U.S. takes on war-hardened Taliban it helped create - 09/21/2001

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/21/taliban.htm

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Their edicts — forbidding women to attend school, banning everything from makeup to kite flying — are infamous. So are their punishments, ranging from amputation to public stoning. In five years, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia has become one of the best-known and most-hated regimes in the world. President Bush has threatened to unleash a massive military retaliation against the fundamentalist Muslim group for harboring its most famous "guest": Osama bin Laden. The Saudi millionaire, already indicted for plotting the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa, is the chief suspect in last week's terrorist attacks in the USA. snip

An American creation

U.S. and Pakistani officials concede that the United States is partly responsible for the conditions that bred both the Taliban and bin Laden. In the words of one senior U.S. intelligence official, the United States is about to go to war with an enemy that it helped create in the 1980s. snip

The creation of the West's newest and perhaps deadliest enemy began in 1979, when the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to prop up the country's communist government. The CIA, eager to stop the spread of Marxist ideology, spent $3 billion arming and equipping the Islamic rebels, known as the mujahedin. The rebels objected to the secular, puppet government.

After a decade of combat that has been compared to the U.S. experience in Vietnam, war-weary Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the United States stopped supporting the rebels. The CIA didn't offer to rebuild the ravaged country or work out a replacement government. Soon, civil strife erupted among Afghanistan's tribes, leaving the country's 21 million residents without running water or health care.

In 1994, a reclusive, one-eyed religious cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, proclaimed himself the "king of all Muslims" and began what is known as the Taliban militia. An Afghan, he said the Taliban, which means "students of religion" in the Pashto language of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, was established to combat the lawlessness and tribal fighting that had descended upon Afghanistan. He promised to restore peace and transform the country into the purest Islamic state in the world. His forces included many of the U.S.-trained mujahedin.

[dave_p]

1. Mostly good, but some tosh

"the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to prop up the country's communist government. The CIA, eager to stop the spread of Marxist ideology, spent $3 billion arming and equipping the Islamic rebels, known as the mujahedin"

I love the way this always gets reversed. US support for the Mujahiddin preceded the Soviet intervention. The Soviets were furious when their Afghan pals overthrew a middle-of the-road regime they'd been on reasonably good terms with (though there were extenuating local circumstances), and even more so when the nutty Hafizullah Amin ousted his less disagreeable party boss and started pissing off everyone in the country. And they weren't at all happy with being asked (repeatedly) by their now embattled allies to send troops. By the time they went in, the CIA was already deeply involved, though the most spectacular arms deals (nearer $6bn then $3bn, and $12bn in today's money) came in the 80s.

The Taliban are pretty gross in their take on women, minorities, the right to enjoy life, stuff like that. But the article's closing equation of the movement and aQ as "links in the same chain of the international terrorist network" is utter crap. US commanders know which they're fighting (usually the Taliban). Anti-US Afghan fighters know which they're backing (the Taliban). Few remember how at their first appearance in 1994 the Taliban were hailed in the West as a "peace movement" opposing corrupt warlord violence. They and aQ are entirely distinct entities that managed to find a common cause fighting first political enemies and then a foreign invasion - much like the US and the Mujahiddin jihadis all those years ago.

[NNN0LHI]

2. Funny that our media never mentions ANY of this any more

Well not really funny I guess.

Don