US soldier

Russia accuses the US and NATO of "covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants" in Afghanistan

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has quietly admitted to Congress that there is "no physical evidence" to back up the claim that Russia is arming the Taliban—but it appears that Moscow still has a few bones to pick with its wrongful accusers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's Information and Press Department released a statement on Tuesday which accuses the of US of supporting terrorists in Afghanistan:
One gets the impression that to distract world public opinion from numerous mistakes made during the more than 15 year-long stay of the US and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, some people are trying to slander Russia, both on their own and with the help of their henchmen in Afghanistan, while covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants.
The statement cites a string of "strange" events in Afghanistan:
  • Reports of three US servicemen "with a consignment of arms" caught trying to sell weapons to ISIS fighters in the northern province of Sar-e Pol last January.
  • The US detained but then released the son of the head of the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU); he is now an ISIS commander in Afghanistan.
  • The night landing of two helicopters without identification marks in extremist-controlled territory in the Sayyad District; the helicopters then flew back to a NATO base.
The full statement is below:
Despite the assurances of the Afghan authorities that they will curb groundless accusations of Russia for allegedly supporting the Taliban, some Afghan MPs and heads of provincial Afghan security agencies continue to repeat these insinuations. This time, police chief of Kandahar Province Abdul Raziq alleged that Russia is helping the Taliban with money and arms supplies in cooperation with other countries. In addition, Fox News Channel in the US resorted to a well-known trick of manipulating public opinion by presenting in the same context reports about the appearance of unidentified helicopters in Kunduz Province bordering on Tajikistan and the smuggling of goods across the Tajik-Afghan border with the latest fantasies of Afghan pseudo analysts on the possible arrival of Russian military advisors to organise financial and logistics support for the Taliban.

The facts we have at our disposal show that the reality is completely different. Earlier the Afghan website Payam Aftab carried an article about the detention of three US servicemen with a consignment of arms in the Kokistanat District of the northern province of Sar-e Pol last January. ISIS commandos who were going to buy these arms from the Americans were caught at the same time with a huge sum of money. However, later on the US servicemen were released from custody and transferred to their command, while all documents, including interrogation records, money and arms mysteriously disappeared.

Even stranger is the release of Azizullah from the US Bagram Prison near Kabul in the autumn of 2016. He is the son of Tahir Yuldashev, head of the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Later on Azizullah was moved to the Darzab District of the Jowzjan Province in the north of Afghanistan, where he headed a unit of 25 militants that left the IMU for ISIS. As a result, Azizullah's unit subjugated armed formations of the Taliban in some districts of the provinces of Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e Pol, compelled the local population to swear loyalty to ISIS and established a second open bridgehead of ISIS in the north of Afghanistan (after the first one in Nangarhar).

Finally, Sar-e Pol Governor Mohammad Zahir Wahdat confirmed on the record information about the night landing of two helicopters without identification marks in extremist-controlled territory in the Sayyad District. They went to the government air force base in Mazar-e-Sharif that also accommodates the NATO military base Camp Marmal.

One gets the impression that to distract world public opinion from numerous mistakes made during the more than 15 year-long stay of the US and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, some people are trying to slander Russia, both on their own and with the help of their henchmen in Afghanistan, while covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants.
Moscow has never shied away from speaking openly about what's really happening in Afghanistan. Back in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of indirectly supporting the Afghan drug trade.