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Thread: Afghanistan, Northern Alliance, Taliban and the late 70's???

  1. #1

    Afghanistan, Northern Alliance, Taliban and the late 70's???

    Ok I saw a history channel special about this whole incident regarding the rise of Osama the Taliban, our role in it and the USSR.

    My question is can someone summarize what happened? The program skipped around so much and was talking about the northen alliance, mujahadeen/bin laden fighting the ussr with the cia funding them.



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  3. #2
    Basic history of Afghan State is Russia and Britain created it a long time ago, in the 80s the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and America feared the spread of communism, so armed+funded+trained the Mujahadeen/freedom fighters (consider how strong Israel is militarily, this is the advantage America gives) and the Soviets economy collapsed after being bled dry after the long war, and they had to concede failure. This left a large group of now experienced freedom fighters who were well trained/armed/funded and they eventually took political power, as the Taliban.

    I'm far from an expert but I think that's the basics.
    "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK


    http://www.KnowYourRINO.com


    "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon


    “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” - Voltaire.

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Zolah View Post
    Basic history of Afghan State is Russia and Britain created it a long time ago, in the 80s the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and America feared the spread of communism, so armed+funded+trained the Mujahadeen/freedom fighters (consider how strong Israel is militarily, this is the advantage America gives) and the Soviets economy collapsed after being bled dry after the long war, and they had to concede failure. This left a large group of now experienced freedom fighters who were well trained/armed/funded and they eventually took political power, as the Taliban.

    I'm far from an expert but I think that's the basics.

    That that is what they call "Blow Back".

  5. #4
    Yes, technically al-queda is an invention of the U.S. government. The same thing will happen with our "allies" in Iraq, who will end up siding with Iran. I guess that's why we'll need to stay there for another 100 years That's the worst part about this whole mess. It's not only costing us a ton in 'blood and treasure', it's extremely counterproductive.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by BFranklin View Post
    Ok I saw a history channel special about this whole incident regarding the rise of Osama the Taliban, our role in it and the USSR.

    My question is can someone summarize what happened? The program skipped around so much and was talking about the northen alliance, mujahadeen/bin laden fighting the ussr with the cia funding them.
    There was a news conference in Washington when Taliban leaders came to discuss the infamous pipeline deal. The Taliban was welcomed here until they ditched the pipeline, even though the Taliban leader insulted a lady reporter who asked a pointed question. He told the reporter that her husband must be very ashamed of her for being so insolent, or something to that effect, lol... it was telivised.

  7. #6
    Interesting video about the Afghan oil connection. I never heard of this guy, Karl Schwartz.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqgPcdjA-I0

  8. #7
    "Yet the evidence is that the US government wanted the Soviets to invade and did what it could to provoke it. According to Secretary of State Robert Gates 1997 book "From the Shadows" the CIA started giving aid to Islamic rebels in Afghanistan six months before the Soviets invaded. This was confirmed and detailed in an interview with Zbignew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor in 1998 in the French journal Le Nouvel Observateur. In the interview Brzezinski explained that Jimmy Carter signed an order on July 3 of 1979 to give aid to the mujahadeen and that he (Brzezinski) wrote Carter a note that same day saying "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention".

    Not that Brzezinski objected. To the contrary this is how he answered his interviewer's question on whether he had any regrets. "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."

    Afghanistan would become the next venue for Cold War game playing and the Afghan people would be the pawns."

    from: Worst Movie of the Year
    Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
    By STANLEY HELLER

    http://www.counterpunch.org/heller12262007.html
    "Masterful and arrogant wealth, created largely by Government protection of its profits, not content with its domination and influence within a single party, had sought to corrupt them both, and to that end had insinuated itself into the primaries, in order that no candidates might be nominated whose views were not in accord with theirs." (‘Colonel’ Edward Mandell House in 'Philip Dru: Administrator', circa 1912)

  9. #8
    Radical Islam itself is a creation of the CIA, not just Al-Qaida. But I'll agree that we were scared to death that the Soviets would invade the Middle East and take over all the oil fields-kind of like what happened with Iran back in '53
    Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. -James Madison



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  11. #9
    So the CIA wrote the Qu'ran too, huh...

    Is there anything anti-American you WON'T belive?

    Bush flew the planes into the towers, I saw it on prisonplanet.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by orlandoinfl View Post
    So the CIA wrote the Qu'ran too, huh...

    Is there anything anti-American you WON'T belive?

    Bush flew the planes into the towers, I saw it on prisonplanet.
    Don't be so closed-minded.

    It would be naiive to say that the CIA isn't experienced in inciting radicalisation and promoting a destablisation of a region, a la Freedom Fighter's Manual (http://www.ballistichelmet.org/school/free.html)

    Radical Islam isn't a creation of the CIA though, but it is directly related to intervention by America and UK.
    "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK


    http://www.KnowYourRINO.com


    "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon


    “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” - Voltaire.

  13. #11
    There were different factions of the Afghan freedom fighters. The Northern Alliance was friendly to the west and the Taliban were their enemy. They both fought against the Soviets.

    Once the Soviets left, the Taliban got the upper hand. The Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the country. It was a vital mineral rich part of the country. All the ruby, emerald and lapis mines were in this area. Every miner carries dynamite and an AK 47.

    Bin Ladin's final act before giving the go ahead to 911 was to kill his main rival Masood who headed the northern alliance.

    Here is some info.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud


    Here are some pictures of expeditions.
    http://www.gems-afghan.com/exped00.htm

  14. #12

    Propaganda

    From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad
    Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts


    By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A01

    In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

    The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.

    As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.

    Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched a "scrubbing" operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets.

    The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

    Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID "will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries."

    The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.

    President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach "respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry."

    The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits.

    AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.

    "It's not AID's policy to support religious instruction," Stratos said. "But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity."

    Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID's former director established that taxpayers' funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has "not a legal leg to stand on" in distributing the books.

    "Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious," she said.

    Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.

    During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.

    "I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union," said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID's Central Asia Task Force.

    AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.

    Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.

    "The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse," said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.

    An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.

    The military content was included to "stimulate resistance against invasion," explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska's Afghanistan center. "Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it."

    During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier's head is missing.

    Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.

    "We were quite shocked," said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. "The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it."

    After the United States launched a military campaign last year, the United Nations' education agency, UNICEF, began preparing to reopen Afghanistan's schools, using new books developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction.

    Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF's new texts could be used only as supplements.

    Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references.

    About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as "civics" courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and "how to be a good Muslim."

    UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old "militarized" books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials.

    On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said.

    "We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum," he said.


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

  15. #13
    Conclusion: (a) Interventionist foreign policies don't work (b) American governments are awful at intervention.
    "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK


    http://www.KnowYourRINO.com


    "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon


    “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” - Voltaire.

  16. #14
    Bump
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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