They said the Russians want to lure thousands of former elite Afghan commandos into a “foreign legion” with offers of fixed payments of $1,500 a month and promises of safe havens for themselves and their families so they can avoid being deported home. assume it would be death at the hands of the Taliban. “They don’t want to go to fight – but they have no other choice,” said one of the generals, Abdul Raof Arghandiwal, adding that the dozens of commandos in Iran he has sent messages to fear deportation the most. “They ask me, ‘Give me a solution? What do we have to do? If we go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us.” Arghandiwal said the recruitment was led by the Russian mercenary force Wagner Group. Another general, Hibatullah Alizai, the last Afghan army chief before the Taliban took over, said the effort was also helped by a former Afghan special forces commander who lived in Russia and spoke the language. The Russian recruitment follows months of warnings from US soldiers who fought with Afghan special forces that the Taliban intended to kill them and that they might join forces with US enemies to stay alive or out of anger with their former ally. “We didn’t get these people out like we promised, and now he’s going home to rest,” said Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer who served in Afghanistan, adding that the Afghan commandos were highly skilled, tough fighters. “I don’t want to see them on any battlefield, frankly, but certainly not fighting the Ukrainians.” Details of the effort were first reported by Foreign Policy magazine last week based on unnamed Afghan military and security sources. The recruitment comes as Russian forces are reeling from Ukrainian military advances and Russian President Vladimir Putin is pursuing a mobilization effort that has forced nearly 200,000 Russians to flee the country to avoid conscription. The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Yevgeny Prigozhin, who recently identified himself as the founder of the Wagner Group, dismissed the idea of an ongoing effort to recruit former Afghan soldiers as “crazy nonsense.” The US Department of Defense also did not respond to a request for comment, but a senior official said the recruitment was not a surprise given that Wagner is trying to recruit soldiers in several other countries. It’s unclear how many Afghan special forces members who fled to Iran have been courted by the Russians, but one told the AP he was in communication via the WhatsApp chat service with about 400 other commandos who are considering offers. The commando said his offer included Russian visas for himself, as well as his three children and wife who are still in Afghanistan. Others have been offered visa extensions in Iran. He said he was waiting to see what others in the WhatsApp groups would decide, but believed many would take the deal. American veterans who fought with Afghan special forces have described to the AP nearly a dozen cases, none independently confirmed, of the Taliban going door-to-door looking for commandos still in the country, torturing or killing them or doing the same to family members. Human Rights Watch said more than 100 former Afghan soldiers, intelligence officers and police have been killed or forcibly “disappeared” just three months after the Taliban took over despite promises of amnesty. The brother of an Afghan commando in Iran who accepted the Russian offer said Taliban threats made it difficult to refuse. He said his brother had to hide for three months after the fall of Kabul, moving between the homes of his relatives while the Taliban searched his home. “My brother had no choice but to accept the offer,” said the commando’s brother, Murad, who would give only his first name for fear the Taliban might track him down. “This was not an easy decision for him.” An ex-soldier sent a message to Arghandiwal, saying: “You get military training in Russia for two months and then you go to the battle lines.”
