Afghanistan has learned to master the money allocated by the US for operations against the Islamic Caliphate.
Author: Andrey Serenko, NG staff correspondent and head of the Center for the Study of Afghan Politics (Russia)
Original article: Кабульские муллы и “идиоты из ЦРУ”
The Afghan Taliban (on April 17, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation excluded this movement from the list of terrorist organizations) is simulating a fight against the local branch of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS), banned in Russia, Vilayat Khorasan. This was stated by former CIA analyst Sarah Adams, commenting on reports from Kabul about the alleged assault on an IS secret base in the Afghan capital by Taliban special forces on June 9 of this year. According to the former US intelligence officer, the Taliban is deceiving Washington to continue receiving money from it for the alleged fight against the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
On June 9, information resources controlled by the Afghan Taliban disseminated a message that special forces of the Taliban's General Intelligence Directorate (GID) attacked a secret base of the "Wilayat Khorasan" in the 15th district of Kabul. The first to publish the news was the Al-Marsad agency, close to the GUR of the Taliban, which also posted a video of the night battle and noted that the Taliban intelligence special forces were conducting an operation against ISIS in the Qasaba area, not far from the Kabul airport. The video recording shows powerful explosions and the sounds of continuous gunfire. Official representatives of the Taliban have not provided any comments on the incident at the time of writing.
However, Sarah Adams, a former US CIA employee, professional analyst, and recognized expert in the fight against terrorism, published her comment on one of the social networks on June 9. She called the information about the Taliban's GID operation against the ISIS safe house in Kabul's 15th District "ridiculous", saying that "the Taliban staged a fake raid against ISIS".
"Let me explain how ridiculous this operation is," Sarah Adams wrote. "We know this place well from our field investigations related to ISIS (Khorasan Province)... Since 2021, after the fall of Kabul, this building has been under the control of the Zulfiqar unit of the Taliban's General Intelligence Directorate. This is their local "version" of the CIA... It was here that Sirajuddin Haqqani's people (the head of the Taliban's Interior Ministry and the leader of the terrorist "Haqqani network" banned in Russia - "NG") secretly met with the top leadership of ISIS in Kabul - while providing the West with frankly delusional intelligence about the alleged fight against them. Inside this building, they constantly laugh at what idiots they think the CIA is."
Commenting on the video and reports of the Taliban GID special forces attack on the allegedly secret ISIS base in the Afghan capital, Sarah Adams emphasized that "the GID is literally storming its own building, trying to convince everyone that it belongs to someone else."
The former CIA analyst recalled that "fake Taliban operations" allegedly against ISIS militants have been repeatedly recorded before: "They (the Taliban. - "NG") carry them out to please American "counterterrorism" partners. Why do they need these stagings? Because the Taliban receive millions of dollars from the US government to "fight terrorism" (by the US-Taliban agreements in Doha on February 29, 2020)."
According to Sarah Adams, the last such transfer from Washington took place "a couple of weeks ago" and amounted to "exactly $ 46 million." A former US intelligence analyst makes it clear that the demonstrative mock attack by Taliban special forces on a supposedly secret IS base in Kabul on June 9 is directly related to the May payment from the US: the "furious mullahs" are interested in continuing to receive money from the US and therefore demonstrate to their American partners that their "investments in security and the fight against terrorism" have a public effect. And for this, they are not sorry to smash even their own GID facility in the Afghan capital, passing it off as an IS secret base.
Curiously, Taliban representatives have previously repeatedly made statements that the regime of the "furious mullahs" allegedly completely destroyed IS in Afghanistan and that foreign experts and organizations are exaggerating the threat posed by "Wilayat Khorasan". And suddenly, against this backdrop, a noisy demonstration battle with alleged ISIS militants in Kabul... Obviously, in this case, the Taliban's propaganda line came into conflict with the accounting of the Taliban's GID, which had to urgently report to American sponsors on the money allocated to fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the real ISIS in the Taliban "emirate" continues to gain strength. According to the most conservative estimates, the number of militants of "Wilayat Khorasan" in Afghanistan is between 6,000 and 10,000 people - and this is the backbone of the terrorist organization, which continues to successfully recruit new supporters. The recruitment networks of the Afghan branch of ISIS operate not only in Afghanistan but also in all neighboring countries, including the Uyghur regions of China, as well as in Russia, Turkey, and European countries.
Reliable sources report the successful penetration of ISIS into the ranks of the Taliban itself: it is known that hundreds of Taliban have already joined "Wilayat Khorasan", primarily for financial reasons. Some time ago, the leaders of the Taliban announced a reduction in the number of their armed formations due to a lack of funds for their maintenance. Afghan and regional experts do not doubt that some of the Taliban fighters who have been reduced in number will sooner or later end up under the control of ISIS. And it is still unknown how the leadership of the Taliban's punitive structures plans to respond to this threat.
However, according to some Afghan analysts, for several Taliban commanders and political functionaries, the prospect of expanding ISIS in Afghanistan and the region is not a threat. Thus, in some northern Afghan provinces, local Taliban commanders have long been closely cooperating with ISIS representatives and are not even averse to replacing the white flag of the Taliban with the black banner of ISIS under certain conditions. In the meantime, these commanders are watching with irony how American and some regional politicians are financing the Taliban in the hope that it will become an alternative to the "caliphate" in Afghanistan.
