No Raymond, the US did not support Al-Qaida during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, they supported the forces aligned with Ahmad Massoud, in the Northern Alliance, who was murdered just a day or so prior to 9/11. The Taliban is comprised mostly of those whom Massoud was fighting with, but politically not aligned. But its all moot, seeing how it all turned out, and the US administration is prepared to do the same all over again and expect different results.
“No Raymond, the US did not support Al-Qaida during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, they supported the forces aligned with Ahmad Massoud, in the Northern Alliance, who was murdered just a day or so prior to 9/11.”
As far as I know, this is incorrect. Ahmad Shah Massoud was one of the most valiant leaders of the resistance at the time, alongside Abdul Haq. Both men were staunchly opposed to the idea of aligning themselves politically with non-Afghan foreigners meddling in what they perceived to be internal affairs in Afghanistan. In fact, this was about to cost them dearly in the end. It has been reported for instance that several times, when Massoud’s military stocks of ammunition etc. began running dangerously low, American foreign policy neglected to address this issue, simply because the CIA would not deal with Afghan leaders who wouldn’t politically align themselves with the council of commanders subsidized by them. This council of representatives was made up of members of the Haqqani network and members of other Wahhabi-backed factions, like Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,…etc, all of them linked with al Qaeda in a way, or at least connected to Muslim Brotherhood affiliates.
Both Massoud and Abdul Haq received scant military support, plus Massoud had found more often than not that when Americans tried to funnel weapons and ammo from Pakistan to Afghanistan, the lion’s share of it was funneled (by the ISI) to this council’s Saudi backed factions before these supplies finally reached them.
This conveys a particular stupidity which American foreign policy seems to be unable to distance itself from: you cannot subsidize vehemently anti-infidel and Anti-American Muslim forces, and simply assume that these people will turn into genuine friends later. You cannot buy the loyalty of Muslims, that is out of the question: at one stage you pay them off, and later on they WILL turn against you and you’ll have to designate them as terrorist groups, which is too little too late !
Raymond Ibrahim: “To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the chronic shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.”
I am concluding that this analysis is correct, corroborated by my reading of Peter Tomsen’s “The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers” a few months ago.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Wars-Afghanistan-Messianic-Terrorism/dp/B00BRA75PK/ref=pd_sim_b_5