The US is moving to reclaim the Bagram airbase from the Taliban after losing it during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Donald Trump announced.
“We’re trying to get it back, by the way,” Mr Trump told reporters during a joint press conference with Sir Keir Starmer in Aylesbury on Thursday.
The Bagram base was the largest operated by the US in Afghanistan and is strategically important in countering China’s growing influence in the region.
Mr Trump suggested that he was negotiating with the Taliban to retake ownership, adding: “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back.”
The Taliban were an indigenous rabble of fanatical seminary students. The Pakistani military dictator Zia and the Pakistani intelligence agency (the ISI) started throwing money (some CIA-derived, much more from the Saudis and Gulfies) at the Taliban, setting up training camps for them in Pakistan, enabling them to grow as a militia and a political force. Most of this growth was in the late phases of the expulsion of the Russians and their puppet government, and more so during the social upheavals that followed.
Al-Qaida had a more direct muj lineage. Binladen got his start as a bagman delivering Saudi money to the mujahideen. But Al-Qaida was a multinational organizaion, not rooted in Afghan society. The Taliban shared Sunni fundamentalist fanaticism with AQ, but in a Pushtu cultural context. For example, they turned a blind eye to such traditional Pushtu practices as buggering pubescent boys. The Taliban have also gone to great lengths to brutally oppress and sometimes murder people from other ethnic and religious groups within Afghanistan.
After the end of the Russian occupation, the main successor groups to the mujahideen were the various warlord-led militias that later formed the Northern Alliance. The Taliban fought against them.
So, while the CIA blowback narrative is partially true, the Pakistani meddling explanation is closer to the truth.
Your not wrong is the Pakistani interference but that doesn’t remotely change the fact that the mujahedeen whos direct successors were funded by America, bin laden as you say was a middle man between Saudi and and America for money yet to claim it’s more due to Pakistan? Every lead goes back to America and American funding and American ideology, Pakistans funding of Afghani extremist is in line with us doctrine for the region even when Afghanistan had a democratic leader and a functional military it chose not to support them and instead radicals from the countryside
But you are absolutely right about Saudis funding extremism, wanna guess who propped up the tiny little emirate of Saud into controlling most of the Arabian peninsula? Or how the saud leadership who funded this were directly couped in by America against the former Saudi leader? As a former Muslim I’m fully aware of how evil the Arabian peninsula states are and how fucked Pakistan became under Zia al huq, but that doesn’t even remotely change the fact that the leader of all of this was still America and it’s idealistic Monroe doctrine