SubscribeWe didn't make these monsters.
American Enterprise, Dec, 2001
Ever since the September 11 attacks, it's become a matter of faith on the American Left that the United States somehow created the terror-loving Taliban regime.
The United States made mistakes under its last three Presidents, and it's possible that a different foreign policy could have stopped the Taliban from emerging. But America's errors were almost entirely sins of omission. Here's what happened:
The anti-Soviet mujahedin funded by the U.S. consisted of seven factions. Some were fundamentalist Muslims who envisioned an Islamic state along the lines of Saudi Arabia. About as many had a cosmopolitan orientation and wanted a Westernized state similar to Turkey. The Taliban were not among the mujahedin factions at all, and all of the Taliban's important leaders, including Mullah Omar, were out of the country, mostly in Pakistan, during the war against the Soviets. Some American aid surely did seep into Taliban organizations, but only as one group among many.
Partly because of their ideological diversity, the mujahedin failed to unify when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Afghanistan lurched from regime to regime as living standards deteriorated.
Anxious to control the lucrative Afghan trade in opium poppies, the Pakistanis supported the Taliban, whom they believed would be weak and easy to manipulate. The United States did not aid the Pakistanis in these efforts, and actually cut off financing to them at about the same time in the wake of Pakistan's nuclear tests.
Wealthy Saudis did, however, support the Taliban, some because they sympathized with the Taliban's vision of a pure Islamic state; some because they feared a more pro-Western government would aid the tapping of Central Asia's vast energy resources, undermining oil prices in the process; and some who saw their donations as "protection money" to keep the Taliban and their ilk out of Saudi Arabia. The Taliban, for their part, began a military campaign in 1994 and consolidated control over 90 percent of the country by 1996. Some mujahedin fighters joined them, but the Taliban's leaders had never worked with the United States.
In the mid 1990s, the U.S. did little to stand in the way of the Taliban, probably the single worst mistake of American foreign policy during the '90s. But we didn't create the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.
« Older These are your daddy's comics... | I Love Death [warning: potenti... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
me, I like fire. We should bring this kind of democracy to america, shut the women up, light up the pipe with worthless dollar bills and say fuck it, we didn't really elect the president anyway.
Afghanitstan will always be a mess so long as the world powers use it in their little war games.
posted by jmgorman at 6:30 PM on February 17, 2004