What Did Bin Laden Family in Us Do After 9/11

March 03, 2022 Post a Comment

President George W. Bush addresses soldiers in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in November 2001, after the United states of america invaded Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. Bush-league warned of the mission's difficulty, only few in the administration anticipated the long war alee.

The history of The states intervention in Afghanistan, from the Cold War to 9/11

How American meddling shaped life in Afghanistan.

By Aug 21, 2021, viii:00am EDT

The Usa' decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan closes a 20-twelvemonth affiliate betwixt the two countries. But US intervention in Afghanistan far predates the 21st century, stretching back decades.

In the weeks and months ahead, at that place are going to be a lot of questions almost what's side by side for Afghanistan, including how the US approaches it. But contemplating what happens going forward also ways looking at the past, including the ways American interest has shaped Afghan politics and life for more than than l years.

During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union sought to gain footholds in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, outset through infrastructure investments and then military machine intervention. In one case they withdrew in the tardily 1980s, the land entered a civil war — a backdrop to the ascent of the Taliban. And while the U.s.a. took a back seat in Afghanistan during much of the '90s, it invaded after the 9/xi terrorist attacks in 2001 and undertook a two-decade projection for which the underlying mission would evolve. At present President Joe Biden has finally pulled American troops out of Afghanistan, but the two nations are still intertwined.

Russian soldiers sitting on a tank in the Hindu Kush mountains during the invasion of Afghanistan in 1980.

The states soldiers baby-sit a Marine base at Kandahar International Drome in 2001.

I recently spoke with Ali A. Olomi, a historian of the Centre East and Islam at Penn Land Abington, about the long, storied history of Usa meddling in Afghanistan and how information technology has shaped the country and people'due south lives there. Olomi, who is the host of the podcast Head on History, discussed the US's funding of some factions of the mujahedeen, or Afghan guerrilla fighters, during the 1970s and '80s; America's rolling reasoning for its interest in Afghanistan mail service-2001; and whether the US, even without soldiers present, is actually gone.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

A lot of people appointment US intervention in Afghanistan to 2001. Merely is that the right place to start?

The actuality is that the United States was involved all the fashion back in the 1950s. Afghanistan was going through a serial of modernizing projects, and it attempted to really build into a modernistic nation-state under two subsequent leaders: showtime, King Zahir Shah, and then followed by his cousin who overthrew him, President Mohammad Daoud Khan. And it was right in the midst of the Cold War.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, namely through infrastructure building. The Soviet Union actually built what's known as the Salang Tunnel, which connected northern Afghanistan to Kabul. The United States was involved in what was known equally the Helmand Valley project, which was an irrigation projection and agricultural projection about edifice dams in southern Afghanistan. It had been funneling a meaning amount of money from the '50s and '60s on.

There was a lot of money coming from both of these large, great powers in Afghanistan. And that really sets the stage for what eventually becomes a more than formal military human relationship to the state.

And where does the war machine relationship start? The 1970s?

Yes. In the '70s, the The states is at first quite hesitant to back up any type of armed forces expansion.

Daoud Khan starts to ally himself more than and more with the Soviet Union. He tries to establish a friendly relationship. He has a very famous phrase that he uses: "I experience happiest when I light my American cigarette with Soviet matches." That really speaks to his attempt to leverage his really weird, uncomfortable Cold State of war relationship. Simply his allying with the Soviet Matrimony makes the The states very, very nervous.

Things become even worse in 1978, when Daoud Khan is formally overthrown in what'due south known equally the Saur Revolution and a Marxist-Leninist government is established, the Democratic Commonwealth of Afghanistan. Here, the United States starts to slowly funnel money toward some resistance groups. It doesn't have a unified policy. It's not like, okay, we need to starting time a resistance motion to overthrow this communist regime. It has a little bit of a muddled approach.

There were some in the [US] government, like former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was very interested in getting involved. There were other military machine leaders that idea if nosotros become involved, that's going to force the Soviet Union to get involved. And then they have a bit of a mixed purse approach. Just they exercise start to agitate quite early on in 1978, and in 1979, they are funneling money to Pakistan's intelligence services, who are and then funneling it into the hands of the resistance. That does eventually induce a Soviet invasion.

The US was really involved a fiddling before the Soviets invaded. Once they got invaded, then the United States throws its full backing. It goes from meddling and funneling and agitating to outright proverb, "Okay, we demand to support the mujahedeen," and allying themselves with the anti-communist resistance motion.

In the Cold War, the US backs Afghan reactionaries to fight a Soviet-friendly regime

Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, and so prime number minister of Afghanistan (far right), seen with Soviet Government minister of Defence force Marshal Nikolai Bulganin in Kabul on Dec xvi, 1955. These Soviet ties brought a irksome escalation of disharmonize with the US in the Cold War.

And just to be clear, what is the mujahedeen?

The mujahedeen is a sort of resistance movement that emerges in response to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The People's Democratic Republic party is wildly, wildly repressive, which equally a issue produces a skilful bargain of resistance.

Now, we should note that information technology's also a really progressive authorities. This is a government that expands women's rights, it extends literacy, it builds agronomical reforms in the economic system. But at the same fourth dimension, they're also disappearing people. There are people who are like, hey, I tin finally notice a job, and other people who are like, wait a infinitesimal, we have health care. Only if you lot spoke up confronting the government, there were chances that you'd be thrown in jail, arrested, disappeared. As a issue of that repressive component, there were pockets of resistance that have been growing.

The mujahedeen are non a single grouping. We frequently talk about the mujahedeen as one group, but [they were] actually four different kinds of groups that roughly align as resisting this new oppressive, repressive government.

The starting time is the more organized. There is the Islamist faction, led past people similar Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is trained in the sort of jihadist ideology; he'd like to see an Islamic government. He'southward a really regressive, retrograde, reactionary figure. In fact, fifty-fifty before the Soviet invasion, he carried out a series of horrific acid attacks against women.

This is a very unsavory graphic symbol. And he happens to be one of the more organized groups, allied with the more than moderate Ahmad Shah Massoud, who's not conveying out acrid attacks. He'southward non regressive. He is much more interested in a sort of egalitarian vision of an Islamic republic, ane with representative rather than this kind of autocratic rule. And notwithstanding despite these ideological differences, these 2 people ally themselves or at least align in opposition to communist government.

Mujahedeen at a edge camp almost Wanna, Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, in 1984.

At that place'due south besides leftists as office of the mujahedeen; Maoists and leftists who have been disaffected past this government, who felt that they weren't being heard or being repressed. And the mujahedeen is also made up of the Communist Party's ain military commanders, a group of young military commanders who defect from the regime.

Then the fourth and terminal group are just ordinary people — people that just pick upwardly arms and fight and resist. They don't have an ideology. They don't accept any particular vision of what the government is supposed to look similar or what the authorities is supposed to do. They just realize that, wait a minute, this government is oppressive, or they're changing things in a mode that they're not happy with, and they resist. This movement is a piffling slower. Once the Soviets invade, this group of ordinary people volition grow dramatically, and this is the majority of the mujahedeen.

We're talking about a coalition of groups with different aims, different goals that just marshal when the Soviets are in that location. Once the Soviets are gone, this group volition turn amid itself and nosotros will see the civil war of the '90s.

What was the United states's involvement with those different groups?

The Us interest is uneven. The US isn't simply funding mujahedeen. At that place'due south an oversimplification that happens sometimes in this discourse, partly as a result of the U.s.'due south own claims. Brzezinski very proudly pats himself on the back and says, "We created the mujahedeen." Just he says this after the fact. In reality, when we look at the archives, that's not true. [The The states] exploits the mujahedeen. They definitely use the mujahedeen to their advantage. And they exercise funnel money through Pakistan'south Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). But that money is more often than not going into the hands of the more organized groups of the mujahedeen.

Ordinary people aren't receiving training from the CIA or Pakistan'south ISI. They're just ordinary people who have guns in their houses, selection upwardly their guns, and fight. But unfortunately, the more organized groups are those reactionary elements. It's people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is an Islamist who is quite dangerous, who does receive funds, who does receive some grade of training.

You even accept CIA documents that mutter that the Afghans are very hard to train because they operate on a different sense of time, that they won't organize in the same way that the US military will organize. Anyone who'due south familiar with Middle Eastern civilisation, Primal Asian culture, or Indian culture knows that if you lot go to a wedding ceremony that says information technology starts at 7 pm, it'll start at 9 pm. There's a like experience with the mujahedeen: They tell mujahedeen, hey, we're going to get-go at 0800, and they'll do it on their ain fourth dimension.

Simply it is to these more reactionary elements that the US allies itself. And, in fact, information technology makes some really horrific blunders. Ane of the things that the US ends up doing is that it pressures Arab republic of egypt to release a group of Islamists that it had arrested. And one of the Islamists that was arrested in Egypt and then is released is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who happens to be the 2d-in-command of al-Qaeda.

The U.s. inadvertently imports him — and we don't accept the full film, so it could very easily have been intentional as an attempt to eternalize the mujahedeen by bringing in foreign fighters. But they start to bring in what are known as the Arab Afghans, or the Arab mujahedeen, and these are people from Arab republic of egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, these are people from Yemen, people from Saudi Arabia, who then go along to form al-Qaeda.

There is a relationship hither in which the US, through funneling money to ISI, Islamic republic of pakistan's intelligence services, either inadvertently or intentionally ends up funding a grouping of foreign fighters who marry with the more than organized elements of the mujahedeen. The issue of that will be that once the Us and the Soviet Wedlock withdraw their influence, Afghanistan falls into a ceremonious war. And in that civil state of war, both al-Qaeda volition be built-in and the Taliban.

The unintended consequence of that meddling is chaos. And that chaos will give us al-Qaeda and the Taliban, both of whom have American grooming manuals, some American funds, and American guns, all that they received funneled through Pakistan's ISI. And now the CIA says, "Oops. Nosotros've only allowed these groups to take class considering we took our eye off of Afghanistan."

Later on the Cold War, a civil war brings the Taliban to power

A woman sits before ruined buildings. — The ruins of buildings destroyed by Soviet attacks and the Afghan civil war.

Once the Soviet Union withdraws, and there'south a civil state of war in Afghanistan, is the The states still present during that time? Like, during the '90s?

The Soviet Union and the U.s. both sign an understanding, or at least, they are the guarantors of this agreement known as the Geneva Accords. It's technically between Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Pakistan. Just the United States agrees that nosotros will no longer fund the mujahedeen, or at least that i group of the mujahedeen, and the Soviet Wedlock agrees that they volition withdraw. The Soviet Marriage does formally withdraw. It leaves no real support for its former allies, the government. And the United States continues to funnel some money, merely information technology mostly turns away.

The event is that within 3 years, the government collapses and the civil war emerges between these old and mujahedeen factions, who, again, like I mentioned, are completely different with very different visions. It's in that moment that the U.s.a. is not involved, the Soviet Marriage's not involved. In fact, the onetime Soviet Union ambassador will actually blast the The states and the Soviet Union and say, "Nosotros meddled in Afghanistan, and then we stopped paying attending."

It is hidden in that language of "stopped paying attending" that really speaks to what ends up happening. A ability vacuum is created, and into that vacuum volition pace the civil war. From that civil war will be born the Taliban who emerged every bit a completely new actor. They're the 2d generation that grew upwards in refugee camps in Pakistan — Afghans were born in refugee camps, raised in refugee camps. They arrived fresh onto the scene. They intervene into this civil war, are able to exploit it, and therefore establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996-'97.

The US invades afterwards 9/11, without articulate goals. The Taliban await out the long war.

Osama bin Laden attends a news conference in Khost, Afghanistan, in 1998. Just before the 2001 US invasion, Taliban offered to give upward Osama bin Laden.

How long were the Taliban in command? Until 2001?

The Taliban exerts its authority through near of Afghanistan, non all of it. Unlike at present, where they seem to have extended their control to everywhere other than the Panjshir Valley. In the '90s, they only controlled from Kandahar to Kabul, both Herat and the North did resist quite a bit.

Herat will somewhen fall, but the North — led again by the Panjshir Valley, and Ahmad Shah Massoud and what would eventually become known as the United Front or the Northern Alliance — they volition have their own autonomous territory that the Taliban will never conquer. So Transitional islamic state of afghanistan will kind of exist split betwixt the Northern Alliance in the N and the Taliban, who found the Islamic Emirate. And just a few countries will recognize the Taliban every bit the legitimate authorities of Afghanistan — Pakistan, Kingdom of saudi arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. But they fall in 2001, relatively chop-chop.

And that's after the US invades?

The U.s. starts, really, through a bombing campaign, and the Taliban actually collapses there. The Taliban doesn't accept air support, there'southward no Taliban air force. So they actually pursued peace quite early.

In Oct 2001, they offer to mitt over Osama bin Laden in render for an end to the bombing campaign. The Bush administration, at the time, didn't have it, and a formal invasion is undertaken. The offer was rejected because the Taliban wanted to hand him over to a third party and for a trial. The US likewise viewed their mission as "catastrophe a safe haven for terror," so invasion was explicitly part of the plans.

The Taliban just completely vanish and become a small insurgency group that lives by and large in mountains. Some of them effort to escape into hiding in Pakistan, some of them end upward in pockets in Kandahar, some of them are in safe houses. But they're no longer a sort of organized, unified group. They're no longer in government.

They're only pockets of insurgency allied with al-Qaeda. They won't really emerge until the mid-2010s, where they are much more organized and seem to have received more coin than they ever had. There's some estimates that we're looking at billions of dollars. Somehow, in the process, they were defeated, they went away and hid and kind of congenital a spate of an economical base through extortion and drug trafficking. They were reorganized in the 2010s and emerged every bit over again a sort of unified political motility.

To back upward a bit, and I feel odd asking this, but why did the Usa even become to Afghanistan in 2001? Because of al-Qaeda? Because of bin Laden? I feel like we all sort of know this and we don't.

Ostensibly, the reason was, beginning, some form of justice against Osama bin Laden, some class of revenge, that nosotros demand to go him for what he did, for nine/11. Simply there was also a language of liberation that was woven into it. And that was more of an add-on, a post-hoc, after-the-fact justification. The main justification was to go after Osama bin Laden. In one case the Taliban collapses, and they say, "Hey, we'll hand over Osama bin Laden," a sort of new justification had to be invented. And that was, nosotros demand to nation-build, we demand to build Afghanistan up.

What we tin meet of the internal discussions betwixt former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and onetime Vice President Cheney and quondam President George West. Bush, the argument or justification for why they want to nation-build is, one, so that they can create a pro-American government, a foothold in the region, and therefore are able to extend American bases. And two, and then that they can therefore create a nation-state that'south favorable to the United States and would not allow terror bases to e'er take root at that place again.

President Bush speaks with reporters, flanked by Secretarial assistant of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and sometime Secretary of Country Colin Powell. Competing motives in the Bush-league assistants derailed the Us mission in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.

The justification was that it was to prevent future attacks, but it was too about extending American military bases and allowing more bases to be built there and therefore extending American military might.

Part of the force of the American military has ever been the ability to deploy quickly. If you have to deploy from the United States, that's going to take time. This is i of the reasons we have aircraft carriers in various parts of the ocean; it's why we build the bases in places like Djibouti. And the United States thinks in those terms. Then the ability to build bases is a very important aspect of invading Afghanistan — build American bases, brand an American-friendly authorities, or at least permit it to take root in that location.

Technically, the The states could have accepted the surrender, accustomed Osama bin Laden, and that'south it. Justice is served, right? Put Osama bin Laden on trial or execute him or whatever. Merely going farther past invading was an attempt to extend American influence in that region.

That's where the U.s. got involved in, I think, a chip of a quagmire, because not only did it not know how to build the infrastructure, or the democratic institutions, just more than importantly, it flooded Transitional islamic state of afghanistan with money that oftentimes went into the hands of military contractors and advisers and all these different segments — even warlords — who all got really rich off of American dollars.

Afghan society never really got whatsoever of those benefits. The economical disparity was still real. There was no real social mobility; jobs were incredibly difficult to come past. And then, yep, yous develop Kabul with new skyscrapers, and perchance you have a couple KFCs in that location, but the rural parts of Afghanistan remain neglected. And that, in many means, is the bang-up failure of the United states' invasion.

A failed rebuilding, and the The states withdraws again. But is this the end?

Maryam Durani works at radio station in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in May 2021. Many women in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan fear a return of the Taliban's oppressive policies.

How has the United States' involvement in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan shaped life for the people at that place?

I retrieve that in one instance, it did offer an opportunity to call up of the future in a dissimilar style. There was a sense of hopelessness with the Taliban. I think mail service-2001, there is a peachy sense of energy and excitement and opportunity that does open up when nosotros're talking near people who are thinking about becoming engineers or journalists or going into authorities. So in that location is a cracking activity of optimism and an try to actually reform society.

Also, information technology is coupled with a very real contradiction of that, that the United States was a major assaulter nonetheless. The United States wasn't merely in Afghanistan, it was carrying out a droning campaign. So young Afghans would grow up with the experience of, okay, I can go to school today, something I may non have been able to do under the Taliban. But that besides means that if the skies are blue, I might get droned.

So they had to live in this really precarious, frustrated environment where, yes, there was some really great progress, some actually great strides, things opening up. Only simultaneously, they were recognizing and acknowledging the fact that the United states of america was nonetheless at war, carrying out bombing campaigns. The government that was ready was precarious, at all-time, decadent at worst. And then there was a real complicated feeling.

I speak to Afghans, I accept family unit in that location, and they'll tell you lot that in that location'southward a lot of dandy and beautiful things, jobs and opportunities. Merely at that place's also the real sense that an American tank is simply going to ringlet downward your street, that if you, unfortunately, movement in a sure mode, nervous troops are going to burn on you lot because they remember you have a bomb, they think that you lot are part of al-Qaeda.

That anxiety was real. Afghans felt occupied, while simultaneously besides seeing that in that location were these different changes in society, that there was a transformation taking place. And that tension was very real for them — the feel of occupation and the experience of modify and transformation.

How do you describe the situation now? I mean, I don't know how to describe the situation at present.

Nobody does; you're not alone. Experts don't know how to draw this state of affairs. It's a bizarre moment. We don't know what the formal policy toward Afghanistan will exist. There is plain a military withdrawal, but volition the United States normalize the human relationship with the Taliban? Will the former enemies all of a sudden go a government?

Nosotros know that they're thinking of blocking the money, and so there's that element of it. But what happens if almost of the countries in the world recognize the Taliban as the rightful leaders of Afghanistan, even if Afghans themselves don't? The bulk of Afghans despise the Taliban; they're universally hated beyond indigenous groups and political spectrums. Simply what happens with the de facto relationship that's going to be? The U.s.a. allied itself with all sorts of unsavory governments — Saudi arabia, right? What is that relationship going to exist? Nobody knows.

Taliban fighters patrol the streets of Kabul on August nineteen.

Afghan nationals sit within a US armed services aircraft to leave Transitional islamic state of afghanistan on August 19. The evacuation process has been chaotic, with the U.s.a. declining to predict the Taliban'south quick capture of Kabul.

It seems that the military engagement, at to the lowest degree in terms of troops, is going to cease, but it doesn't necessarily mean that droning is going to end. So the Afghan experience of death from above is going to go on. In fact, President Joe Biden made it very openly clear that he will continue to utilise America'southward Air Force to "dethrone the terrorists," which is a code for drone warfare. The continuation of drones in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan means that while US troops might be gone, U.s. presence might be gone, the threat of United states of america military is still at that place.

We also don't know what the Usa'due south commitments are to ordinary Afghans. Will they at present exist willing to accept more refugees? The answer is yes, then far, but there's no real talk almost actually raising the cap of dealing with things like the visa procedure, which is a complete quagmire, a labyrinthine procedure that is impossible to navigate. An Afghan who's been cut off from the internet, how are they supposed to navigate that procedure?

In that location are no answers, but questions that have been raised by what is going on. In that location's also the real anxiety that Afghanistan may fall into an outright civil war within a thing of years. What happens in that location? Practise we stand by and watch a humanitarian crisis unfold? I think the universal feeling among nigh Afghans — and I should be careful not to speak for every Afghan — but there is a sort of acceptance that Us withdrawal is a adept thing. Simply what is the Usa going to practise later is a crucial question that needs to be answered. And it is non being answered yet.

cumminsplaing1944.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.vox.com/world/22634008/us-troops-afghanistan-cold-war-bush-bin-laden

Cummins Plaing1944