Originally posted by Viking
In these times of War On Terror™ I would have thought American state sponsored terrorism would be a sensitive topic. Sure the Soviets weren't exactly the good guys, but that doesn't make the Mujahideen/Taliban any less of a terrorist organization. Osama Bin Laden was even a key figure in training the Mujahideen.
Context is such an important historical consideration. Yes there's relationship, cause and effect, a timeline but that doesn't create equivalencies that just aren't there. The Mujahideen (or more accurately, the Afghani Mujahideen of "Charlie Wilson's War") were "various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups, initially fought against the incumbent pro-Soviet Afghan government during the 1980s. "
And they were ....
"The mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Carter and Reagan administrations and the governments of Saudi Arabia, the People's Republic of China, several European countries, Iran, and Zia-ul-Haq's military regime in Pakistan."
Then ....
"The mujahideen won when the Soviet Union pulled troops out of Afghanistan in 1989, followed by the fall of the Mohammad Najibullah regime in 1992. However, the mujahideen did not establish a united government, many of the larger mujahideen groups began to fight each other, and they were in turn ousted from power by the radical splinter group known as the Taliban in 1996."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MujahideenThe tenuous link:
"The Taliban initially had enormous goodwill from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality and incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives of the beginnings of the Taliban[12] are that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals.[13] The other is that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the "Afghanistan Transit Trade" and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.[14]
Though there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war".[15]"
12. ^ Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim world / editor in chief, Richard C. Martin, Macmillan Reference USA : Thomson/Gale, c2004
13. ^ Matinuddin, Kamal, The Taliban Phenomenon, Afghanistan 1994-1997, Oxford University Press, (1999), p.25-6
14. ^ Rashid, Taliban (2000), 25-29.
15. ^ Rashid, Taliban (2000)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Had there been sufficient "follow-through" (post Soviet pull-out) history may have unfolded in a significantly different manner. Granted, that's theory and not actual history (afterall, for it to be history, well, it had to happen) .... alas. Never-the-less, it's the sort of foreign policy that yielded better results than recent policy and that certainly seems supported by history. Context is the litmus test for historical lessons. Doesn't stop some from ignoring that fact, though. (Not singling you out as example).
