Yeah, plenty of people have misconception that it was just the Taliban who the US funded. The US funded everyone who were against USSR. The mujahideen was a catch-all term of Afghans who fought against the Soviets.
They also don’t know that despite catch-alls and such, usually the word (I know it’s pretty generic in Arabic) was used for a leftist-Islamist hybrid typical for that time and not typical now (the Islamic Republic of Iran has some remnants of that ideology). And before that there was a socialist dictatorship. And before it a British-aligned monarchy.
Yet people trained by USSR for police and military work are still employed by Taliban in positions requiring qualifications, or so I’ve been recently told. Will be interesting to see what happens when they get too old. Will such new states disassemble into tribal zones or will they manage to create their own institutions at least for training people capable of maintaining a basic military organization.
Yeah, plenty of people have misconception that it was just the Taliban who the US funded. The US funded everyone who were against USSR. The mujahideen was a catch-all term of Afghans who fought against the Soviets.
Even in Russia people often don’t know this.
They also don’t know that despite catch-alls and such, usually the word (I know it’s pretty generic in Arabic) was used for a leftist-Islamist hybrid typical for that time and not typical now (the Islamic Republic of Iran has some remnants of that ideology). And before that there was a socialist dictatorship. And before it a British-aligned monarchy.
Yet people trained by USSR for police and military work are still employed by Taliban in positions requiring qualifications, or so I’ve been recently told. Will be interesting to see what happens when they get too old. Will such new states disassemble into tribal zones or will they manage to create their own institutions at least for training people capable of maintaining a basic military organization.