Russia on Friday denied allegations by the commander of NATO that Moscow may be assisting the Taliban as the insurgents fight US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

"These claims are absolutely false," Zamir Kabulov, head of the Russian foreign ministry's department responsible for Afghanistan and the Kremlin's special envoy in the country, told RIA Novosti state news agency.

"These fabrications are designed, as we have repeatedly underlined, to justify the failure of the US military and politicians in the Afghan campaign. There is no other explanation."

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, who also heads the US military's European Command, told lawmakers in Washington on Thursday that he had witnessed Russia's influence grow in many regions, including in Afghanistan.

In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Scaparrotti said Moscow was "perhaps" supplying the Taliban.

In February General John Nicholson, the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, testified that Russia is encouraging the Taliban and providing them with diplomatic cover in a bid to undermine US influence and defeat NATO.

Kabulov in 2015 said that Russia was exchanging information with the Taliban and saw shared interest with them when it comes to fighting the Islamic State jihadist group.

Russia considers the Taliban a terrorist group and it is banned in the country, along with the Islamic State group.

Taliban fighters on Thursday captured Afghanistan's strategic district of Sangin, where US and British forces suffered heavy casualties until it was handed over to Afghan personnel. </s> "These claims are absolutely false," Zamir Kabulov, head of the Russian foreign ministry's department responsible for Afghanistan and the Kremlin's special envoy in the country, told RIA Novosti state news agency.

"These fabrications are designed, as we have repeatedly underlined, to justify the failure of the US military and politicians in the Afghan campaign. There is no other explanation."

In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Scaparrotti said Moscow was "perhaps" supplying the Taliban.

In February General John Nicholson, the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, testified that Russia is encouraging the Taliban and providing them with diplomatic cover in a bid to undermine US influence and defeat NATO.

Kabulov in 2015 said that Russia was exchanging information with the Taliban and saw shared interest with them when it comes to fighting the ISIS.

Russia considers the Taliban a terrorist group and it is banned in the country, along with the ISIS.

Taliban fighters on Thursday captured Afghanistan's strategic district of Sangin, where US and British forces suffered heavy casualties until it was handed over to Afghan personnel. </s> NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe has said that Russia may be helping to supply Taliban militants that are fighting Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government.

U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on March 23 that he has seen evidence of increasing Russian efforts to influence the Taliban "and perhaps even to supply" the militant group.

Scaparrotti, a four-star general who previously served as the director of the Joint Staff and the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, did not specify what types of supplies he thought Russia might be providing the Taliban.

Taliban officials have told Reuters they have had significant contacts with Moscow since at least 2007 but said Russian involvement did not extend beyond "moral and political support."

U.S.-led forces have been battling the Taliban since driving them and their Al-Qaeda allies out of power following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP </s> Russia may be influencing and supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan, the top U.S. general in Europe told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, NBC News reported.

Russia has largely been absent in Afghanistan since the Soviet Union's disastrous war there in the 1980s, but its role seems to be growing today, said Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who also serves as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, according to Reuters.

"I've seen the influence of Russia of late — increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Scaparrotti said.

His testimony comes in the wake of the Taliban's reported capture of the hotly contested town of Sangin in Afghanistan on Thursday. </s> Image copyright AP Image caption Russia may be supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan, a US general has said

Russia has denied a top Nato general's allegation it may be secretly sending supplies to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Gen Curtis Scaparrotti told lawmakers in Washington on Thursday that Moscow was "perhaps" supplying the extremist group.

On Friday, Zamir Kabulov, the Kremlin's special envoy in Afghanistan, said the allegation was "absolutely false".

Russia has previously said its limited contact with the Taliban is aimed at bringing them to the negotiating table.

Moscow considers the Taliban a terrorist organisation, and backed the Northern Alliance against the group in the civil war of the 1990s.

But in December 2015 it did concede "the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours" in Russia's fight against so-called Islamic State.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Afghan security forces pictured during a battle with the Taliban

However, Gen Scaparrotti, Nato's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: "I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban."

He gave no further information to back up the allegation.

Russia's surprising new ally: By Dawood Azami, BBC World Service

Softening its approach towards the Afghan Taliban is a dramatic and somewhat unexpected shift for Russia. But ties have improved over the past year, with several Russian officials publicly acknowledging Moscow's "contacts" with the Taliban.

They cite two reasons: ensuring the security of Russian citizens and political offices in areas where the Taliban has recently expanded its territorial control; and countering IS, which established its regional branch in Afghanistan in January 2015.

The Afghan Taliban's assurances it will keep IS away from Russia's borders and those of other regional players, including Iran and China, have proved particularly important. But this new softening has led a number of high ranking American military officials to accuse Russia of undermining the Afghan government and its US/Nato allies and "legitimizing" the Taliban.

Western officials also say that Russia is using the emergence of IS in Afghanistan as an excuse to justify its meddling in the country. Meanwhile, Afghan officials have repeatedly reminded Moscow that instead of establishing links with non-state actors, it should work with the government for regional peace and stability.

The comments came a month after the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan said Russia was encouraging the Taliban and providing them with diplomatic cover in a bid to undermine US influence and defeat Nato.

But Mr Kabulov told RIA Novosti state news agency on Friday: "These fabrications are designed, as we have repeatedly underlined, to justify the failure of the US military and politicians in the Afghan campaign. There is no other explanation." </s> WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan.

"I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

He did not elaborate on what kinds of supplies might be headed to the Taliban or how direct Russia's role might be.

Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s.

But Russian officials have denied they provide aid to the insurgents, who are contesting large swaths of territory and inflicting heavy casualties, and say their limited contacts are aimed at bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under control of the insurgents, who are seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

Underlying the insurgents' growing strength, Taliban fighters have captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials said on Thursday.

The top U.S. commander in the country, General John Nicholson, said last month that Afghanistan was in a "stalemate" and that thousands more international troops would be needed to boost the existing NATO-led training and advisory mission.

Scaparrotti said the stakes were high. More than 1,800 American troops have been killed in fighting since the war began in 2001.

"NATO and the United States, in my view, must win in Afghanistan," he said.

Taliban officials have told Reuters that the group has had significant contacts with Moscow since at least 2007, adding that Russian involvement did not extend beyond "moral and political support." (Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) </s> [ Editor’s Note: The US is showing itself on defense. One of the oldest PR tactics is always to accuse your opponent first of doing anything he can nail you with, as the majority of the public believes the initial accuser.

But the US is pushing a string here on the exploitation of the Afghan drug trade. We have reams of US involvement on that, including a former Bush cabinet Secretary that started a fake dry-cleaning chain of facilities in Afghanistan to import cleaning supplies for it, but which turned out to be the chemicals need to refine opium into heroin.

It was not too long after that even Predator drones were flying heroin out to Balkans bases with high security protection, part of the Bush massive “outsourcing” of security operations at the time. That money has been followed into black ops and a huge array of political campaigns ever since – virtually a heroin Santa Claus.

Zakharova could have been a surgeon, as she can fillet you while you are standing without you feeling a thing … Jim W. Dean ]

Jim's Editor’s Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal

 Jim's work includes research, field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more. Thanks for helping. Click to donate >>

Russia has accused the US military of being the chief sponsor of Taliban militants in Afghanistan, saying that during the active presence of US-led NATO forces in the country, the production and distribution of narcotics had drastically surged there.

The accusations were raised on Thursday by Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. She was responding to earlier US claims that Russia was collaborating with the Takfiri militants – what the official said was meant to mask America’s own “sponsorship of the Taliban” in Afghanistan.

Zakharova said Russian had limited contacts with the Taliban but said this was meant to ensure the safety of Russian citizens in the country and to support the stalled Afghan national conciliation process.

She said there was already evidence of US sponsorship of Taliban and emphasized that several probes conducted by special committees of the US Congress testified to that. Instances of this, Zakharova said, were reports that acknowledged certain portions of US weapons that had been reported “stolen” or fallen into “wrong hands” had in fact reached the Taliban.

The official recalled a 2016 report by then US defense secretary in which he had revealed that 1.5 million items of American weaponry had disappeared in Afghanistan and Iraq. Zakharova emphasized that armaments written off by the Pentagon as inventory losses could be used to equip “an entire army,” Moscow-based Sputnik International reported.

US sponsorship of terrorism in Afghanistan has also been underlined by the country’s previous president Hamid Karzai, who accused the US last November of collaborating with the Deash terror group in his country.

Accusing Washington of allowing Daesh to flourish inside Afghanistan, Karzai stated in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera news network:

“In my view under the full presence, surveillance, military, political, intelligence, Daesh has emerged, and for two years the Afghan people came, cried loud about their suffering, of violations. Nothing was done.”

Karzai further stressed that the administration of US President Donald Trump used Daesh terrorism as an excuse to drop the massive GBU-43 bomb – the largest non-nuclear bomb used by the US military — on Afghanistan in April 2017, pointing out that “the next day, Daesh takes the next district in Afghanistan.”

“That proves to us that there is a hand in it and that hand can be no one else but them [the US] in Afghanistan,” said the former Afghan president who originally rose to power with Washington’s blessings.

The Russian Foreign Ministry official also reiterated that constant US claims against Russia were meant to conceal Washington’s own political-military failures across Afghanistan.

Zakharova emphasized that during the massive invasion of Afghanistan by NATO and American forces under the pretense of ‘war on terror,’ the country had become a focal point for the production and distribution of narcotics while the threat of terrorism was never eliminated in the war-ravaged nation.

A US-led military force invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist incidents in New York and Washington, vowing to oust the Taliban regime ruling over the country and bringing peace and stability to the nation.

The massive military occupation lasted until December 28, 2014, when the mostly Western military forces withdrew most of its troops and announced the conclusion of the combat mission.

In 2015, the US-led NATO initiated a new mission, code-named “Resolute Support,” which the announced objective of providing training assistance to Afghanistan’s security forces. Nevertheless, the still ongoing mission has failed to bring any sort of peace, security or stability to the Asian country.

This is while the Taliban and its newly-emerging terrorism rival, Daesh – which is gaining growing influence in Afghanistan with thousands of militant forces — continue to control more than half of Afghanistan’s territory, according to official figures.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman further blamed the unstable situation across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as a surge in international terrorism on “the NATO member states’ military gambles.” </s> Sign up for one of our email newsletters.

“I've seen the influence of Russia of late, increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban,” Scaparrotti said.

Any type of material support, however, would be a significant escalation of Russia's involvement with the Taliban; it has said in the past that it maintains only limited communication with the group.

Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who is the Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, did not elaborate to the Senate Armed Services Committee on what type of equipment the Taliban might have received or when.

The top American general in Europe told lawmakers Thursday that Russia and the Taliban are growing increasingly close, suggesting that the Kremlin might even be supplying the insurgent group.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban captured a key district center in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on Thursday while in the country's north, an officer turned his rifle on sleeping colleagues, killing nine policemen, officials said.

The fall of Sangin district, once considered the deadliest battlefield for British and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, comes amid the insurgents' yearlong push to expand their footprint in the Taliban heartland of Helmand.

The British who took over southern Helmand in 2006 were headquartered at Camp Sebastian, which at its peak was the center for 137 bases in Helmand. Most of Britain's more than 400 military deaths occurred in Helmand province — in Sangin alone, Britain lost 104 soldiers.

Since the withdrawal of foreign NATO combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, and with only a smaller, U.S.-led advise and training mission left behind, Sangin has been seen as a major tests of whether Afghan security forces can hold off advancing Taliban fighters.

The district's police chief, Mohammad Rasoul, said the Taliban overran Sangin center early Thursday.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, also issued a statement claiming the Taliban capture of Sangin.

Speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from several miles away from the district center, Rasoul said the district headquarters had been poorly protected and that at the time of the Taliban siege, only eight policemen and 30 Afghan soldiers were on duty.

Afghan security forces were now amassing nearby for a full-scale counter-attack in a bid to retake Sangin, Rasoul added, though he did not say when the assault would occur and how many forces would be involved.

“We are preparing our reinforcements to recapture the district,” Rasoul said.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the Afghan military would seek the help of international coalition forces in the area.

NATO spokesman William Salvin said in a statement that Afghan troops remained in Sangin district but had relocated several kilometers (miles) outside the district center. He said the relocation was necessitated because of the extensive damage to the district center by the Taliban.

In Kabul, a lawmaker from Sangin, Mohammad Hashim Alokzai, urged the military to move quickly to retake the district, saying its fall could have devastating consequences for Helmand, where the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah has in the past months also come under constant and heavy attack by the Taliban.

“The seizure of Sangin is a major tactical triumph for the Taliban,” Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, said Thursday. The insurgent group “has taken over a major urban space in one of its major stronghold provinces, amplifying the major threat that the group poses to Afghanistan nearly 16 years after it was removed from power.”

Sangin is also one of the biggest opium markets in Afghanistan, which saw over 4,800 metric tons produced countrywide in 2016 —— more than all other opium-producing countries combined, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes. Efforts at poppy eradication in Afghanistan have been severely restricted because of the insecurity in the southern and eastern regions of the country, where the bulk of the crop is grown.

Opium, which is used to make heroin, is a major source of income for the insurgents and the Taliban levy taxes on opium that moves through its territory.

“It's hard to overestimate the significance of Helmand — it's strategically located near Pakistan, it's a bastion of the opium trade,” said Kugelman. “Perhaps the biggest reason why the British focused so much on Sangin is that they had invested so much over the years in trying to stabilize the place — and had suffered many combat deaths in the process.”

In northern Kunduz province, police spokesman Mafuz Akbari said the insider attack on Thursday that claimed the lives on nine policemen took place at a security post and that the assailant escaped under the cover of darkness.

Afghanistan has seen a spike in so-called insider attacks. In such incidents, attackers who turn their rifles and kill colleagues usually end up stealing their weapons and fleeing the scene to join insurgents.

Akbari said the assailant had gone over to the Taliban. He also claimed that the attacker and the Taliban gathered the bodies of the dead policemen and set them on fire.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the attack, but denied that a policeman had been involved or that the Taliban had burned the bodies of the policemen.

The conflicting accounts could not be immediately reconciled. The region is remote and not accessible to reporters.

Afghan forces have come under intensified pressure by insurgents in both Helmand and Kunduz. </s> The news comes in the wake of the Taliban’s reported capture of the hotly contested town of Sangin in Afghanistan on Thursday, the location of a number of U.S. and British fatalities inside the deadly Helmand Province.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi shared a statement on Thursday that claimed the Taliban had captured Sangin’s district center, according to the Associated Press.

But that claim has been refuted by coalition forces.

American Army Capt. William K. Salvin, spokesman for NATO’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, pushed back, alleging that Afghan forces still controlled the town but had simply moved its district center.

“This move to a new district center had been planned for some time,” Salvin said, noting that U.S. Forces assisted with the move and helped destroy buildings and inoperable vehicles to leave nothing usable behind.

“The only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt,” he added.

The American military and NATO forces handed over control of Sangin to the Afghan military in 2013. Nineteen members of the American military have died maintaining the region since 2006, according to Operation Enduring Freedom statistics, and British forces lost more than a hundred soldiers in the town alone.

Russia, meanwhile, has largely been absent in the country since the Soviet Union fought a disastrous war there in the 1980s. But their renewed interest in the region, Scaparrotti said, seems to be growing.

Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month and told Senators that Russia was overtly attempting to legitimize the Taliban via a false narrative that they were fighting ISIS.

He added that he had received reports that Russia was also providing “support to the Taliban.”

The general called this “surprising” as “the Taliban have evolved over the years into a narco-insurgency and one that engages in extensive criminal activity, narcotics, kidnapping, illegal mining and other forms of criminal activity to fund their operations.”

Nicholson also noted that Russia had met with the Taliban in Moscow to discuss the future of Afghanistan, but hadn’t extended an invitation to the Afghan government.

Afghan and U.S. forces “are in a stalemate” and requested “a few thousand” more soldiers to help train, advise and assist the local military.
Russian Special Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov denies allegations by NATO Commander Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti that Russia was "perhaps" supplying the Taliban.