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Taliban's Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along (www.mintpressnews.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 76 points 3 years ago (2 children)

A reminder that the Taliban only exists because the US funded the Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war

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  • [–] 23 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    To be technical, did the US actually fund the Taliban when it got started? The Pakistani intelligence service did, and the Taliban were only able to take power because of the US-backed Mujahideen alliance rapidly descended into civil war when the Soviets pulled out and the Afghan government fell, but idk.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago

    All the armaments the US supplied (most of which actually came from China) to the Mujahideen was distributed by Pakistani intelligence services - that is true. However, the US knew perfectly well who the Pakistanis were giving these weapons to - it had been longstanding US foreign policy SOP to nurture and support far-right, reactionary Islamism as a counter to middle-eastern nationalism. That's the reason the "big bads" in the middle-east now are people like Osama and not people like Arafat.

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