Obama: ‘We gave Iraq the chance to have an inclusive democracy’

[Thoryalai Zazai]

Thanks for correcting some facts which I had wrong but you cannot deny that it was the same NATO nations that ruined you with Taliban.

How so? When the Communists launched their tyrannical rule and killing spree, Jimmy Carter signed off on covert support for the Mujahideen. With Iran going to the Mullahs, Pakistan became the single beneficiary of this initiative, hence their direction of all aid to their existing Islamist puppets, who until that point had posed no relevance in Afghanistan, other than a strategic warning to the government. When a young and naiive Ahmed Shah Massoud for instance raised arms against Daud Khan's government in Panjsher, he was kicked out of the region by his own tribe. Gulbudeen at the time was no more than a violent nuisance. The US government may be faulted for delegating the distribution of funds and weapons to the Pakistanis, instead of helping Afghans create a government of our own in exile to keep the resistance under an organised, Afghan controlled umbrella, free from radicalized buffoons. But then again, we've to be reasonable enough to ask what choices the US truly had, when Pakistan was left as the only staging ground for launching operations in the first place. But even still, towards the late 1980's, the US began to covertly support more Nationalist Mujahideen leaders directly and within Afghanistan. The one best placed geographically to make use of this assistance was the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was supported by the Americans and even the Indians, against Pakistan's favourite stooge, Gulbudeen Hekmatyar. This murderous thug who most often hindered the Mujahideen insurgency rather than help it, enjoyed the greatest amount of funds and weapons from Pakistan. Most people including 99.9% of Americans don't even know this, but the clash between Pakistan and the US began well before 9/11, which might explain the mysterious plane crash of Zia Ul Haq and the explosion at the arms depot from which Pakistan armed the Mujahideen. Bin Laden was basically the icing on the cake and perceived by many knowledgable Americans to be a State sponsored asset for their enemies, giving them the benefit of plausible deniability. There's no way the Americans will let this one go....you can bet on it.

The Taliban on the other hand certainly had many among their members derive out of the Mujahideen, but their leadership and structure as a movement - fuelled by inexperienced Maddrassa indoctrinated orphans and/or poverty stricken youth with no exposure on the battlefield - came into being AFTER the Soviet withdrawal as well as the assumed American disengagement from the region. Therefore your insistance that NATO somehow created them is completely incorrect. Afghan Communists and Pakistanis tend to try and raise this as an issue, but the truth is that it isn't. I've always understood where the Pakistani government cornered itself into. Let's hope for the Pakistanis themselves, that the latest initiative goes all the way to the complete dismantling of terrorist assets.

In a nutshell, here's where the Americans have stood by Afghans:

- Pre-war assistance and loans to balance the same from the Soviets
- War of independance against Soviet terror
- War of independance against Islamist terror via proxy
- The revival and rise of the Afghan State

Are we clear here?