This is hardly comprehensive, but I am sure you can do more of your own DD. I am only bringing it up so that you do not think I am after US bashing and that US had no involvement with the Taliban. You will not like the politics of the source, but there are other more neutral sources that confirm this. I chose this because it was rather concise.
ST
Beginning under President Jimmy Carter, the United States backed the
mujahadeen guerillas fighting the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan,
which included training the cohorts of Osama bin Laden. When Soviet troops
withdrew in 1989, the U.S. walked away. In his September 21 Washington Post
op-ed, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid writes: "Washington allowed two
allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to run with their own proxies -- first
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who destroyed most of Kabul with rocket attacks in
1993, and then the Taliban. Iran, Russia, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan backed other factions, thus ensuring that the civil war, fueled
so heavily by outsiders, would continue." From 1992 to 1995, fighting among
the different factions, including Hekmatyar and many of the warlords that
make up the Northern Alliance, killed over 50,000 civilians.
The Taliban emerged in 1994 from the rural southern hinterlands of
Afghanistan, under the guidance of the reclusive village cleric Mullah
Mohammed Omar. It rose to power by promising peace and order for a country
ravaged by corruption and civil war and the prospect of re-establishing
traditional majority-Pashtun dominance. From 1994 to 1996, the Clinton
administration sided with the Taliban. This included direct financial aid
and support for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia's military. |
