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The GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, spent years financing terrorist groups in Afghanistan to target U.S. and coalition forces. An investigation by The Insider has not only confirmed the existence of the program but also identified GRU officers responsible for its coordination. The Russian intelligence agency used a gemstone trading company as a front to run a network of Afghan couriers who delivered money to Taliban fighters and other militant groups. Once their missions were completed, the couriers were provided with Russian documents and granted asylum in Russia.
The network mapped by The Insider — which includes both the GRU handlers responsible for the program and their Afghan agents — appears to contain information previously unknown to the NDS and its U.S. intelligence partners.
The program, as per the ex-NDS sources, averaged $200,000 per killed American or coalition soldier, with the payment being disbursed to the network responsible. There were smaller allowances for killed Afghan troops and security officers. One former NDS official estimated that Russia paid a total of approximately $30 million to the Taliban via the scheme, a fraction of the $3 to $4 billion the CIA spent on Operation Cyclone, the covert program to fund, arm, and train the mujahideen to drive the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. “I think $30 million was a small amount to give the United States a bloody nose,” one former NDS officer said. Another ex-NDS source claimed that at least that much had also been spent on funding other armed groups opposing the U.S.-supported Afghan government, a claim partly corroborated by data showing close contacts between the GRU spymasters and members of Afghan resistance movements dating back to 2014.