| | | Maybe I overcomplicated with that respect thing. The respect due to all those parties is very little. Actually, it's a negative quantity.
However, the Soviet war in Afghanistan had little to do with Gorby. The war lasted from 1979 until 89, and Gorby was the big boss from 1988 to 1991, when Yeltsin, after the coup, proclaimed Russia's independence from the USSR, and Gorby found himself the president of an empire that no longer existed.
It does appear that the U.S. support of the Afghan mujaheedeen (along with the Saudi funding, as I seem to recall) helped train and mobilize modern militant jihadi movement. That's where they received their military training and experience. But, in those days Soviet imperialism was still a huge thing, and very dangerous. It did seem like an easy decision to use the locals to do the fighting. So, IMO, it would be difficult to blame Carter - and later Ronald Reagan - for doing what they did.
Remember that early in the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 a very similar thing happened - the Muslim "Northern Alliance" did most of the fighting on the ground. (I sometimes wonder what ever happened with our Northern Alliance friends. One day they were allies, the next - they fell off the face of the earth).
I suppose it can be argued that the nasty old USSR served - indirectly - as the godfather of modern jihadism.
(Probably would have happened anyway. The history of Islam is filled with periods of jihadist flareups). |
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