America+and+Taliban+Relationship

The Taliban and America's Involvement in It's Inception

//Taliban Flag

// **The Taliban** is a Sunni Islamist, predominately Pashtun movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when its leaders were removed from power by Northern Alliance and NATO forces. It has regrouped and since 2004 revived as a strong insurgency movement fighting a guerrilla war against the current government of Afghanistan, allied NATO forces participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It operates in Afghanistan and the Frontier Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

The Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and incessant fighting of **Mujaheddin** warlords.

=  **Mujaheddin**   =

==   The Mujaheddin are a group of Muslims involved in a//[| jihad]//, who are fighting in a war or involved in any other struggle.


 * Mujaheddin in Afghanistan **

The best-known mujahideen, various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups, initially fought against the incumbent pro-Soviet Afghan government during the late 1970s. At the Afghan government's request, the Soviet Union became involved in the war. The mujahideen insurgency then fought against the Soviet and Afghan government troops during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union pulled out of the conflict in the late 1980s the mujahideen fought each other in the subsequent Afghan Civil War.

//The areas where the different mujahideen parties operated in 1985.//

** U.S. Involvement **

=Operation Cyclone= Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. Operation Cyclone is one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; funding began with $20-30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.

On July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December and installation of a more pro-Soviet president, Babrak Karmal, Carter announced, "The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War".

The program relied heavily on using the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as an intermediary for funds distribution, passing of weapons, military training and financial support to Afghan resistance groups. Along with funding from similar programs from Britain's MI6 and SAS, Saudi Arabia, and the People's Republic of China, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents between 1978 and 1992. They encouraged the volunteers from the Arab states to join the Afghan resistance in its struggle against the Soviet troops based in Afghanistan.

=The End of The Soviet War in Afghanistan and the Consequences of U.S. Aid= Once the Soviets withdrew American interests in Afghanistan also halted. The US decided not to help with reconstruction of the country and instead the US handed over the interests of the country to its allies: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan quickly took advantage of their new charitable opportunity and forged relations with warlords and later the Taliban to secure trade interests and routes. From wiping out the country's trees through logging practices, which has destroyed all but 2% of forest cover country-wide, to substantial uprooting of wild pistachio trees for the exportation of their roots for therapeutic uses, to opium agriculture, the past ten years have formed permanent ecological and agrarian destruction that Afghanistan may never recover from. == //Soviet troops withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988.//

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