The European resource "Lighthouse Reports" published the material "Forgotten Afghan spies of France. The French-led intelligence cell in Afghanistan has been kept secret for years, and now France has abandoned its agents."(c) Lighthouse Reports
For many years, France had a large military presence in Afghanistan: between 2001 and 2014, about 70,000 French troops visited this country.
In May 2012, the then French President Francois Hollande clearly stated that by the end of 2012, his country should not have combat units in Afghanistan. His statement marked the end of the 11-year war for French soldiers. The last of them left Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Starting in May 2021, three months before the fall of Kabul, France resettled 5,500 Afghans who either worked for the French in Afghanistan (including in the armed forces) or suffered under the new Taliban regime for other reasons. Two operations, named ADL and Apagan, were carried out as part of this evacuation. Both of them were presented by the current French President Emmanuel Macron as a great success. "You have received hundreds of calls from people asking for help, and you have responded to them, sparing no effort," he said in October 2021 during a speech to government officials involved in both operations.
But a new investigation conducted by Lighthouse Reports shows that none of these points of view was completely correct. In fact, after 2014, France conducted an operation on Afghan territory. The purpose of this operation, called Shamshad, was to collect intelligence data that could be used to protect French interests in Afghanistan, including to protect French territory from terrorist groups. The operation was active until 2020 and was conducted by the French secret service, known as DGSE (General Directorate of External Security), which reports to the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, together with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in partnership with its Afghan counterparts, the National Directorate for Security of Afghanistan (National Directorate for Security - NDS). Former Afghan operators. Those involved in the Shamshad operation claim that the French DGSE even paid them salaries - up to $ 1,000 per month.
For several months after the Taliban came to power, former Shamshad agents remained in Kabul without any support. Most of them faced direct threats and were forced to hide. Lighthouse Reports and its partners spoke with eight of these former intelligence officers. Some have since been evacuated to France; others have managed to escape to neighboring countries such as Iran and India. Some are still hiding in Afghanistan, living in constant fear of retribution from the Taliban. Their testimony shed new light on the French military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as on the vicious process of evacuation to France.
MethodsThanks to advocacy groups, lawyers and members of the Afghan community in Europe, we were able to contact some former members of the Shamshad unit.
We spent hours interviewing former officers to verify their testimony in Afghanistan, Iran, the UAE, India and France. Some of them were also able to share concrete evidence of the work they did with DGSE, from operation documents to photographs that we do not publish in order to protect their safety, as well as numerous emails that they sent to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanding their evacuation.
Since nothing was known about the existence of Operation Shamshad before we started our work, we conducted an investigation and turned to high-ranking sources in both the French armed forces and the Afghan army to confirm its existence. According to sources, this was the largest DGSE operation since 2014.
We also studied the evacuation process itself. According to Afghan sources, only 30 Shamshad members were evacuated to France. We tried to understand how and why this happened. We found that the French Ministry of the Armed Forces had a list of more than 90 former Shamshad members on the eve of the fall of Kabul, which they sent to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the latter did not take effect until the spring of 2022, six months after the Taliban seized power, despite timely notifications from lawyers and members of Shamshad, who warned the ministry of the danger they faced due to their previous work, and only a small part of the people on the list were evacuated.
The email we saw shows that on August 19, 2021, four days after the fall of Kabul, one of the agents wrote to the French Ambassador to Afghanistan asking for help. Two weeks later, French lawyers wrote to the head of the French DGSE, Bernard Emie, about Shamshad members who asked them for help. They didn't get a response.
StorylinesWith regard to the former employees of Shamshad, France has not fulfilled its promises.
Abdullah (names changed), as well as two other employees,
Those living in France now had to wait almost six months before he was evacuated. Others, about 30 people, according to some of their comrades, are still waiting to be evacuated.
Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with Le Monde and Radio France Internationale (RFI), managed to talk to five Afghan employees about this situation, two of whom are still hiding on Afghan territory. "Emmanuel Macron said that we should not let down any colleague who worked with the French authorities. I hope he will fulfill his promises," Zubeir, who is in India, said. "All my friends have left, I'm stuck here alone," grumbles Nur*, who got to the UAE with his family "on his own" when Kabul fell, and is still waiting for a French visa.
The risks faced by former Shamshad agents still in Afghanistan are undeniable. In a report published in November 2021, the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch reported on numerous repressions already carried out by the new owners of Kabul against former intelligence agents, especially those who, like former Shamshad agents, collaborated with the West.
