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Originally Posted by jfman
And the USA backed the Taliban first time round. The cycle is endless and there is no real incentive on their part to stop it. Generations in Afghanistan have grown up knowing nothing but being a chess piece in American wars even when 15 Saudi Arabians participated in the 9/11 attacks.
The average Afghan endorsed that no more, and arguably less, than your average US/UK national endorsed our involvement in Afghanistan. But many paid a heavy price and continue to do so.
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Incorrect - the US, and the UK for that matter, trained and equipped certain of the tribal leaders in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. These became known as the Mujahideen, who overran the Soviet puppet government shortly after the withdrawal of the Red Army, almost as quickly as the Taliban overran Kabul this week.
The 1990s Taliban (some of them, at least) were the grandsons of the Mujahideen and they certainly benefited from the training and equipment left in the country by the SAS and others. They did not, and do not, however, share the ideology of the Mujahideen, who were moderate pussycats by comparison. The Mujahideen were classic tribal leaders motivated by loyalty to an idea of Afghanistan where that tribal system could continue to thrive without outside interference. The Taliban, particularly the original 1990s version of them, were motivated by a desire to create a primitive, austere version of Islam in the country and they weren’t at all fussy about giving succour to those who fancied taking that Islamic purity and sticking it to the West. It remains to be seen how much of that will reassert itself once the 2020s Taliban have their feet under the table. I suspect slightly more than they’ve indicated.
The Taliban overthrew the system established by the Mujahideen in 1996. It helps nobody to make historically incorrect statements about the USA backing the Taliban. It’s also pointless to do so. If you want to take a pop at the Americans all you have to do is point at Afghanistan this week, where an epoch-defining catastrophe is unfolding as we speak, entirely due to a forseeable, preventable failure of US foreign policy.