US created, nurtured Taliban in decade-long covert op: Russia’s top security official

Russia’s top security official says the United States created and nurtured the Taliban militant group in Afghanistan in a decade-long covert operation.

“Frankly speaking, it was the United States that laid the foundation for the Taliban movement,” Head of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with the Argumenty i Fakty weekly on Tuesday.

The Taliban militant group, Patrushev said, is the result of “Operation Cyclone… one of the longest and most expensive operations in the history of the CIA,” which was carried out by the US spy agency in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

The operation “was aimed at financially and militarily supporting Afghan mujahedeen, who later formed the backbone of terrorist forces not only in Afghanistan but throughout the region,” Patrushev added.

The so-called mujahedeen fought the former Soviet Union forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

The senior security official said Russia “has never cooperated with the Taliban.” He said the Russian Supreme Court officially designated Taliban a terrorist group in 2003.

Last month, The New York Times said in a controversial report that a top-secret unit within the Russian military intelligence, or the GRU, had allegedly offered monetary rewards to Taliban-linked militants who would kill US troopers in Afghanistan last year.

The report claimed that US President Donald Trump had been briefed about the matter in March. Trump has denied that assertion.

The Kremlin, too, has rejected the report.

Kremlin rejects reports of Russian bounties to Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan

The New York Times has reported about the Trump administration’s deliberation about the ‘stunning’ intelligence assessment.

Patrushev, the Russian official, stressed that the claim was not true.

“Any allegation that our country entered into a conspiracy with the Taliban, especially with the aim of killing American troops, has no basis,” he said.

Patrushev stressed that the “baseless speculations of journalists” that appeared in the Times report “have already been refuted by the White House and the Pentagon.”

The Taliban militant group has also denied the report.

On Sunday, Zamir Kabulov, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan, said the US intelligence had been involved in “drug trafficking” in the Asian country.

US intelligence involved in ‘drug trafficking’ in Afghanistan: Russia envoy

The Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan has accused Washington of involvement in “drug trafficking” in the war-torn country.

The United Nations (UN) says more than 80 percent of the world’s opium is produced in Afghanistan and the bulk of narcotics produced in the country are destined for European states.

Patrushev said Moscow had been invariably helping the Afghan government fight drug trafficking.

The US and a number of its allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled a Taliban regime in 2001 despite their support for the militants when they fought the Soviet Union under a different name during the 1980s. The US claimed the Taliban were harboring the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

In February, the US and the Taliban signed a deal that would see the phased withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

Patrushev said that since the beginning of the US-led war on Afghanistan, “the scale of heroin production has increased tenfold” in the country.

That posed “a serious source of threat to the security of Russia” and the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he said.

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