Russia is coordinating the recruitment of over a hundred Cuban mercenaries for its war effort in Ukraine, according to hacked documents obtained by The Intercept.

Activist hackers known as the “Cyber Resistance” and allied to the Ukrainian government recently infiltrated the personal email account of a Russian officer in the Western Military District who was involved in the recruitment of Cubans. The stolen data offers rare and previously unseen insight into how Russia operates its pipeline of foreign mercenaries into the Ukraine conflict.

Within the cache of hacked documents are approximately 122 passport scans and images of Cuban nationals, all fighting-aged males, along with a series of Spanish-language enlistment contracts in with a section of the Russian Armed Forces headquartered in the city of Tula , where a military school and airborne soldiers are known to be located. The contracts are templates, not fully executed agreements, but they sketch the incentives Russia appears to be offering foreign fighters.

The contracts promise “a one-time cash payment in the amount of 195,000 rubles,” about $2,000, for the Cubans signing on to serve in the zone of the “ special military operation ” (the Kremlin euphemism for the war in Ukraine) and monthly payments starting at “204,000 rubles per month,” or just over $2,000, depending on rank, along with several spousal and family benefits. So far, these types of official Russian military contracts geared toward foreign nationals have mostly been discussed in regional media reports (such as those targeting ethnic Russian men in former Soviet republics , according to the British Ministry of Defence).

One set of images in the hacked documents shows single passports with a hand holding up entry cards into Russia above them, revealing that a group of at least five Cuban men entered the country through Belarus, a key Kremlin ally, on July 1. A little over a month before that arrival date, a senior Belarussian military official made a public show of pledging to train Cuban troops on its territory .

While the hacked documents do not include signed enlistment contracts for the Cubans, some of the Cubans in the array of passport scans were easily found through Facebook profile searches, and some of them openly posted about relocating to Russia and posed in locations around the Tula region. One of them not only updated his Facebook profile with details that he traveled from Santiago de Cuba to Russia in early July, but also posted a flurry of videos with a new Russian passport and in front of tank columns with the trademark Russian “ Z ” spray-painted on the sides.

Only weeks ago, that same Cuban man put out a video from the center of Tula in a popular square that was easily geolocated by The Intercept. Similarly, another apparent recruit from Havana posed at an outdoor shopping center in Tula and, in a separate image, with a fresh buzzcut in front of a Pyaterochka market – a popular grocery chain in Russia – just last week.

Three of the Cubans from the hacked cache also appeared in a Facebook story from early September smiling together, with one of them sporting the famous striped telnyashka undershirt worn by Russian airborne soldiers and paratroopers, the types of soldiers stationed in Tula where the Cubans are suspected of being trained. The aunt of another one of the Cuban nationals posted a birthday photo of her nephew (that matched his passport date of birth) and said that he had been “in Russia” and alluded to “fighting in Ukraine.”

Among the many details in the hack of the Russian officer’s inbox are email exchanges with military accounts and the translators who processed the Cuban passports; images of internal meetings with high-ranking uniformed officers; and an Excel spreadsheet with nearly a hundred recruitment contacts across four of the five official military districts of Russia.

For his part, the hacked Russian officer, Maj. Anton Valentinovich Perevozchikov, did not deny his role in recruiting the Cubans. He instead sent an expletive-laced reply to The Intercept denouncing NATO and declaring, “Russia will win.”

According to a senior officer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces with direct knowledge of the hacked materials, “We can see that a group of Cuban citizens are going to participate in some activities related to the Russian military.” He added, “Their efforts remain focused on enticing new recruits voluntarily to prevent a fresh wave of mandatory mobilization.”

According to the same officer, at the outset of the full-scale war in 2022, amid the massive failures in Russia’s initial offensives on Kyiv, the Ukrainian military observed that limited numbers of volunteers “willing to risk their lives under the leadership of ineffective Russian officers” came from abroad. The latest push with Cubans, he added, could be aimed at bolstering the perception that there is international support for Russia, though economics are a factor too.

“It’s possible that Cuban citizens are being enlisted due to cost considerations as they are simply cheaper,” he said. “Apart from salaries, the Russian government is obligated to provide additional compensation in cases of injury or death for its citizens. However, this responsibility doesn’t extend to Cuban citizens. When you come here for financial gain, your death is your headache.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz at the Kremlin in Moscow on June 14, 2023.

Photo: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnk/AFP via Getty Images

Global Volunteers in Ukraine

Since the beginning of the total invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there has been persistent talk that the Kremlin was soliciting the help of global volunteers. While Kyiv has made no secret of having its own International Legion , made up of NATO veterans and volunteers from around the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin has remained mostly tight-lipped on his use of foreign fighters.

That didn’t stop early reports swirling of Syrian mercenaries , adept in urban combat from years of sectarian warfare, being enlisted into the Russian war effort, or Pentagon claims of Iranian operatives in Ukraine, and other rumors that soldiers from the Central African Republic (an ally of the Kremlin) were fighting on behalf of Moscow.

But the hacked material, dating from this summer, suggests that Putin and his military apparatus have made real efforts to recruit foreign fighters for a bloody war that is causing mass casualties on both sides. While the Kremlin has often accused the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of hiring foreign mercenaries for its International Legion, the cache illustrates that Russia is also enlisting foreigners from its own allied countries.

On Monday, the Cuban government said it had uncovered a criminal “human trafficking network” that was ferrying some of its citizens to the Russian war effort and denied Cuba’s involvement. “The Ministry of the Interior detected and is working on the neutralization and dismantling of a human trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens based there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces that participate in military operations in Ukraine,” according to the statement. “Cuba has a firm and clear historical position against mercenarism and plays an active role in the United Nations in repudiating that practice.”

The Cuban government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

It is unclear whether Havana’s statement on Monday was prompted by the recruitment effort revealed by the hacked documents, or by a report in a Miami newspaper on how Russia had allegedly forced a pair of teenaged Cuban migrants into its military in the Ryazan region, which neighbors Tula.

Emails to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the apparent channeling of Cuban mercenaries into the war in Ukraine went unanswered.

In September, Russian media reported Cuban immigrants already living in Russia had signed up for the war effort after Putin decreed an easy path to citizenship for foreign nationals who enlisted in the military. But the records from Perevozchikov’s inbox show that this group of men was recruited into Russia this year.

While the war in Ukraine has invigorated NATO and spurred on the addition of two new member states, Finland and Sweden, it has also reawakened other geopolitical alliances. Russia and Cuba were strategic allies during the Cold War, when Cuban leader Fidel Castro sent his troops to fight in the Soviet-backed war in Angola .

The two sides have strengthened their bonds since the broader invasion of Ukraine started a year and a half ago. Cuban leaders have time and again sided with Russia and have not publicly denounced the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine. Putin, for his part, has refused to rule out deploying troops to the island nation just over 100 miles from the Florida coast.

The post Hacked Documents Reveal Russia’s Contracts for Cuban Mercenaries in Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept .

The political crisis roiling Pakistan has morphed into a constitutional crisis. The dual crises were kicked into motion when former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from power last year and deepened with his recent imprisonment on corruption charges.

Last week, the Pakistani authorities moved to charge Khan under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act for his alleged mishandling of a classified diplomatic cable, known internally as a cipher. The March 7, 2022, cable had been at the center of a controversy in Pakistan, with Khan and his supporters claiming for a year and a half that it showed U.S. pressure to remove the prime minister. Khan publicly revealed the existence of the document in a late March 2022 rally. In April, Khan was removed by a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

In the latest blow to the former prime minister, Pakistani authorities filed a First Information Report — an official allegation — charging that Khan and his associates were “involved in communication of information contained in secret classified document … to the unauthorized persons (i.e. public at large) by twisting the facts to achieve their ulterior motives and personal gains in a manner prejudicial to the interests of state security.”

The official report, the first step to a formal indictment, alleged that Khan and members of his government held a “clandestine meeting” in mid-March 2022, shortly after the cable was sent, in a conspiracy to use the classified document to their advantage.

Earlier this month, The Intercept reported on the contents of the secret cable , which confirmed U.S. diplomatic pressure to remove Khan. The document was provided to The Intercept by a source in the Pakistani military. The formal allegation against Khan makes no mention of The Intercept’s publication of the diplomatic cable.

After the allegations about the cable were formally lodged against Khan this weekend, a wrinkle quickly appeared in the case. Pakistan’s legislature, widely believed to be acting as a rubber stamp for the military, recently approved changes to the state secrets law that Khan was being charged under. Pakistan’s sitting President Arif Alvi, though, denied on social media that he had authorized the signing of the amendments into law.

“As God is my witness, I did not sign Official Secrets Amendment Bill 2023 & Pakistan Army Amendment Bill 2023 as I disagreed with these laws,” Alvi tweeted, referring to another controversial new piece of legislation granting the Pakistani military sweeping powers over civil liberties. “However I have found out today that my staff undermined my will and command.”

The additions to the Official Secrets Act specifically target leakers and whistleblowers, outlining new offenses for the disclosure of information to the public related to national security and effectively criminalizing any news reporting that the military deems to be against its interests. Khan is expected to be indicted soon under the new law.

Alvi’s statement — that he had opposed the laws, but that his staff had apparently signed off on them without his consent — throws Pakistan into uncharted constitutional territory. Under normal circumstances, the country’s president is required to give final affirmation to any laws passed by Parliament.

Imran Khan’s Imprisonment

Khan is reportedly under pressure while in government custody. According to media accounts, he lodged complaints about surveillance in prison, as well as the inability to meet with lawyers and family members. And Khan’s wife has expressed fears that the former prime minister could be “poisoned” in jail.

The former prime minister is currently serving a three-year sentence on corruption charges that his supporters say are politically motivated. As part of his punishment in that case, he has also received a five-year ban from politics, which is believed to be aimed at preventing Khan — the most popular politician in the country — from contesting elections slated for later this year.

Meanwhile, the crackdown on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, Khan’s political party, continued. On Sunday, shortly after Khan was booked under the state secrets law, his former foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, was arrested under the same statute.

In an interview with Voice of America last week, former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton called for Congress to look into potential U.S. involvement in Khan’s removal. Bolton said that despite his differences with many of Khan’s policies, which included strident criticism of U.S. involvement in Pakistani domestic affairs, he opposed the crackdown by the military, saying “terrorists, China and Russia” could use the discord to their advantage.

“I would be stunned if that’s exactly what they said,” Bolton said of the cable text published by The Intercept. “It would be remarkable for the State Department, under any administration, but particularly under the Biden administration, to be calling for Imran Khan’s overthrow.”

The post Imran Khan Booked Under Pakistan State Secrets Law for Allegedly Mishandling Secret Cable in 2022 appeared first on The Intercept .

U.S.-trained military officers have been appointed to head five of eight regions of Niger by a junta that includes at least five U.S.-trained military officers, The Intercept has learned. While the Pentagon claims its instruction doesn’t lead to mutinies, innovative research by a former Pentagon analyst indicates the opposite could be true.

The Nigerien junta, which calls itself the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland, seized power on July 26 and detained the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum. Earlier this month, the junta reportedly installed eight top security officials to govern its seven regions and the capital district. This consolidation of power included the appointments of Brig. Gens. Iro Oumarou and Ibrahim Bagadoma; Col. Maj. Oumarou Tawayé; Inspector General of Police Issoufou Mamane; and Col. Labo Issoufou. All have “participated in U.S.-sponsored training,” a State Department spokesperson said in response to questions from The Intercept.

The Pentagon is confident that “no correlation” exists between its instruction and U.S. trainees conducting coups, but recent scholarship complicates that view. In a 2022 study , Renanah Joyce, an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University and a former Defense Department analyst, evaluated the Armed Forces of Liberia, which the United States rebuilt from the ground up following a devastating civil war. She found that, along with technical, tactical skills, the U.S. training program also “heavily emphasized liberal norms, socializing the Liberian military to respect human rights and civilian authority.”

“The [U.S.] training fails to address or transform institutions.”

Employing an inventive experiment that involved a survey, Joyce discovered that when faced with competing “liberal norms,” U.S.-trained soldiers prioritized military cohesion over human rights and democratic principles. When Joyce put Liberian soldiers to the test, she found “respondents with U.S. training were significantly less likely to express willingness to prioritize human rights,” as well as “somewhat less likely to express absolute support for democracy and somewhat more likely to express support for army rule.” In contrast, those “without U.S. training were significantly less likely to express support for one-party rule.”

“U.S. training too often imparts tactical and operational skills that can make military forces more competent without simultaneously making them more professional or subordinate to civilian authority because the training fails to address or transform institutions,” Joyce told The Intercept, while emphasizing that different programs target different segments of the military and impart different skills. “Good tactical training that occurs in the context of weak, corrupt, or illiberal institutions — political and military — is likely to do no good and may do harm.”

The Pentagon does not seem to have bought into Joyce’s findings — and perhaps is not even aware of them. Last week, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder noted that U.S. training emphasizes democratic governance and civilian control of the military.

“We do know that several Nigerien military personnel associated with the events there have received U.S. training in the past,” he said . “There is no correlation between the training that they received and their activities.” The Pentagon did not explain how Ryder came to this conclusion, despite repeated requests for clarification from The Intercept.

Joyce was skeptical. “If it’s true that training always tries to promote adherence to principles of democratic governance and civilian rule of the military, the fact that a coup happened in Niger suggests that these efforts were ineffective at best in that case,” she told The Intercept. “I’m quite confident that the U.S. training provided does nod, at least in passing, to the importance of democratic governance. The problem is that even if soldiers buy into these norms — which requires quite a lot of time and training, by the way — it’s not enough to ensure the right behaviors if institutional guardrails and good political governance are missing and rival autocratic providers are present.”

The Intercept has identified the head of the Nigerien junta, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani (also spelled Tiani); Gen. Mohamed Toumba; and the new defense chief, Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, as mutineers with U.S. connections. In total, at least five members of the junta were trained by the United States, according to a U.S. government official with knowledge of efforts to ascertain their American ties. Last week, Barmou told U.S. Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland that the junta would execute the deposed president if neighboring countries attempted a military intervention to restore Bazoum’s rule, according to a second U.S. official who spoke with The Intercept. Barmou did not respond to requests for an interview.

The junta has faced pressure from the U.S. and other international actors to release and reinstate Bazoum. This weekend, the junta publicly announced that it plans to prosecute Bazoum for “ high treason ” for “stealing all of Niger’s resources.” If convicted, Bazoum could, under Nigerien law, face the death penalty.

At least 15 U.S.-supported officers have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel in recent years. The list includes officers who conducted coups in Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). Chad’s Mahamat Idriss Déby — who was installed by the army in a dynastic coup after the death of his father in 2021 — also benefited from U.S. assistance in 2013, according to information the State Department provided in response to The Intercept’s questions. Déby, whose country borders Niger to the east, met with members of the junta , as well as Bazoum, just days after the coup d’état.

The juntas in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali quickly lined up behind Niger’s coup leaders and warned that any military intervention to restore Bazoum would be considered a “ declaration of war ” against them all.

The Intercept recently reported that in Mali, Col. Assimi Goïta — who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces, participated in U.S. training exercises, and attended a Joint Special Operations University seminar in Florida before overthrowing the government in both 2020 and 2021 — struck a deal with Wagner, the Russia-linked mercenary group that has since been implicated in hundreds of human rights abuses alongside Malian troops.

“What we are seeing in Mali, Burkina Faso, and now Niger, is evidence that officers once trained by the U.S. and France are willing to ‘bite the hand’ that feeds them, rejecting their former U.S. and French partners,” said Joyce. “The availability of alternative security assistance and training — particularly from Russia — makes this decision easier than it would be otherwise.”

“Officers once trained by the U.S. and France are willing to ‘bite the hand’ that feeds them.”

Not all recent Sahelien coups involve U.S.-trained officers. Sudan, which has suffered 17 coups, saw military takeovers in 2019 and 2021 that apparently did not involve U.S. trainees. (The U.S. designated Sudan a “ state sponsor of terrorism ” from 1993 to 2020 and had limited military-to-military contact .) And not all U.S.-trained African mutineers hail from the Sahel. Before Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, he underwent basic training at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) in Georgia and advanced instruction at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.

The five U.S.-trained Nigerien governors received instruction in a wide variety of “topics” including counterterrorism, border security, and “kidnapping for ransom,” over the course of “many years,” according to an email from the State Department. “We are not able to provide individual training records at this time,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.

The Congressional Research Service estimates that the Pentagon and State Department have furnished more than $6.5 billion in security assistance to African partners over the past decade, although that number is likely an undercount . Counterterrorism assistance has dominated U.S. military aid on the continent since 9/11, but each year, around 90 percent of African nations also receive U.S. training in human rights and civilian control of the military.

The post Niger Junta Appoints U.S.-Trained Military Officers to Key Jobs appeared first on The Intercept .

The United States has trained at least five members of the new ruling junta in Niger, The Intercept has learned. America has now “ paused ” security assistance to that military-led government even as it looks to ramp up such aid to Burkina Faso, which is ruled by a military officer who took power in a 2022 coup.

The Nigerien junta, which calls itself the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland, seized power on July 26 and detained the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum. The commander of the country’s presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, also spelled Tiani , has proclaimed himself the country’s new leader, while Bazoum and his family remain “under virtual house arrest,” U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs and Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said this week. Nuland and other U.S. officials asked to see Bazoum in person when they visited Niger on Monday, but his captors refused.

Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that a Lt. Cl. Abdourahmane Tiani was selected to attend a yearlong International Counterterrorism Fellows Program at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., from 2009 to 2010. Over the weekend, another Nigerien mutineer, Gen. Mohamed Toumba, spoke before a cheering crowd at a 30,000-seat stadium named after Seyni Kountche, who led Niger’s first coup d’état in 1974. “We are aware of their Machiavellian plan,” he said of those “plotting subversion” against “the forward march of Niger.” Five years ago, Toumba addressed U.S. military officers and African dignitaries at the opening ceremony for Flintlock, U.S. Africa Command’s largest annual special operations counterterrorism exercise. The Intercept previously reported that Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou , who headed Niger’s Special Forces and now serves as chief of defense , also attended the National Defense University and trained at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), Georgia.

“It’s a disturbing trend, and a sign of how badly misallocated our national security spending is on the continent,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy , D-Conn., on X, formerly known as Twitter, drawing attention to The Intercept’s coverage of the latest in a long parade of U.S.-trained military mutineers.

Two weeks after Niger’s coup, the State Department has still not provided a list of the U.S.-connected mutineers, but a U.S. official confirmed that there are “five people we’ve identified as having received [U.S. military] training.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

“The U.S. is using security assistance and military training too broadly in sub-Saharan Africa. Doing so means you’re putting the United States in a position where it’s implicated in human rights abuses and the malign behavior of local security partners,” said Elias Yousif, a research analyst with the Stimson Center’s Conventional Defense Program. “Our experience in the Sahel should be especially cautionary. Over many years, we’ve seen a remarkable series of coups as well as deteriorating security with a rise in militancy, Islamist insurgencies, and criminal networks. I would be hard-pressed to point to a success that could justify continuing on the same path.”

“A Model of Democracy”

In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Niger “ a model of democracy ,” even though the latest State Department human rights report on the country refers to “ significant human rights issues ,” including “extrajudicial killings by or on behalf of [the] government.”

The State Department has offered similarly confused responses to The Intercept’s questions about the coup in Niger. When asked about the training provided to members of the Nigerien junta, a nameless spokesperson replied by email: “This is an evolving situation and it is too soon to characterize the nature of ongoing developments.”

That spokesperson also insisted that the “U.S. Government does not provide training to the Presidential Guard.” A 2017 and 2018 joint State and Defense Department “ Foreign Military Training Report ,” however, mentions “In Country Training” for members of Niger’s presidential guard.

“We are pausing certain foreign assistance programs, and will continue to review our assistance as the situation evolves,” Blinken posted on X last week, but also said in a press statement that the U.S. was continuing some “security operations” in Niger.

Following military coups, U.S. law generally restricts countries from receiving military aid . But The Intercept recently found security assistance still trickling into Mali , even though that country is ruled by a U.S.-trained officer who overthrew the previous government and its military has been implicated in the killing of civilians. Military officers twice overthrew the government of Burkina Faso in 2022, but the U.S. continues to provide training to Burkinabe forces according to Gen. Michael Langley , the chief of Africa Command, or AFRICOM. In April, less than a month after Langley informed members of the House Armed Services Committee about the continued support, the Burkinabe military reportedly massacred at least 156 civilians , including 45 children, in the village of Karma. Langley has also argued against constraints on U.S. military aid following coups.

On Monday, Nuland met with Barmou, warning the new defense chief of “the economic and other kinds of support that we will legally have to cut off if democracy is not restored.” Barmou — who U.S. commandos previously helped set up specialized mobile units designed to target terrorist groups and criminal gangs — was apparently unmoved. “They are quite firm in their view on how they want to proceed,” said Nuland , noting “it was difficult today, and I will be straight up about that.”

At least 14 U.S.-trained officers have taken part in coups in West Africa since 2008.

Last year, The Intercept asked Nuland what the U.S. was doing to slow the parade of African officers overthrowing governments the U.S. trains them to protect. “Nick, that was a pretty loaded comment that you made,” she replied. “Some folks involved in these coups have received some U.S. training, but far from all of them.” Since then, five more U.S.-trained officers have been involved in coups. Reporting by The Intercept indicates that at least 14 U.S.-trained officers have taken part in coups in West Africa since 2008.

Ineffective and Counterproductive

Senior officials at the State Department and Pentagon , meanwhile, are reportedly lobbying to increase security assistance to Burkina Faso, which neighbors Niger, at a time when human rights defenders and journalists say the government is cracking down on critical voices and forced disappearances are on the rise .

“It’s getting much worse. The government is suppressing free speech,” a journalist working in Burkina Faso told The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, due to fears for his safety. “People who speak out are being abducted. The situation is scary.”

The Biden administration’s push for increased security aid to Burkina Faso comes despite a coup last year by U.S.-trained Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba , who was swiftly overthrown by another military officer, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré. Last September, The Intercept asked AFRICOM if Traoré was also trained by the U.S. “We are looking into this,” said AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan, noting that the command was “still digging” into possible “engagements” with him. “I will let you know when I have an answer,” Cahalan wrote. A request this week for updates yielded no response.

Experts say that the U.S. track record of pouring money into foreign militaries instead of making long-term investments in humanitarian aid, strengthening civil society, and bolstering democratic institutions has been short-sighted and detrimental to wider American aims. They also question the ability of the United States to build foreign military capacity, a task the Pentagon sees as a core competency .

“When you look at the big picture, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Burkina Faso, the U.S. government’s funding and training of other nations’ military and police forces in counterterrorism has largely been ineffective and counterproductive in regards to the pursuit of meaningful safety, for either Americans or anyone else around the world,” Stephanie Savell, the co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University, told The Intercept.

Ukrainian troops trained by the U.S. and its allies have floundered during a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces, raising questions about the quality of the instruction and the efficacy of tens of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance. In 2021, an Afghan army built, trained, advised, and armed by the United States over 20 years evaporated in the face of Taliban forces. In 2015, a $500 million Pentagon effort to train and equip Syrian rebels, slated to produce 15,000 fighters over three years, yielded just a few dozen before being scrapped by the United States. A year earlier, an Iraqi army created, trained, and funded — to the tune of at least $25 billion — by the U.S. was routed by the far smaller forces of the Islamic State.

In West Africa in particular, Yousif noted, security aid has not been tethered to a more diversified whole-of-government approach. “It really illustrates the lack of tools in the toolkit that the United States has in this part of the world. It’s the one mechanism that the U.S. thinks it has for garnering influence and delivering foreign policy benefits, but it seems like a very poor tool, especially in a place like the Sahel, where militaries are also increasingly a threat to the civilian government.”

The post At Least Five Members of Niger Junta Were Trained by U.S. appeared first on The Intercept .

The U.S. State Department encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.

The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.

The cable reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The contents of the document obtained by The Intercept are consistent with reporting in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn and elsewhere describing the circumstances of the meeting and details in the cable itself, including in the classification markings omitted from The Intercept’s presentation. The dynamics of the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. described in the cable were subsequently borne out by events. In the cable, the U.S. objects to Khan’s foreign policy on the Ukraine war. Those positions were quickly reversed after his removal, which was followed, as promised in the meeting, by a warming between the U.S. and Pakistan.

The diplomatic meeting came two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which launched as Khan was en route to Moscow, a visit that infuriated Washington.

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. In response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s role in the conflict, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.” Van Hollen appeared to be indignant that officials from the State Department were not in communication with Khan about the issue.

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd . “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”

In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Lu warned that if the situation wasn’t resolved, Pakistan would be marginalized by its Western allies. “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar,” Lu said, adding that Khan could face “isolation” by Europe and the U.S. should he remain in office.

Asked about quotes from Lu in the Pakistani cable, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “Nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be.” Miller said he would not comment on private diplomatic discussions.

The Pakistani ambassador responded by expressing frustration with the lack of engagement from U.S. leadership: “This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored or even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

“There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

The discussion concluded, according to the document, with the Pakistani ambassador expressing his hope that the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war would not “impact our bilateral ties.” Lu told him that the damage was real but not fatal, and with Khan gone, the relationship could go back to normal. “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective,” Lu said, again raising the “political situation” in Pakistan. “Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

“Khan’s fate wasn’t sealed at the time that this meeting took place, but it was tenuous,” said Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will better if he is removed from power.”

The Intercept has made extensive efforts to authenticate the document. Given the security climate in Pakistan, independent confirmation from sources in the Pakistani government was not possible. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We had expressed concern about the visit of then-PM Khan to Moscow on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have communicated that opposition both publicly and privately.” He added that “allegations that the United States interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. They have always been false, and they continue to be.”

American Denials

The State Department has previously and on repeated occasions denied that Lu urged the Pakistani government to oust the prime minister. On April 8, 2022, after Khan alleged there was a cable proving his claim of U.S. interference, State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter was asked about its veracity. “Let me just say very bluntly there is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” Porter said .

In early June 2023, Khan sat for an interview with The Intercept and again repeated the allegation. The State Department at the time referred to previous denials in response to a request for comment.

Khan has not backed off, and the State Department again denied the charge throughout June and July, at least three times in press conferences and again in a speech by a deputy assistant secretary of state for Pakistan, who referred to the claims as “propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.” On the latest occasion, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, ridiculed the question. “I feel like I need to bring just a sign that I can hold up in response to this question and say that that allegation is not true,” Miller said , laughing and drawing cackles from the press. “I don’t know how many times I can say it. … The United States does not have a position on one political candidate or party versus another in Pakistan or any other country.”

While the drama over the cable has played out in public and in the press, the Pakistani military has launched an unprecedented assault on Pakistani civil society to silence whatever dissent and free expression had previously existed in the country.

In recent months, the military-led government cracked down not just on dissidents but also on suspected leakers inside its own institutions, passing a law last week that authorizes warrantless searches and lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers. Shaken by the public display of support for Khan — expressed in a series of mass protests and riots this May — the military has also enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.

These sweeping attacks on democracy passed largely unremarked upon by U.S. officials. In late July, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, visited Pakistan, then issued a statement saying his visit had been focused on “strengthening the military-to-military relations,” while making no mention of the political situation in the country. This summer, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, attempted to add a measure to the National Defense Authorization Act directing the State Department to examine democratic backsliding in Pakistan, but it was denied a vote on the House floor.

In a press briefing on Monday, in response to a question about whether Khan received a fair trial, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We believe that is an internal matter for Pakistan.”

Political Chaos

Khan’s removal from power after falling out with the Pakistani military, the same institution believed to have engineered his political rise, has thrown the nation of 230 million into political and economic turmoil . Protests against Khan’s dismissal and suppression of his party have swept the country and paralyzed its institutions, while Pakistan’s current leaders struggle to confront an economic crisis triggered in part by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices . The present chaos has resulted in staggering rates of inflation and capital flight from the country.

In addition to the worsening situation for ordinary citizens, a regime of extreme censorship has also been put in place at the direction of the Pakistani military, with news outlets effectively barred from even mentioning Khan’s name, as The Intercept previously reported . Thousands of members of civil society, mostly supporters of Khan, have been detained by the military , a crackdown that intensified after Khan was arrested earlier this year and held in custody for four days, sparking nationwide protests. Credible reports have emerged of torture by security forces, with reports of several deaths in custody.

The crackdown on Pakistan’s once-rambunctious press has taken a particularly dark turn. Arshad Sharif, a prominent Pakistani journalist who fled the country, was shot to death in Nairobi last October under circumstances that remain disputed. Another well-known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, was detained by security forces at an airport this May and has not been seen since. Both had been reporting on the secret cable, which has taken on nearly mythical status in Pakistan, and had been among a handful of journalists briefed on its contents before Khan’s ouster. These attacks on the press have created a climate of fear that has made reporting on the document by reporters and institutions inside Pakistan effectively impossible.

Last November, Khan himself was subject to an attempted assassination when he was shot at a political rally, in an attack that wounded him and killed one of his supporters. His imprisonment has been widely viewed within Pakistan, including among many critics of his government, as an attempt by the military to stop his party from contesting upcoming elections. Polls show that were he allowed to participate in the vote, Khan would likely win.

“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. “This is ultimately about the Pakistani military using outside forces as a means to preserve their hegemony over the country. Every time there is a grand geopolitical rivalry, whether it is the Cold War, or the war on terror, they know how to manipulate the U.S. in their favor.”

Khan’s repeated references to the cable itself have contributed to his legal troubles, with prosecutors launching a separate investigation into whether he violated state secrets laws by discussing it.

Democracy and the Military

For years, the U.S. government’s patronage relationship with the Pakistani military, which has long acted as the real powerbroker in the country’s politics, has been seen by many Pakistanis as an impenetrable obstacle to the country’s ability to grow its economy, combat endemic corruption, and pursue a constructive foreign policy. The sense that Pakistan has lacked meaningful independence because of this relationship — which, despite trappings of democracy, has made the military an untouchable force in domestic politics — makes the charge of U.S. involvement in the removal of a popular prime minister even more incendiary.

The Intercept’s source, who had access to the document as a member of the military, spoke of their growing disillusionment with the country’s military leadership, the impact on the military’s morale following its involvement in the political fight against Khan, the exploitation of the memory of dead service members for political purposes in recent military propaganda, and widespread public disenchantment with the armed forces amid the crackdown. They believe the military is pushing Pakistan toward a crisis similar to the one in 1971 that led to the secession of Bangladesh.

The source added that they hoped the leaked document would finally confirm what ordinary people, as well as the rank and file of the armed forces, had long suspected about the Pakistani military and force a reckoning within the institution.

This June, amid the crackdown by the military on Khan’s political party, Khan’s former top bureaucrat, Principal Secretary Azam Khan, was arrested and detained for a month. While in detention, Azam Khan reportedly issued a statement recorded in front of a member of the judiciary saying that the cable was indeed real, but that the former prime minister had exaggerated its contents for political gain.

A month after the meeting described in the cable, and just days before Khan was removed from office, then-Pakistan army chief Qamar Bajwa publicly broke with Khan’s neutrality and gave a speech calling the Russian invasion a “huge tragedy” and criticizing Russia. The remarks aligned the public picture with Lu’s private observation, recorded in the cable, that Pakistan’s neutrality was the policy of Khan, but not of the military.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has changed significantly since Khan’s removal, with Pakistan tilting more clearly toward the U.S. and European side in the Ukraine conflict. Abandoning its posture of neutrality, Pakistan has now emerged as a supplier of arms to the Ukrainian military; images of Pakistan-produced shells and ammunition regularly turn up on battlefield footage. In an interview earlier this year, a European Union official confirmed Pakistani military backing to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister traveled to Pakistan this July in a visit widely presumed to be about military cooperation, but publicly described as focusing on trade, education, and environmental issues.

This realignment toward the U.S. has appeared to provide dividends to the Pakistani military. On August 3, a Pakistani newspaper reported that Parliament had approved the signing of a defense pact with the U.S. covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.” The agreement was intended to replace a previous 15-year deal between the two countries that expired in 2020.

Pakistani “Assessment”

Lu’s blunt comments on Pakistan’s internal domestic politics raised alarms on the Pakistani side. In a brief “assessment” section at the bottom of the report, the document states: “Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process.” The cable concludes with a recommendation “to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad” — a reference to the chargé d’affaires ad interim, effectively the acting head of a diplomatic mission when its accredited head is absent. A diplomatic protest was later issued by Khan’s government.

On March 27, 2022, the same month as the Lu meeting, Khan spoke publicly about the cable, waving a folded copy of it in the air at a rally. He also reportedly briefed a national security meeting with the heads of Pakistan’s various security agencies on its contents.

It is not clear what happened in Pakistan-U.S. communications during the weeks that followed the meeting reported in the cable. By the following month, however, the political winds had shifted. On April 10, Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

The new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, eventually confirmed the existence of the cable and acknowledged that some of the message conveyed by Lu was inappropriate. He has said that Pakistan had formally complained but cautioned that the cable did not confirm Khan’s broader claims.

Khan has suggested repeatedly in public that the top-secret cable showed that the U.S. had directed his removal from power, but subsequently revised his assessment as he urged the U.S. to condemn human rights abuses against his supporters. The U.S., he told The Intercept in a June interview , may have urged his ouster, but only did so because it was manipulated by the military.

The disclosure of the full body of the cable, over a year after Khan was deposed and following his arrest, will finally allow the competing claims to be evaluated. On balance, the text of the cypher strongly suggests that the U.S. encouraged Khan’s removal. According to the cable, while Lu did not directly order Khan to be taken out of office, he said that Pakistan would suffer severe consequences, including international isolation, if Khan were to stay on as prime minister, while simultaneously hinting at rewards for his removal. The remarks appear to have been taken as a signal for the Pakistani military to act.

In addition to his other legal problems, Khan himself has continued to be targeted over the handling of the secret cable by the new government. Late last month, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Khan would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act in connection with the cable. “Khan has hatched a conspiracy against the state’s interests and a case will be initiated against him on behalf of the state for the violation of the Official Secrets Act by exposing a confidential cipher communication from a diplomatic mission,” Sanaullah said .

Khan has now joined a long list of Pakistani politicians who failed to finish their term in office after running afoul of the military. As quoted in the cypher, Khan was being personally blamed by the U.S., according to Lu, for Pakistan’s policy of nonalignment during the Ukraine conflict. The vote of no confidence and its implications for the future of U.S.-Pakistan ties loomed large throughout the conversation.

“Honestly,” Lu is quoted as saying in the document, referring to the prospect of Khan staying in office, “I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

March 7, 2022 Pakistani Diplomatic Cypher (Transcription)

The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination. The Intercept has removed classification markings and numerical elements that could be used for tracking purposes. Labeled “Secret,” the cable includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S .

I had a luncheon meeting today with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu. He was accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Les Viguerie. DCM, DA and Counsellor Qasim joined me.

At the outset, Don referred to Pakistan’s position on the Ukraine crisis and said that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” He shared that in his discussions with the NSC, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” He continued that he was of the view that this was “tied to the current political dramas in Islamabad that he (Prime Minister) needs and is trying to show a public face.” I replied that this was not a correct reading of the situation as Pakistan’s position on Ukraine was a result of intense interagency consultations. Pakistan had never resorted to conducting diplomacy in public sphere. The Prime Minister’s remarks during a political rally were in reaction to the public letter by European Ambassadors in Islamabad which was against diplomatic etiquette and protocol. Any political leader, whether in Pakistan or the U.S., would be constrained to give a public reply in such a situation.

I asked Don if the reason for a strong U.S. reaction was Pakistan’s abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow. He said that “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” He paused and then said “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar.” He then said that “honestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.” Don further commented that it seemed that the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow was planned during the Beijing Olympics and there was an attempt by the Prime Minister to meet Putin which was not successful and then this idea was hatched that he would go to Moscow.

I told Don that this was a completely misinformed and wrong perception. The visit to Moscow had been in the works for at least few years and was the result of a deliberative institutional process. I stressed that when the Prime Minister was flying to Moscow, Russian invasion of Ukraine had not started and there was still hope for a peaceful resolution. I also pointed out that leaders of European countries were also traveling to Moscow around the same time. Don interjected that “those visits were specifically for seeking resolution of the Ukraine standoff while the Prime Minister’s visit was for bilateral economic reasons.” I drew his attention to the fact that the Prime Minister clearly regretted the situation while being in Moscow and had hoped for diplomacy to work. The Prime Minister’s visit, I stressed, was purely in the bilateral context and should not be seen either as a condonation or endorsement of Russia’s action against Ukraine. I said that our position is dictated by our desire to keep the channels of communication with all sides open. Our subsequent statements at the UN and by our Spokesperson spelled that out clearly, while reaffirming our commitment to the principle of UN Charter, non-use or threat of use of force, sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, and pacific settlement of disputes.

I also told Don that Pakistan was worried of how the Ukraine crisis would play out in the context of Afghanistan. We had paid a very high price due to the long-term impact of this conflict. Our priority was to have peace and stability in Afghanistan, for which it was imperative to have cooperation and coordination with all major powers, including Russia. From this perspective as well, keeping the channels of communication open was essential. This factor was also dictating our position on the Ukraine crisis. On my reference to the upcoming Extended Troika meeting in Beijing, Don replied that there were still ongoing discussions in Washington on whether the U.S. should attend the Extended Troika meeting or the upcoming Antalya meeting on Afghanistan with Russian representatives in attendance, as the U.S. focus right now was to discuss only Ukraine with Russia. I replied that this was exactly what we were afraid of. We did not want the Ukraine crisis to divert focus away from Afghanistan. Don did not comment.

I told Don that just like him, I would also convey our perspective in a forthright manner. I said that over the past one year, we had been consistently sensing reluctance on the part of the U.S. leadership to engage with our leadership. This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored and even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate and we do not see much U.S. support on issues of concern for Pakistan, particularly on Kashmir. I said that it was extremely important to have functioning channels of communication at the highest level to remove such perception. I also said that we were surprised that if our position on the Ukraine crisis was so important for the U.S., why the U.S. had not engaged with us at the top leadership level prior to the Moscow visit and even when the UN was scheduled to vote. (The State Department had raised it at the DCM level.) Pakistan valued continued high-level engagement and for this reason the Foreign Minister sought to speak with Secretary Blinken to personally explain Pakistan’s position and perspective on the Ukraine crisis. The call has not materialized yet. Don replied that the thinking in Washington was that given the current political turmoil in Pakistan, this was not the right time for such engagement and it could wait till the political situation in Pakistan settled down.

I reiterated our position that countries should not be made to choose sides in a complex situation like the Ukraine crisis and stressed the need for having active bilateral communications at the political leadership level. Don replied that “you have conveyed your position clearly and I will take it back to my leadership.”

I also told Don that we had seen his defence of the Indian position on the Ukraine crisis during the recently held Senate Sub-Committee hearing on U.S.-India relations. It seemed that the U.S. was applying different criteria for India and Pakistan. Don responded that the U.S. lawmakers’ strong feelings about India’s abstentions in the UNSC and UNGA came out clearly during the hearing. I said that from the hearing, it appeared that the U.S. expected more from India than Pakistan, yet it appeared to be more concerned about Pakistan’s position. Don was evasive and responded that Washington looked at the U.S.-India relationship very much through the lens of what was happening in China. He added that while India had a close relationship with Moscow, “I think we will actually see a change in India’s policy once all Indian students are out of Ukraine.”

I expressed the hope that the issue of the Prime Minister’s visit to Russia will not impact our bilateral ties. Don replied that “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

We also discussed Afghanistan and other issues pertaining to bilateral ties. A separate communication follows on that part of our conversation.

Assessment

Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process. We need to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad.

The post Secret Pakistan Cable Documents U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan appeared first on The Intercept .

When he took over as attorney general in 2016, Mohammad Farid Hamidi vowed to crack down on the corruption that had plagued Afghanistan’s political elites, including within his new office. For months, he spent his Mondays meeting with any resident seeking legal counsel, earning a reputation as the “ people’s prosecutor .” And he increased the number of women on his staff of 6,000 prosecutors from under three percent to 23 percent, before resigning amid political pressure in early 2021.

But his greatest challenge came six months later, when the Taliban seized back control of Afghanistan, two years ago this month. Since then, the Taliban have shut down the attorney general’s office and freed thousands of people who had been locked up, sending many former prosecutors into hiding. Targeted by the people they helped convict , some 29 prosecutors have been killed in the last two years, including three in the last two weeks.

“They were released,” said Hamidi, referring to scores of individuals his office had prosecuted, including many Taliban members, “and they are looking to find the prosecutors who tried them.”

All along, Hamidi has been trying to help his former colleagues; last month, with the U.S. Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, or APA-US, he helped launch the “Prosecutors for Prosecutors” campaign , which aims to get 1,500 Afghan prosecutors and their families to safety. APA-US and its Afghan counterpart, now operating in exile, have partnered with a number of organizations to raise $15 million to fund nongovernmental organizations that can relocate them to safe countries. Their partners include Jewish Humanitarian Response, the International Association of Prosecutors , and No One Left Behind, as well as a number of local district attorneys across the U.S.

“They stood for law and justice in Afghanistan for the past 20 years, shoulder to shoulder with the international community, with the people of Afghanistan, with the government of Afghanistan,” Hamidi told The Intercept. “Withdrawal from Afghanistan shouldn’t be a withdrawal from all promises, all ethical obligations, human rights obligations.”

More than 1.6 million Afghans fled the country in the last two years, with more than 100,000 resettling in the U.S. In the chaotic weeks following the dramatic collapse of the former Afghan government, foreign states and international organizations helped evacuate Afghans they had worked with, prioritizing those they deemed at the highest risk, including women activists, human rights defenders, and members of the former government and military.

No such priority group was carved out for Afghan prosecutors, who also did not qualify for the State Department’s Special Immigrant Visa program, reserved for Afghans who had been employed by the U.S. government. While some prosecutors were able to flee through personal connections, thousands were left behind.

There was “no plan” by U.S. officials to get prosecutors to safety, Hamidi said, even as they had been targets of attacks for years. “They knew many people like prosecutors would be in danger. And there was no plan or program to provide them any opportunity to be included in any of these categories, SIV, P-1, P-2,” he said, referring to priority refugee status for certain categories of vulnerable Afghans.

That makes no sense to David LaBahn, president of APA-US, which had helped train Afghan prosecutors. “Here are the prosecutors who put terrorists and drug smugglers in prison — who have now been released from prison — and because they didn’t have a government contracting card, they are at the bottom of the list,” LaBahn told The Intercept. “It defies all logic.

“They’re being hunted right now,” he added. “People who are begging for their lives and who feel completely deserted.”

An Ongoing Emergency

Hamidi was in the U.S. when Kabul fell. He immediately knew that years of his work would be wiped out, that he wouldn’t be able to return home, and that the lives of thousands of his colleagues were at risk. As soon as the Taliban seized the capital, he started writing to all the international agencies that had worked alongside his office over the years, including the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

USAID and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had funded his office’s initiative to train 250 female prosecutors, but now that those women were in hiding, he heard nothing from them. “They financed this program, and we implemented it. I sent letters to USAID and mentioned this, but no response,” he said. “The U.S. government, U.S. entities, the U.S. people — they have a responsibility to support the people of Afghanistan and those people who are at risk and in danger because of their work, because of their dedication to law and justice.”

The U.S. government, he stressed, did “nothing” for them.

That’s despite the fact that Afghan prosecutors had been responsible for jailing thousands of Taliban members, as well as narcotraffickers and members of other extremist groups and organized crime networks who helped fund the Taliban insurgency. Hamidi said that some 50,000 Taliban and Islamic State members were imprisoned between 2001 and 2021. “The fight against terrorism was in two main areas: One was in the battlefield, and the other was when the Taliban were arrested and handed over to the attorney general’s office for investigation,” he said. “Many ministers, commanders, governors who are now holding positions of power in the country were in jail at a time or another.”

Asked about Hamidi’s outreach to the U.S. government, a spokesperson for the State Department wrote in an email to The Intercept that “the Biden-Harris Administration continues to demonstrate its commitment to the brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the past two decades.” The spokesperson added that the agency “does not comment on who is in the refugee processing pipeline due to privacy and protection reasons” but that the resettlement of eligible Afghans is one of its “top priorities.” USAID did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last two years, the plight of Afghans in the country and outside has largely fallen off the news cycle as fatigue and new conflicts have replaced global shock at the country’s unraveling. That indifference stands in stark contrast with the sense of emergency that still dominates countless Afghans’ lives. APA-US continues to field desperate requests for help from dozens of former prosecutors still in Afghanistan. Through its Afghan counterpart, the group compiled a verified list of 3,850 former prosecutors and other staff and shared it with U.S. officials. But because there’s no visa path available to them in the U.S., the groups are looking to fund private efforts to relocate the prosecutors and help them secure employment. Already, some U.S.-based prosecutors have answered the call, promising help with relocation efforts and jobs for Afghan prosecutors arriving in the U.S.

“People are being killed, and there appears to be no action, or limited action, by those who should be acting.”

For the time being, LaBahn stresses, the need is urgent and short-term.

“People are being killed, and there appears to be no action, or limited action, by those who should be acting,” he said. “What we’re trying to do right now is just get people to safety, get them food, and get them housing, and then we can worry about the process of what country will ultimately protect them.”

One Prosecutor’s Escape

Najia Mahmodi was one of the women Hamidi hired into the attorney general’s office. She was born before the U.S. toppled the Taliban in 2001 and remembers seeing them beat women in the street when she was a child. But she was part of a generation of Afghan women who grew up during a time of opportunity. She received a law degree from the American University of Afghanistan. While a student, she survived a Taliban attack that killed 16 of her classmates. Later, she became chief prosecutor for crimes against women and survived other attacks near the prosecutor’s office. Her role involved investigating crimes such as rape, battery, forced marriage, and prohibiting a woman or girl from going to school or work. Many of those offenses were criminalized under the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, and the Taliban rescinded the laws when it returned to power.

As the Taliban seized province after province two summers ago, Mahmodi’s 3-year-old son would greet her when she came home from work with updates on which part of the country had fallen. Her friends and family urged her to leave Afghanistan, knowing she would be an immediate target. She delivered her second child, a daughter, just as the Taliban advanced on Kabul, choosing to have an early C-section because she wasn’t sure she would be able to access a hospital when the time came. Thousands of the men her office had helped convict were being freed, and she began to have nightmares about them.

On August 15, she went into hiding. For 10 days, she tried to make sure her toddler wouldn’t be too loud because she feared being discovered and handed to the Taliban. Meanwhile, she reached out to all her foreign contacts for help. Eventually, she got a call back and was told to head to the airport immediately, instructed to wave her phone at U.S. Special Forces so they would recognize her. Her contact told her that the soldiers would shoot toward the crowd to disperse those around her but that she should not run and keep walking toward them.

Hours later, she was in Qatar with her children; she eventually resettled in the U.S., where she is enrolled to start a master’s in law program in the fall.

After leaving, she was able to rile up international support to get some of her colleagues from the elimination of violence against women division of the attorney general’s office moved to Pakistan through a private sponsorship. But only women benefited from that initiative, and many more remain in Afghanistan. They are struggling to survive without jobs in a country where more than 15 million people are currently facing food insecurity. Passports are hard to obtain, particularly for those who are trying to hide their identity.

“They are in constant fear for their lives,” Mahmodi said. “They are a target.”

The post As the Taliban Hunts Prosecutors, Afghan and U.S. Lawyers Team Up to Bring Their Colleagues to Safety appeared first on The Intercept .

brig. gen. Moussa salaou barmou , the chief of Niger’s Special Operations Forces and one of the leaders of the unfolding coup in Niger, was trained by the U.S. military, The Intercept has confirmed. U.S.-trained military officers have taken part in 11 coups in West Africa since 2008.

“We have had a very long relationship with the United States,” Barmou said in 2021 . “Being able to work together in this capacity is very good for Niger.” Just last month, Barmou met with Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga , the head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, at Air Base 201, a drone base in the Nigerian city of Agadez that serves as the lynchpin of an archipelago of U.S. outposts in West Africa.

On Wednesday, Barmou, who trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the National Defense University in Washington, joined a junta that ousted Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s democratically elected president, according to Nigerien sources and a U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Barmou did not return phone calls and text messages from The Intercept.

A U.S. official tracking the coup, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed Barmou’s relationship with the U.S. military and said he was probably not alone. “I’m sure we will find out that others have been partners, have been involved in U.S. engagements,” he said of other members of the junta, noting that U.S. government agencies were looking into the matter.

U.S.-trained officers have conducted in at least six coups in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali since 2012. They have also been involved in recent takeovers in Gambia (2014), Guinea (2021), Mauritania (2008), and Niger (2023).

“We train to standards — the laws of war and democratic standards,” said the U.S. official. “These are foreign military personnel. We can’t control what they do. We have no way to stop them.”

Members of Niger’s Presidential Guard surrounded the president’s palace in Niamey on Wednesday and took Bazoum hostage. Bazoum and his family were “doing well,” the Nigerien presidency said on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Later, the account repeated what Bazoum had posted on his personal page : “The hard-won achievements will be safeguarded. All Nigeriens who love democracy and freedom will see to it.” Neither account has posted anything further in the last 12 hours.

Calling themselves the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, Barmou and eight other high-ranking officers delivered a statement on Nigerien state television shortly after detaining Bazoum. The “defense and security forces” had “decided to put an end to the regime … due to the deteriorating security situation and bad governance,” according to their spokesperson.

Since 2012, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $500 million in Niger, making it one of the largest security assistance programs in sub-Saharan Africa. Across the continent, the State Department counted just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003 , compared with 2,737 last year in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger alone, according to a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a U.S. Defense Department research institution.

U.S. troops train, advise, and assist their Nigerien counterparts and have fought and even died there. Over the last decade, the number of U.S. military personnel deployed to Niger has jumped from just 100 to 1,016 . Niger has also seen a proliferation of U.S. outposts .

Barmou and Braga met last month to “discuss anti-terrorism policy and tactics throughout the region,” according to a military news release . The Pentagon says that the U.S. partnership with Niger’s army, especially its commandos, is key to countering militants.

Defense Department agencies partner with the Nigerien Army and Special Operators to fight violent extremism throughout Northwest Africa, but experts say the overwhelming focus on counterterrorism is part of the problem.

“The major issues fueling conflict in Niger and the Sahel are not military in nature — they stem from people’s frustration with poverty, the legacy of colonialism, elite corruption, and political and ethnic tensions and injustices. Yet rather than address these issues, the U.S. government has prioritized sending weapons and funding and training the region’s militaries to wage their own wars on terror,” said Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, and an expert on U.S. military efforts in West Africa. “One of the hugely negative consequences has been to empower the region’s security forces at the expense of other government institutions, and this is surely one factor in the slate of coups we’ve seen in Niger, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere in recent years.”

The Nigerien Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. The U.S. State Department also did not reply to The Intercept’s requests for information prior to publication.

The post Niger Coup Leader Joins Long Line of U.S.-Trained Mutineers appeared first on The Intercept .

Soldiers from Niger ’ s presidential guard blockaded the office of President Mohamed Bazoum on Wednesday, according to published reports . Several sources say they have detained Bazoum . The West African regional and economic bloc ECOWAS has termed it an “attempted coup.”

The mutiny is the latest in a long line of military uprisings in West Africa, many of them led by U.S.-trained officers. It was not immediately clear if any of the Nigerien troops involved were trained or mentored by the United States, but the U.S. has trained members of Niger’s presidential guard in recent years, according to Pentagon and State Department documents.

U.S.-trained officers have been involved in at least six coups in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali since 2012. In total, America’s mentees have conducted at least 10 coups in West Africa since 2008, including in Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, 2022); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); and Mauritania (2008).

“We are aware of the situation in Niamey, Niger,” John Manley, a spokesperson for U.S. Africa Command told The Intercept. “We are working with the U.S. Department of State to further assess the situation and will provide information when it becomes available.” The command did not respond to questions about whether any of the mutineers had been trained by the United States.

Over the last decade, Niger and its neighbors in the West African Sahel have been plagued by armed groups that have taken the notion of the outlaw motorcycle gang to its most lethal apogee. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on “motos” — two to a bike, their faces obscured by sunglasses and turbans, bearing Kalashnikovs — have terrorized villages across the borderlands where Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger meet.

In 2002, long before motorcycle attacks became commonplace in the tri-border region, the U.S. began providing Niger with counterterrorism assistance ; Washington flooded the country with military equipment, from armored vehicles to surveillance aircraft. Since 2012, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $500 million there , making it one of the largest security assistance programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

U.S. troops train, advise, and assist their Nigerien counterparts and have fought and even died there in an Islamic State ambush near the village of Tongo Tongo in 2017. Over the last decade, the number of U.S. military personnel deployed to Niger has jumped from just 100 to 1,016 . Niger has also seen a proliferation of U.S. outposts .

Niger hosts one of the largest and most expensive drone bases run by the U.S. military. Built in the northern city of Agadez for $110 million and maintained at a cost of $20 to $30 million each year, Air Base 201 is a surveillance hub and the lynchpin of an archipelago of U.S. outposts in West Africa. Home to Space Force personnel, a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, and a fleet of drones — including armed MQ-9 Reapers — the base is an exemplar of failed U.S. military efforts in Niger and the wider region. Earlier this year, The Intercept reported that bandits conducted a daylight armed robbery of base contractors and drove off with roughly 24 million West African CFA francs, about $40,000.

Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism assistance to Niger. Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger alone reached 2,737, according to a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution. This represents a jump of more than 30,000 percent since the U.S. began its counterterrorism efforts. During 2002 and 2003, terrorists caused 23 casualties in Africa. In 2022, militant attacks in just those three Sahelian nations killed almost 7,900 people. “The Sahel now accounts for 40 percent of all violent activity by militant Islamist groups in Africa,” more than any other region on the continent, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center.

In a meeting with Niger’s President Bazoum earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken decried the growing regional influence of the Russia-linked Wagner Group, a mercenary army led by Yevgeny Prigozhin , a former hot dog vender turned warlord . “Where Wagner has been present, bad things have inevitably followed,” said Blinken, noting that the group’s presence is associated with “overall worsening security.” The U.S. was a better option, he said, and needed to prove “that we can actually deliver results.” But the U.S already has a two-decade record of counterterrorism engagement in the region; “bad things” and “overall worsening security” have been the hallmarks of those years. Wagner has only been active in the region since late 2021.

In neighboring Mali, as The Intercept reported earlier this week , Col. Assimi Goïta — who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces, participated in U.S. training exercises, and attended a Joint Special Operations University seminar in Florida — overthrew the government in 2020 and 2021. After close to two decades of failed Western-backed counterterrorism campaigns, Goïta’s junta struck a deal with Wagner; the mercenary group has since been implicated in hundreds of human rights abuses alongside Malian troops, including extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances of dozens of civilians in central Mali since December 2022, as detailed in a new Human Rights Watch report .

Bazoum and his family are “doing well,” the Nigerien presidency said on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The Nigerien embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

The post Soldiers Mutiny in U.S.-Allied Niger appeared first on The Intercept .

Malian soldiers and foreign fighters, identified as members of the Russia-linked Wagner Group, have committed extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances of dozens of civilians in central Mali since December 2022, according to a new Human Rights Watch report shared with The Intercept. Researchers found that the longtime U.S.-backed Malian military also tortured detainees in an army camp and destroyed and looted civilian property as part of its protracted campaign against militant Islamists.

The Malian soldiers committed the atrocities in four villages in the center of the country, according to telephone interviews with 40 people knowledgeable about the abuses, half of them witnesses to the violence. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that foreign, non-French-speaking armed men whom they described as “white,” “Russians,” or “Wagner” participated in most of the attacks.

In December 2021, the Malian junta reportedly authorized the deployment of Wagner mercenary forces to fight Islamist militants after close to two decades of failed Western-backed counterterrorism campaigns in exchange for almost $11 million per month and access to gold and uranium mines . Since then, Wagner — a paramilitary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin , a former hot dog vender turned warlord — has been implicated in hundreds of human rights abuses alongside the country’s military, including a 2022 massacre that killed 500 civilians.

Human Rights Watch’s new findings add to the grim toll.

“We found compelling evidence that the Malian army and allied foreign fighters linked to the Wagner group have committed serious abuses, including killings, enforced disappearances and looting, against civilians during counter-insurgency operations in central Mali with complete impunity,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, the senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Intercept. “The failure of the Malian authorities to identify and prosecute those responsible will most likely only fuel further violence and crimes.”

The U.S. has poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Mali and its neighbors over roughly two decades — enabling human rights abuses by providing weapons and training to militaries that have terrorized civilians, according to the United Nations , human rights advocacy groups , and the U.S. State Department . U.S.-trained military officers have also repeatedly conducted coups , including the putsch-leader who toppled Mali’s governments in 2020 and 2021. While the coups triggered restrictions on U.S. aid, Pentagon officials have pointed to Wagner’s growing influence across Africa as a reason to keep the money flowing.

Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group who advised on U.S. activities in Africa for the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel from 2020 to 2021, noted a fundamental flaw in America’s reliance on security assistance to cement relationships with allies. “It would make more sense for the U.S. to rely on a broader toolkit to responsibly engage with foreign countries, especially ones like Mali experiencing conflict and instability,” she told The Intercept. “It really shouldn’t be the case that the U.S. considers its influence severely weakened because it can’t provide military equipment or training to a certain country.”

The new report documents atrocities committed during joint missions by Malian and Wagner soldiers from last December to late March. On February 3, for example, dozens of white camouflage-clad fighters and at least one Malian soldier flew into Séguéla village on helicopters. Residents said that no Islamist militants were present in the village that day. Despite this, the soldiers went door to door rounding up men, beating people, and stealing their money and jewelry. “There were almost only white Wagner soldiers, they led the whole operation,” said a witness. “They were heavily armed, masked, and wore camouflage uniforms and spoke a language we did not understand, but which was not French.”

The language barrier exacerbated the violence, according to residents. “Some of us did not comply with their instructions because we didn’t understand what they wanted, and so the soldiers beat us even harder,” one victim told researchers. “They beat us with an iron bar. I was beaten on my back and buttocks.”

The white soldiers arrested 17 men and took them away. Survivors found the corpses of eight of them, and five other men, about 40 miles from Séguéla. The victims appeared to have been bound prior to their execution, according to a video that was verified by Human Rights Watch and reviewed by The Intercept. Some were apparently killed by gunshot, while others appeared to have had their throats slit. The researchers are not publishing the video to protect the witnesses.

On March 6 in Sossobé village, Malian troops and white fighters assaulted people and killed five civilians, according to witnesses. Locals said that the Malian and white soldiers arrested 21 men and took them away in helicopters, never to be seen again. On March 23, foreign soldiers and pro-government militiamen beat people and killed at least 20 civilians, including a woman and a 6-year-old child, in Ouenkoro village. The armed men also arrested 12 civilians who were taken to an army camp in the town of Sofara where they were tortured, according to the report.

The government of Mali disputed Human Rights Watch’s findings and touted its “promotion and protection of human rights,” but stated that due to the allegations, it had opened an investigation into potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.

These latest atrocities , as well as earlier abuses, were committed on behalf of a military junta that first took power in August 2020 when Col. Assimi Goïta — who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces, participated in U.S. training exercises, and attended a Joint Special Operations University seminar in Florida — overthrew Mali’s government. Goïta took the job of vice president in a transitional government charged with returning Mali to civilian rule but soon seized power again, conducting a second coup in 2021.

The coups triggered prohibitions on many forms of U.S. security assistance, but American tax dollars nonetheless continue to flow to Mali. The U.S. provided more than $16 million in security aid to Mali in 2020 and almost $5 million in 2021, according to a State Department spokesperson named Jennifer who refused to provide her last name. The department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism is currently waiting on congressional approval to transfer an additional $2 million to Mali.

Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, has argued against the constraints on military aid following coups. “Recent coups d’etat have triggered U.S. restrictions that hinder AFRICOM engagement, forcing those military regimes to double-down on their dependence on Wagner,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee this spring. “Although well intended, U.S. coup restrictions can inadvertently incentivize the most at-risk African countries to dig themselves deeper into the mire of militancy and corruption.”

Langley failed to mention that U.S.-trained officers have conducted at least 10 coups in West Africa since 2008 including Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, 2022), Gambia (2014), Guinea (2021), Mali (2012, 2020, 2021), and Mauritania (2008). AFRICOM did not reply to questions about Langley’s stance and the many U.S.-trained putschists but did acknowledge “limited communications” with Mali’s ruling junta “to discuss the need for them to keep to their promise to hold credible, transparent elections.” Most recently, said spokesperson John Manley, an AFRICOM official met with Mali’s prime minister and defense minister in October 2022.

This spring, Rear Adm. Milton “Jamie” Sands, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, told The Intercept and other reporters that Wagner’s “presence and their activities run counter to a safe, stable, and secure Africa.” He failed, however, to mention that it was the U.S.-mentored Goïta who struck a deal with Wagner in late 2021. Nor did he acknowledge that the Sahel’s security challenges increased as the U.S. deployed elite commandos to, and poured military aid into, Mali and its neighbors, and far predate significant Russian involvement in the region.

AFRICOM did not respond to questions about any steps taken to counter Wagner’s influence in Mali. The State Department says that the U.S. will “continue to support Mali in achieving its goals of peace and economic development.”

The post Wagner Group Disappeared and Executed Civilians in Mali appeared first on The Intercept .