[peisistratos]

> You mean other than Bin Laden being there, of course. The Taliban provided shelter to a guy who committed a terrorist attack on the US, and refused to give him up. We would never have gone in otherwise.

The US was involved in large scale operations in the 1970s and 1980s to destabilize the secular Afghan government. The US bankrolled and armed bin Laden, and much of what would become the Taliban, in their jihad against Afghanistan's then secular government.

[vastoi]

Where can I find more information about the history of the region? I know so little.

[jki275]

See the link I posted above. Lots of history there. Charlie Wilson's war also has a lot about the US influence operations against the Soviet Union.

[jki275]

No.

The US was involved in operations to destabilize the USSR government that invaded and took over Afghanistan, that the USSR was using to destabilize the entire region in the effort to spread communism across the globe.

And no, the US did not bankroll and arm Bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, or the Taliban. The Taliban has essentially nothing to do with the Mujahideen that we worked with against the USSR, popular reporting over the last few years notwithstanding. The Mujahideen were almost exclusively Afghan tribes, the Taliban were interlopers who took over from Pakistan in the years after the USSR was driven out.

In fact, the Mujahideen continued to fight the Taliban until the US invaded in October 2001 and reestablished connections with the Northern Alliance in the initial effort to drive the Taliban out.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/who...