What we’re not hearing from the media and politicians on the current chaos of Afghanistan…
You decide why this isn’t part of the narrative.
Our western governments in a greater part created this problem. Through the longest CIA operation ever mounted, the US government financed and armed Afghanistan’s Mujahideen against the Russians when the Soviets moved in to support a communist (coup) government in Afghanistan (1978). These Mujahideen would later fracture into groups that became Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Then the CIA followed on from this by supporting the Taliban, hoping to create a client government in Afghanistan offering them covert support for years. But factions within the Taliban, favouring independence from US influence, dumped UNOCAL (now part of Chevron) in preference of a non-US oil company for a major pipeline in 1998 and then the US attitude really changed. ‘Covert’ went out the window…
The US needed an excuse to ‘tidy up’ a non compliant Taliban so used 9/11 as the excuse to potentially invade (despite the fact that there was no connection between the official US 9/11 story and Afghanistan or the Taliban). The Taliban were rightly worried about an open US led military invasion so they even offered to give up bin Laden to the US. But Bush and the rest of the war hawks refused to accept this. They wouldn’t even negotiate on the issue. The US, and a particularly vociferous and powerful group PNAC (Project for a New American Century) within the government wanted war. They wanted control of the region. They started the war that cost trillions of dollars. They engineered elections to put in place puppets that would follow the US lead. That’s significantly why we are where we are.
And the withdrawal was negotiated and agreed during Trump’s term. Biden is not solely responsible for this mess.
What to do? Is there a place for UN peace keeping ‘blue-helmets’ to secure exit for any refugees? I’ve not heard that mentioned…
I’d say let those that want out get out and facilitate it and welcome those refugees throughout and across the world. And let those that want to stay have their Islamic state.
Further military and covert ‘intelligence’ operations are never going to fix what is essentially a crisis that originated in colonial histories and is still being kept alive by ignorant delusions of political omnipotence and exceptionalism.
Feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong – I’m always happy to be better informed.
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