I am not generous with doling out respect. It needs to be earned IMHO and starting conversations with name calling definitely doesnt help.
That is exactly what I said, although in far fewer words, except that everyone else in Afghanistan was fighting the leftists/commies. Where you ultimately try to blame the US/CIA for rise of taliban, I lay the blame directly on the failed Soviet policies or rather lack thereof, in Afghanistan. Lack of political vision in Afghanistan and withdrawal of Soviet war machinery did nothing to replace the vacuum it created, not to mention failure to place even a semblance of a political infrastructure, leading to a free for all grab for power by the leading factions of the Mujaheedin.
The ISAF is trying to do what the Soviets did not or failed to, post 'war'.
Lets be adults here, shall we?
Right just scroll over the first reply you posted me and then come to me at earning respect. Usually when addressing someone for the first time it is custom to be civil.
Secondly, there was no failure of Soviet policies the Soviets were begining to realise that they were losing the Cold War and as every influential system has done they answered by increasing their military presence. The Soviet's were invited btw by the Afghani government. The US wanted to use this oppertunity, it should be noted that the Reagen administration had adopted a policy that was strategically aimed to increase the cost of being a 'superpower' for the USSR and thus increasing the pressure on their system. Though it was aimed at making the military might of the USSR colapse it stress their system to a collapse completely.
Now, in such circumstances, it should also be noted that the USSR, according to latest released KGB files, Taliban: Declassified, thought that the USA was supporting a Pan-Islamist alliance of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan to infiltrate their southern regions with high Muslim populations which the Soviets considered to be 'backward'. Thus, they were always on the defencive. The USA completely abandoned the Afghani people: the years of fighting had seen the Soviet tactics of decreasing the civics structure so that the Afghani people would have to come to concentrated cities where they could easily be held in terms of military control. It backfired as the Afghans, as is their proud history, took on this tactic and embraced it to their use using a highly fluidic system to take on Soviet conventional strenght. The Soviets then started to destroy every symbol of the 20th century left in Afghanistan with the exception of the few cities they held and later on Kabul.
After their exit, the Soviet giant took its last breaths and fell. The USA was the
only nation that could have stabalised Afghanistan and ignored it. THis is not just true for Afghanistan but the rest of the world where the fissures of the Cold War politik left Africa and Central Asia bleeding. The USA celebrated.
That is where the Talibs rose to fill in the gap and mind you, the Talibs were never a united front either. There were elements in the Taliban government that deemed that OBL and every foreign fighter should leave Afghanistan, they even were in talks with C. Powell for a gas pipeline as far back as
2001!
So read, please, these people are the bastards of the Cold War.
Read
The Bear that went over the moutain edited by L. W. Grau, 1996
and Shuja Nawaz's account in
Crossed Swords 2007.
Why open new thread for years old documentary when there are already many threads on this
I guess because people did not have their dose of 'Reasons to hate Pakistan' today.
