They didn’t “supply weapons” to the Taliban. They recruited tens of thousands of fanatic young muslims in various middle eastern countries - through Saudi Arabia, specifically bin Laden - and brought them to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. We know those fighters as mudjahideen. They fought the Russians for ten years in Afghanistan, which led to both millions of casualties among the population and about 5 million refugees that went to Pakistan.
Living in slum conditions in Pakistani camps, the only “education” an entire generation of Afghan children got was an extreme teaching of the Qu’ran through a Pakistani political party which ran the schools in those camps. After the Soviets left in 89, Afghanistan was in a state of perpetual quarrel between the government and the various mudjahideen groups and in the mid 90s, a group of people made up of former refugees, the Taliban, started to compete for power, too. Over the course of the civil war, they gained more influence, power, and also the remaining weapons the mudjahideen had been provided with by the US.
To sum it up:
US recruits, arms and finances mudjahideen to fight Russians, war creates millions of refugees, refugees are indoctrinated in Pakistan, return to Afghanistan, form Taliban, gain power.
As for the US arming ISIS. That group wouldn’t even exist - certainly not at this level of power - without America destroying Iraq. The US and the UK should be forced by the international community to take on any refugee coming from Iraq and to pay massive reperations. We know this won’t happen, of course.
Yes, I’m fully aware. So you’ll take everything he says at face value?
I look forward to entering here and seeing you doubt nothing that any world leader says then!
Edit: I’m not even denying outright the US has had link to Isis. I just question Erdogans motives and the complete truthfulness in what he says (the man himself has been accused of helping Isis - not that long ago).
You’re making out that the Mudjahideen and Taliban were completely seperate entities. Both stem from Wahabi Jihadi extremism backed by Saudi billionaires. The Taliban were essentially an offshoot of them.
Erdogan and the Saudis have backed anti-Assad forces and ISIS for different reasons but basically to destabise Assad and overthrow his regime. The US has done arms deals with the Saudi’s and has backed anti-Assad forces, some of which may not have had links with ISIS. ISIS have undoubtably ended up with US weapons.
MSM is an organic form of Sulphor, not a news source.
If you think American politicians purposely backed ISIS while painting them as the worst of evil you’re a window licing spastic, which you are anyway but carry on. If they were backing ISIS, ISIS would be portrayed as hero’s in every right wing news outlet.
Well, because they were. Christo was referring to the 80s, the “Taliban” didn’t even exist then. The Mudjahideen were also Arabs, while the Taliban are made up of ethnic Pashtuns, most of whom didn’t even speak Arabic. It is true that many of the older fighters of the Taliban had participated in the war against the Russians on the side of the Mudjahideen, but an “offshoot” they are not. Taliban = Afghan Pashtuns, speaking Pashto, Mudjahideen + Al-Qaeda = Arabs recruited in various middle eastern countries, speaking Arabic.
Of course they are similar insofar as they are all Sunni groups with closely related ideology.
No. First of all, the relation of “Saudi billionaires” and the militant jihad is complicated. While they agree in imposing Sharia law, both Al-Qaeda and ISIS try to achieve caliphates, which would effectively end the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Saudi Arabia (and Qatar, among others) is happy to support groups that fight for this ideology abroad, but there is no ISIS or any other group like that within Saudi Arabia.
Secondly, the Taliban are ideologically founded on the deobandi movement (which originated in India) via Pakistan. I’m nowhere near knowlegeable enough to explain the differences between salafis and deobandis in detail (and there are great similarities, no doubt about that), but the say “they are all rooted in Saudi Arabia” is inaccurate.
A final question: why post these pictures? To point out that it was all fine and dandy until the Taliban came? Well, more like it was all fine and dandy until the Soviets and Americans used Afghanistan as another stage in their own proxy war and ruined the country for good.
This article from 1998 explains the relationship between the US, The Saudi’s and the Taliban better than I can.
Essentially Taliban were funded directly by the Saudi’s who also funded arms, mosques with Wahabi teachings and Saudi trained scholars. I used to goto talks from a Wahabi Saudi trained Scholar, named ‘Sheikh Faisal’, he was a good speaker but every speech on every topic would go back to the importance of Jihad. There are plenty of ‘scholars’ shipped in from Saudi to preach Jihadi propoganda in Afganistan.
Despite The Taliban being Deobandi you can see Wahabbi influence their in their attacks on anything that was an innovation from the strict path of Islam, destruction of religious monuments, setting up an Islamic state and aggressive Jihadi expansion. Their alliance with Al Queda was a by product of this.
Now the Soviet/US invasions have hit the country but Islamo Fascism has equally hurt the country.
This is utterly tragic. There are a “number of casualties” apparently. It’s only a mile or so from my office so always scary when these things happen. What also disappoints me is our current culture, where people think the first thing they should do in such a situation is take a picture/video and upload it to Twitter!