The National Security Archive has a large document dump on U.S.-Taliban relations and intelligence reports from the Clinton administration. It’s worth wading through if you want to learn more about the challenges we’re facing right now in Afghanistan. This excerpt is from the end:
As a collection, the documents reproduced here provide an interesting illustration of the complexity of dealing with a repugnant political regime. U.S. State Department officials describe Taliban social policies as abominable; yet they find themselves engaged in regular diplomatic contact and even supporting potential commercial deals. While the State Department is studying reports of growing domestic opposition to the Taliban (prompting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to write in the margins of one memo, "This is encouraging"), UNOCAL (the Union Oil Company of California) is sponsoring a Taliban delegation on a tour of the United States in hopes of getting permission to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. One of the visitors, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban Minister of Education and Minister of Information and Culture, is described as a "key figure in the Taliban’s ideological projects," and an individual even more "extreme on social issues than most Taliban." The State Department confesses U.S. policy "will inevitably be messy and the policy we follow will be ridden with inner tensions, as we simultaneously engage with the Taliban and criticize their abuses."
A more updated version might read, “U.S. policy will inevitably be messy and the policy we follow will be ridden with inner tensions as we simultaneously fight and kill the Taliban and criticize the Karzai regime’s abuses.”
Interesting what happened to Haji Bashir,who is mentioned in doc14.
Oops, I should have said doc08.
(MSNBC) – In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Haji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year.
Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.
CIA stinger missile buy-back and Haji Bashir [pdf file]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Nice catch, Oui.
Ok, this is the weirdest outcome is seen so far for these pre-9/11 Afghan warlords.
Poor Man trivia. Off topic, I know. But relevant to my interests.
Just incomprehensible to sort anything out. What are we doing there?
While totally stressed, the one benefit of all of this, and I mean ONE, is that our armed forces are more hardened, experienced and effective than ever before.
Still pissing in the wind on this one, but VERY EFFECTIVELY..
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US did not seriously respond and the Saudi Government had relaxed insistence Osama Bin Laden be brought to Sharia court of law.
“A Pakistani MFA official told PolOff that this announcement signalled the Taliban’s growing intransigence on the Bin Laden issue. He attribted the hardening of the Taliban’s position to press reports that the Saudi Interior Minister [Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz al Saud] has exonerated Bin Laden for the involvement in the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings, as well as Taliban frustration that the U.S. has not provided them any evidence for their purported inquiry.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Evidence? of the Bogey Man? Really?