Afghan Conflict: Russian Political Leader Meets With Massoud

[Corrian]

Also I give it until like next month before the Taliban ends up violating the agreement enough (Which they seem to already be if reports of beating Americans trying to get to the airport is any indication) that we're bombing them from the air again.

[Novus America]

Meaning students in arabic, taliban was inadvertibly formed by the US

i didn't know that the taliban was formed by the US

It was not really though.
It was a formed from a large number of mostly Pashtun students who had fled to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation and war, who attended Saudi Funded extremist Madrassas or religious schools Pakistan during the war, became radicalized and combined Pakistani Deobandi Islamism and Wahhabism learned there with the Pashtun tribal codes.

After the Soviets left, and after the US had ceased involvement in Afghanistan and sanctioned Pakistan, said radicalized students moved back into Afghanistan, gathering primarily in the Kandahar area. With the support, training and funding of the infamous Pakistani ISI, said students were organized into an extremist militia, the Taliban who seized control of the city, and from there spread throughout the country.

The Taliban were created by Pakistan. Sure the US had provided Pakistan support during the Soviet war, but the Taliban was not organized as a militia until after we had cut off that support.

Maybe you can argue our lack of interest after the Soviets left allowed Pakistan to form the Taliban and helped created the conditions for there takeover, but at most we indirectly helped contribute to the conditions that let them rise to power, they were however a Pakistani creation.

[Corrian]

There's a group of people that really like to make issues as simple as "The US created it", when things in reality are much more complicated, as mentioned above.

[Insaanistan]

i didn't know that the taliban was formed by the US

Because it wasn't.

Right, it was just a group trained and educated by our ally, funded by us, and supported for an extended period of time by us due to their anti-Communist and anti-Shiā (by which was understood to also be anti-Iran) views.

[New haven america]

Because it wasn't.

Right, it was just a group trained and educated by our ally, funded by us, and supported for an extended period of time by us due to their anti-Communist and anti-Shiā (by which was understood to also be anti-Iran) views.

Why would the US fund a group to fight the USSR and Afghan's communist government when the USSR left in the 80's and the government was already defunct by the time the Taliban formed in the 90's?

[Insaanistan]

Right, it was just a group trained and educated by our ally, funded by us, and supported for an extended period of time by us due to their anti-Communist and anti-Shiā (by which was understood to also be anti-Iran) views.

Why would the US fund a group to fight the USSR and Afghan's communist government when the USSR left in the 80's and the government was already defunct by the time the Taliban formed in the 90's?

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

[New haven america]

Why would the US fund a group to fight the USSR and Afghan's communist government when the USSR left in the 80's and the government was already defunct by the time the Taliban formed in the 90's?

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

You're avoiding the question.

Why would the US train and arm a group that started existing after the communists left?

[Old Tyrannia]

Why would the US fund a group to fight the USSR and Afghan's communist government when the USSR left in the 80's and the government was already defunct by the time the Taliban formed in the 90's?

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US never funded the Taliban. They funded the mujahideen, including the Jamiat-e-Islami group to whom Ahmad Shah Massoud, who based on your previous posts you seem to admire, belonged. You might benefit from reading the overview of post-1973 Afghan history that I wrote in another thread before continuing with this conversation.

[Insaanistan]

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US never funded the Taliban. They funded the mujahideen, including the Jamiat-e-Islami group to whom Ahmad Shah Massoud, who based on your previous posts you seem to admire, belonged. You might benefit from reading the overview of post-1973 Afghan history that I wrote in another thread before continuing with this conversation.

The US funded the Mujahideen collectively despite knowing very well there were fundamental differences between different groups in its ranks. Money given to Pakistan went to groups that later would form the Taliban and we simply let Pakistan fund them because they were doing a good job. When the Taliban did in face emerge as a separate entity, you see a multitude of US officials asserting they’ll be good for Afghanistan and urging we support them (such as one whose support was so ardent she was named “Lady Taliban”.)

[Insaanistan]

Hazara Militia Under Alipur Expells Taliban From Behsud District

[Deblar]

If. That said, Soviet era weapons are the bread and butter of militia forces in much of the world. They're not overly complicated. They're reliable. They're abundant. Having the Central Asian countries on side might do more than one would initially expect.

That said, we shouldn't forget that the Northern Alliance is really the better of two bad options. Despite my respect for Ahmad Shah Massoud, and now his son, a lot of the warlords are little better than drug dealers and petty despots.

never forget that the US army gave these people viagra to help them rape boys in exchange for their cooperation

…

What.
The.
Fu-

[Duvniask]

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US never funded the Taliban. They funded the mujahideen, including the Jamiat-e-Islami group to whom Ahmad Shah Massoud, who based on your previous posts you seem to admire, belonged. You might benefit from reading the overview of post-1973 Afghan history that I wrote in another thread before continuing with this conversation.

It is, however, quite ludicrous to suggest the US did not know its money was being funneled to radical islamists. They readily accepted the ISI's agenda of arming islamists like Hekmatyar, who they (the CIA) believed would fight the Soviets the hardest, as Steve Coll shows in his Ghost Wars.

It did also provide direct cash payments to, for example, Jalaluddin Haqqani who, in addition to being an admitted CIA asset, was a close associate of bin Laden and actively involved with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

[Old Tyrannia]

The US never funded the Taliban. They funded the mujahideen, including the Jamiat-e-Islami group to whom Ahmad Shah Massoud, who based on your previous posts you seem to admire, belonged. You might benefit from reading the overview of post-1973 Afghan history that I wrote in another thread before continuing with this conversation.

It is, however, quite ludicrous to suggest the US did not know its money was being funneled to radical islamists. They readily accepted the ISI's agenda of arming islamists who they believed would fight the Soviets the hardest, as Steve Coll shows in his Ghost Wars.

It did also provide direct cash payments to, for example, Jalaluddin Haqqani who, in addition to being an admitted CIA asset, was a close associate of bin Laden and actively involved with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

I'm sure they knew that they were funding Islamists. Regardless, they never directly funded the Taliban itself.

[Duvniask]

It is, however, quite ludicrous to suggest the US did not know its money was being funneled to radical islamists. They readily accepted the ISI's agenda of arming islamists who they believed would fight the Soviets the hardest, as Steve Coll shows in his Ghost Wars.

It did also provide direct cash payments to, for example, Jalaluddin Haqqani who, in addition to being an admitted CIA asset, was a close associate of bin Laden and actively involved with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

I'm sure they knew that they were funding Islamists. Regardless, they never directly funded the Taliban itself.

Right, but the truth of the matter is that the US knowingly backed fundamentalists as part of a geopolitical struggle with little regard to the dangers of fanaticism; reports of it were ignored until it was too late. A good deal of these fanatics were allied to and supported bin Laden, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda at one point or another, and that should frankly come as no surprise, because in spite of the fragmented nature of the Mujahideen their goals were largely cut from the same reactionary cloth.

[Novus America]

Because it wasn't.

Right, it was just a group trained and educated by our ally, funded by us, and supported for an extended period of time by us due to their anti-Communist and anti-Shiā (by which was understood to also be anti-Iran) views.

The Taliban was not formed and organized as a militia until 1994. By 1994 we had stopped caring about Communism much, and actually had Pakistan under sanctions. US Pakistan relations were poor by 1994, and Pakistan was no longer receiving US money.

So that does not really work. And it is also still false to say the US created the Taliban, as if the US was the only party involved. I mean we did provide support to Pakistan in the 80s during the time many of those who later became the Taliban were being radicalized in Saudi funded Pakistani schools, but we were one of many places doing that. We were just one of many players in that game and not carefully watching or planning everything going on in Pakistan. Sure in hindsight we should have been more concerned about said schools, but at the time we had many other priorities. Failing to try to stop something that you did not realize was a problem is quite different than creating it.

By that logic France and the U.K. created the Nazis because thy failed to stop them.

Most who became Taliban were never Mujahideen (being most were students in Pakistan, not fighting the Soviets) and most Mujahideen did not join the Taliban.

Plus the US mostly supported the ethnic Tajik groups amongst the Mujahideen. It is notable the the Tajik dominated groups calling themselves Mujahideen again are now the ones you are praising for leading the resistance against the Taliban. If you claim we created the Taliban, you would have to also say we created the resistance to the Taliban…

So at best you made a claim that oversimplified a very complicated issue into a falsehood.

Yes you can say the some of the US support probably did end up being funneled by by Pakistan to the ISI and through them radical Pashtun groups, that later formed the Taliban.

But that does not mean we “created” the Taliban. We amongst others did help contribute to the situation that caused them to rise, largely through indifference (again we pretty much ignored the whole thing after the Soviets left) but that is much different than claiming we alone created them.

Pakistan’s ISI basically did, but created them as a militia at a time Pakistan was under US sanctions. Now indirectly US sanctions may have encouraged Pakistan to seek out other allies, but Pakistan hardly needed us to decide they wanted influence in Afghanistan, an area they have long felt is in their “sphere of influence” and needed for strategic depth against India. The ISI almost certainly would have created the Taliban regardless of what we did or did not do, as it made sense for the ISI from a short term realpolitik and ideological standpoint to create allied Jihadi groups that the ISI could use to advance their influence.

Creating and funding these types of groups has long been one of the Pakistan’s strategies, or at least the strategy of the Pakistani ISI, which TBF often acts as rogue state within a state and barely controlled by the civilian part of the government it is nominally part of. The rest of the Pakistani government has only limited control over what the ISI does.

Pakistan’s ISI, not the US created the Taliban. And yes the US has had a complex and often unhealthy relationship with Pakistani government, which has a complex and unhealthy relationship with its own ISI. But having a relationship with a foreign government is quite different than doing everything every part of that government does. Especially when said government often was doing things we strongly opposed (hence why we were sanctioning them at the time they formed the Taliban).

The US =/= Pakistan, despite our complex and often unhealthy relationship with Pakistan.

So saying “the US created the Taliban” is not really true. It sounds good on Twitter (which massively dumbs down discourse) but to you should say “the US helped create the conditions that allowed the Taliban to rise” or something like that if you want to criticize the US.

That statement is at least pretty hard to dispute, even if it obviously fails to explain the complexities.

[Picairn]

There's a group of people that really like to make issues as simple as "The US created it", when things in reality are much more complicated, as mentioned above.

Yeah. Pakistan was open about it too.

See this guy? In 1995 he advertised to Ahmed Badeeb, chief of staff to Prince Turki al-Faisal (the head of Saudi intelligence), that under his direction the Pakistani Interior Ministry (alongside with the ISI) helped create the Taliban and built them up from the ground, even went as far as calling them "my boys".

Source: Coll, S. (2005). Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, p. 295.

[The Jamesian Republic]

Because US foreign policy and actions abroad have always 100% made sense, as demonstrated by our amazingly planned, well organized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

You're avoiding the question.

Why would the US train and arm a group that started existing after the communists left?

I think what happened was that we trained and armed them before they became the Taliban. After it was over and the dilemma deepened they became what they are now.

[Novus America]

You're avoiding the question.

Why would the US train and arm a group that started existing after the communists left?

I think what happened was that we trained and armed them before they became the Taliban. After it was over and the dilemma deepened they became what they are now.

The thing is we did not for most of them. Some of the Taliban leadership did fight in the Soviet War, but most Taliban were again in schools in Pakistan and thus not being trained or armed as part of the Mujahideen. And we mostly directly supported the Tajik groups, that became the Northern Alliance.

The Taliban got most of their weapons and training from the Pakistani ISI around 1994, which is after the US had forgotten about Afghanistan and actually place them under sanctions for their nuclear testing.

So given most the Taliban were trained and armed at a time the US was no longer training and arming Afghanis, AND the government providing the training and arms was under US sanctions, that claim is not really accurate.

[Kowani]

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul

[Insaanistan]

Ahmad Massoud: “We Sacrifice our Lives, but we Will Never Sacrifice our Land and Freedom

[South Americanastan]

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul

You know, for an agency focused around secret operations, the CIA sure is terrible at keeping secret meetings secret.

[Kowani]

Airbnb to house 20,000 Afghan refugees globally for free

[Picairn]

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul

You know, for an agency focused around secret operations, the CIA sure is terrible at keeping secret meetings secret.

This is probably intentional for PR reasons. Imagine the scandal if the press wasn't notified of it and discovered it through shoddy sources. Speculations would fly like leaves in a storm. We will never know the content of the meeting until at least 20-30 years from now, of course.

[Kowani]

Taliban appoints former Guantanamo detainee mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir as acting defense minister

[Baltenstein]

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul

Bizarrely, this is almost exactly what happened in the climax of Homeland's fourth season.
Pretty much the only difference is they they met in Islamabad rather than Kabul.

I wonder what special agent Carrie is making of this.