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It is widely | assumed in the West erroneously that the Taliban are just another example of Jihadist Islam,
but if the West had not opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Taliban would never had existed. |
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In the | Saudi Arabian financed religious schools in Pakistan, most students (talibs) were schooled with textbooks developed by the University of Nebraska at Omaha's (UNO) Center for Afghanistan Studies program, funded by USAID, to about $51 million in the decade ending 1994, and published in the dominant Dari and Pashtu dialects of Afghanistan. |
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The | textbooks were designed to encourage Islamic fanaticism and provoke resistance to the Soviet invaders.
The children learned to count using images of missiles, land mines, Kalashnikovs and tanks. |
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This US sponsored teaching literature also glorified the Mujahideen as being obedient to God in willingly sacrificing their lives and their property to impose Sharia law on government. |
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When | in 1996, the Taliban eventually seize Kabul*, they continued to use the same violently Jihadist texts from the USA, removing only the human images as being blasphemous. |
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In this same year, the Taliban also welcomed the young Saudi, Osama bin Laden back to Afghanistan, for Osama had previously been part of the CIA organisation for recruiting and training militants to battle the Soviet 'infidels'. |
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(In 1992 bin Laden had issued his first fatwa calling for the jihad (holy war) against Western occupation of Muslim lands, and arranged the bombing of a U.S. military base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. airmen and wounding 34). |
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(Source: O Stone and P Kuznick The Untold History of the United States, 2013:487-489, Edbury Publishing) | |||||||||||
Monday | February 1, 2016: ten-year-old Wasil Ahmad, a child hero of the Taliban seige of Uruzgan, is assassinated by the Taliban. |
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The | Haqqani Network in 2016 represents the most deadly and effective part of the forces opposing American and allied troops in Afghanistan. The group merged with the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s, and their influence on the Afghan Taliban has grown since the death of former Taliban leader Mullah Omar. |
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Russia | has now argued that the Taliban is a necessary bulwark in the war against the so-called Islamic State. But the American military sees Moscow’s embrace of the Taliban as just another move intended to undermine NATO,
which fights the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State. |
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December 28: | Taliban Statement –
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November 2017: | Deep in Helmand province, a hub of the militant group’s years-long insurgency against Afghan and Western forces, the Taliban’s elite fighters have been conducting surprise attacks against Afghan forces using what officials say are Russian-made night-vision goggles. "Night-vision equipment is used in ambushes by the insurgents, and it is very effective," Major General Dawlat Waziri, the spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, told The New York Times. "You can see your enemy but they cannot see you coming.' |
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Six months | ago, senior Taliban leader Qari Hemkat switched sides to ISIS/ISIL, raising the group’s black flag in two districts of Jawzjan province. His followers started to enslave women and even created a bomb-making school for children. ISIS/ISIL has also claimed more than a dozen bombings in Afghanistan this year, including large-scale attacks in Kabul that have left scores dead. With the onset of the Taliban’s elite fighting force, and an ever-growing ISIS/ISIL presence in the country, President Donald Trump's decision to expand the American troop presence to 14,000 in the hotbed of jihadism is a welcome one for Kabul. |
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14 February 2018 | The Taliban issue an extraordinary, 17,000-word appeal to the “American people,” asking them to pressure U.S. officials to end the 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan and asserting that the protracted American "occupation" had brought only death, corruption and drugs to the impoverished country. The letter, whose authenticity is confirmed by a brief telephone conversation with insurgent spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, is primarily aimed at a U.S. audience. Unlike previous statements issued by the Taliban, it used statistics and logical arguments — not just ideological harangues — to convince Americans that their government’s investment in the war has been a dire mistake. |
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"Prolonging | the war in Afghanistan and maintaining American troop presence is neither beneficial for America nor for anyone else," the document said, calling on U.S. citizens, legislators and others to “read this letter prudently” and evaluate the costs and benefits of continuing to fight. "Stubbornly seeking the protraction of this war," it added, “will have “dreadful consequences” for the region and the "stability of America herself."
The letter, sent under the banner of "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," was issued just weeks after a blitz of deadly insurgent attacks in the Afghan capital have left the government struggling to cope with increased public anxiety and anger. It also came as the Trump administration is ramping up a new military strategy, involving thousands of additional troops, to expand the Afghan security forces and train them to defend their country independently. |
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