Qatar Allegedly Bribed Afghan Leaders to Let Taliban Regain Power

Millions were given to Afghan officials to avoid resisting the Taliban

An investigative report from the Italian TG1 News Network has revealed that Qatar handed millions to three Afghan leaders to prevent them from fighting against the Taliban before the fall of Kabul in August 2021. TG1 published three documents that show the bribes paid to Ashraf Ghani, Marshal Dostum and Atta Mohammad Nur.

Ashraf Ghani, former president of Afghanistan, received $110 million from Qatar, while Abdul Rashid Dostum, former first vice president, was given $51 million, and Atta Mohammad Nur, former governor of Balkh Province, $61 million. The three men received the money from a Qatari representative in Kabul in the summer of 2021.

According to The Kaama Press News Agency, which quotes TG1 News Network, “the money was granted to all three prominent leaders to avoid resisting the Taliban fighters.” Let’s recall that on August 15, 2021, the Taliban swept into Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, after the government of Ashraf Ghani collapsed. The Islamist group had entered the presidential palace without any resistance.

Ashraf Ghani has yet to comment on these allegations, but a representative of Rashid Dostum has firmly rejected them, calling the whole story “baseless”. The same goes for Atta Mohammad Nur who claimed that “the media fabricated these documents in support of terrorist and militant groups.”

Filippo Rossi, the Italian journalist behind the investigative report, stated that his story is based on reviews of documents and interviews with reliable sources.

On August 14, 2021, Reuters had reported that Nur and Dostum had abandoned the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which had just fallen to the Taliban. Nur had then spoken of a “conspiracy” to explain the fall of the city. “Despite our firm resistance, sadly, all the government […] equipment was handed over to the Taliban as a result of a big organized & cowardly plot”, Nur had written on Twitter, without elaborating on the details of the “plot”.

The fact that Qatar might have helped the Taliban regain power is not surprising. In a recent article, the Atlantic Council reported that Doha was cooperating with the Taliban. Ironically, the Qataris had facilitated the US-Taliban talks that led to the 2020 Doha Agreement.

Qatar is a leading sponsor of terrorism, as I explained in this article. From the start of the Syrian conflict until 2013, the country was the rebels’ leading financial backer, according to the Financial Times, just as it was the largest arms provider. But most of the arms shipments sent to Syria ended up in jihadist camps. It is no coincidence that men from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front set out for Doha in 2012 to attend meetings with Qatar’s officials.

The Qataris also harbored members of Al-Qaeda, starting with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind 9/11. While on the run after the attacks, Sheikh Mohammed even returned to Qatar, where he stayed for two weeks, according to a Saudi intelligence source quoted by The New York Times in a 2003 article.

Associated Press, Eric Pilon, Reuters, The Atlantic Council, The Kaama Press News Agency