West's Post-1979 Afghan Misadventure Cast Long Shadow
Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow on Facebook W hen the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the West mobilised massive military and monetary support for the Afghan resistance to drive the Soviets out of the country. A significant chunk of the funds pumped in was spent on school textbooks that justified violence in the name of religion with a short-term goal of drawing recruits for the anti-Soviet resistance. The textbooks featured weapons and soldiers and served as the core curriculum in Afghan schools until the US invaded Afghanistan in 2011 to oust the Taliban from power for harbouring the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban also continued the use of the books during its six-year rule from 1996 to 2001 before the Americans replaced the primers in the noughties but not before, as The Washington Post noted, steeping ‘a generation in violence’. Why Taliban Need To Be Called Out Forcefully The Soviets were defeated in the strategically important country in less than a decade