The Insider brought summer 2020’s Russian-Taliban bounty scandal back to the news after publishing their latest report on this subject last week. They’re designated as a foreign agent by Russia, and two of their article’s three co-authors – Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov – are wanted by the Interior Ministry. Grozev also used to lead Bellingcat’s Russia investigations, who are also designated as foreign agents and which Russia’s foreign spy chief accused of being in cahoots with Western intelligence.
The aforesaid details are being shared so that readers know better than to take their words at face value. The Insider’s report is full of bombshells about the Russian-Taliban bounty scandal, and regardless of whether or not one believes what they wrote, they’re bound to have a narrative impact. That’s because they claim that Russia did indeed pay the Taliban for each American that they killed, there’s allegedly a connection to regional actors too, and all of this is coming out right before Trump’s reinauguration.
In the order that they were mentioned, The Insider purports to have mapped GRU’s Afghan assassination network, which they present as lending credence to these accusations. Readers can review their report to learn more about what they supposedly discovered, but it boils down to spies using diplomatic and business cover to pass along orders and payments to the Taliban. The impression is that Russia is guilty as charged, which could justify the Biden Administration designating it as a state sponsor of terrorism.
As for the regional actors that are allegedly involved, the primary one is Iran, which The Insider claims arranged the first Russian-Taliban contacts. They also reported that Russia funneled arms to the Taliban from its base in Tajikistan and is plotting to help them against Dushanbe. There’s also a vague connection between GRU’s assassins and India. The first claim could lead to more US pressure on Iran, the second could sow discord between these allies, while the third could derail the likely Indo-US rapprochement.
And finally, the timing of all this is clearly meant to complicate Trump’s efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian Conflict with Russia. Even if the Biden Administration doesn’t designate it as a state sponsor of terrorism in order to maximally impede his diplomacy, the media attention that might be given to The Insider’s report could lead to more manufactured pressure on him to reconsider his plans to meet with Putin. There could also be important implications for Trump’s foreign policy towards the broader region.
Prior to this development, Trump was largely indifferent towards the Taliban, his envoy for special missions Richard Grenell seemed ready to leverage newly worsening US ties with Pakistan to secure Imran Khan’s release as part of a grand deal, while a US-Indo rapprochement seemed inevitable. All of that might change if his administration believes the previously mentioned allegations and thus decides to improve US-Pakistani ties at the Taliban’s and India’s expense in the ways that’ll now be described.
Pakistan and the Taliban are once again on the brink of war after their tit-for-tat cross-border attacks stemming from Islamabad’s accusations that the group hosts terrorist-designated TTP militants and Kabul’s refusal to recognize the Durand Line between their nations. If Trump is manipulated into wanting revenge for the alleged bounty plot, then he might drop Khan’s cause and ignore Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile program in order to use that country as a proxy against the Taliban.
Nearby Tajikistan despises the neighboring Taliban for ideological reasons (it’s strictly secular while they’re Islamic fundamentalists) and due to its persecution of ethnic Tajiks in the north, whose numbers are larger than those in Tajikistan proper, which places them on the same side as Pakistan in Afghanistan. Tajik-Pakistani ties have also strengthened in recent years, especially the past one after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited Dushanbe in July and then sent his spy chief there right before the New Year.
Tajikistan might more therefore actively diversify from its military-strategic dependence on Russia in light of the latest reports that GRU armed their Taliban enemies from Russia’s base in the country and is now plotting to help the group against Dushanbe, to which end it could redouble such ties with Pakistan. This could serve to create a rift between these allies that the US could then exploit for divide-and-rule purposes for prying Tajikistan away from the CSTO just like it practically already pried away Armenia.
That Russian-led bloc prohibits foreign military bases on members’ soil without prior consensus, yet the workaround as pioneered by the Armenian precedent is to host foreign troops disguised as “observers” or indefinitely suspend membership in the CSTO. This could unfold in the Tajik context if Trump patches up the US’ problems with Pakistan in pursuit of shared anti-Taliban interests, works with it and Dushanbe to arm that group’s foes, and then requests an in-country military presence to facilitate this.
Already troubled Indo-US relations would further worsen in parallel with improved Pakistani-US ones, but this would have the consequence of precluding India’s informal role in any forthcoming US-led regional pressure campaign against China as part of Trump’s expected “Pivot (back) to Asia”. He might therefore be reminded by the Indophilic members of his administration of that country’s importance to the US’ grand strategic, which could get him to reconsider the abovementioned anti-Taliban scenario.
Regardless of whatever happens, there shouldn’t be any doubt that the timing of The Insider’s latest report about the Russian-Taliban bounty scandal and the details thereof are meant to influence Trump’s foreign policy, though it can only be speculated whether they’ll succeed in whole or in part. Upon analyzing their intentions, it appears that they want to complicate Trump’s peace talks with Russia, improve US ties with Pakistan at the expense of ties with India, and pry Tajikistan away from the CSTO.
The most effective way to counter this is for Trump to stay the course with his noble peace efforts; for India to remind the US that documented Pakistani support for the Taliban was much more meaningful in all respects by far than whatever Russia allegedly gave the group in terms of arms and finances; and for Russia to proactively reassure Tajikistan that it’ll never sacrifice its interests to the Taliban and offering more aid to it too in order to preemptively avert the possibility of the US “outbidding” it in the future.
