-- On 21 Mar 2003 at 12:55, Ken Brown wrote: > US originally helped the kind of people who later became the > "Northern Alliance" - a rather odd mixture of unreconstructed > Stalinists, "liberals" in the European sense of the word, > separationists, local bandit chiefs, drug growers, > pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists and who knows what else. The > Taliban formed later, in Pakistan, and was at least at first > indirectly funded by the US through Pakistan and through > material inherited from some other groups - and of course > later by various Arabs (who may or may not have thought of > themselves as "Al Qaida" before the US pinned the name on > them while looking for a New Enemy for the New World Order). > But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the > Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart
Commie lies.
My understanding is that the Taliban got twelve stingers, not five hundred, and they got them from Hekmatyar, who did get them from the US. Hekmatyar was certainly anti US, arguably a Stalinist and a supporter of terrorism, but he was not and is not an islamic fundamentalist -- his alliance with the taliban was rather like Saddam's alliance with Bin Laden. They temporarily agreed to hate someone else more than they hate each other.
At the beginning of the recent Afghan war the US estimated the Taliban had at most fifty stingers. During the war it became apparent that they had far fewer, probably only the twelve that Hekmatyar gave them.
1. What makes these "lies" as you claim "commie"? Do you think that by impugning US policy in the region we are by implication stating that the forced exit of the Soviets was bad? Quite saying "commie" all the time. All the commies are dead, except for 1 in Cuba and a couple of really old guys in rural China.
2. You knowledge of history is as shoddy as your ability to spot communists and their "lies". The CIA actively recruited and trained Isalmic religious students and helped build and arm the Taliban. And frankly, despite the fact I've never been a supporter of US foreign policy, I was all for it. The Taliban SEEMED at the time to represent a clear "moral" force that alone had the power to unify Afghanistan and bring an end to the Chaos. WHat exactly went wrong I have never fully understood, though I DO know that had I been Afghani, and had I seen a foreign Talib slapping around an Afghan woman, I would have done my best to off the punk. ANd Mullah Omar doesn't seem to have been all there on some levels...
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