Arming Rebels

With the recent upheaval in Libya and the United States government’s decision to participate in a coalition to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and make select bombing raids aimed to help Libyan rebels, many questions have arisen about aiding rebels. These questions often reference American aid in Afghanistan prior to September 11^th, 2001. Some people claim that the United States actually funded the Taliban, contributing to their rise. To what extent did US involvement in Afghanistan in the 20^th century contribute to the rise of the Taliban? Though the movement began in universities build by Americans decades earlier and the US funded Afghanistan’s mujahidin, the US government never directly funded the Taliban, though its actions in the region may have contributed to the Taliban’s rise.

In the 1950’s, the Soviet Union was funding large infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, hoping to curry favor with the government and people in the fight to spread communism. The US quickly realized the Soviet Union’s intentions and fought back by drastically increasing the amount of aid they gave to Afghanistan. A large portion of this aid came in the form of education. The US government sent professors from top American schools to new universities in Afghanistan as consultants to reform the educational system. Though the US went in with intentions of promoting freedom and democracy, their plans backfired forty years later.

The Taliban movement began among university students as dissatisfaction with the mujahidin government. The US had funded several groups of the mujahidin during the Soviet Invasion in hopes that the “holy warriors” would drive out the Russians. At the end of the decade, the Americans’ plan worked in that the Soviets withdrew all troops from Afghanistan. Yet the “coalition government” formed by tenuous alliances between mujahidin leaders never fully functioned. The word “Taliban” comes from Pashtun for “student.” The Taliban were originally a group of radicalized students, many of whom came from universities built in Afghanistan by the Americans, who wanted a working government and a secure population.

In this way, American funding created an intellectual elite who defied American principles. The Taliban did consolidate power for a centralized government, but they also instituted a reign of terror with their brutality.

Though the US did not directly fund the Taliban in the 1990’s, it did arm the mujahidin in the later 1980’s. Some people cite the mujahidin as the original source for the Taliban, interpreting this relationship as the US promoting the rise of the Taliban would be wrong. One of the factions of the mujahidin, funded by the US during the Soviet invasion, did morph into the Taliban in the early 1990’s—the two groups shared some leaders, members, and ideologies. And the Taliban gained ground quickly, seizing control of Afghanistan in just a few years. Yet one of their biggest rivals was another former mujahidin group, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, Afghan hero idolized for fighting against the Soviets and later against the Taliban.

Thus any claim that US funding of the mujahidin was essentially funding the Taliban can be countered with the fact that US funding of the mujahidin was also funding those who fought against the Taliban. Besides, most of this funding had stopped after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

An American think-tank official said of Libya, “you gotta go with the rebels you got.” Whether he is right or wrong in this case, United States aid in Afghanistan did not lead directly to the rise of the Taliban. Of course, however, Libya is a different situation altogether.