I'm thinking it is because Mujahadeen under Osama Bin Laden defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan with Stinger type hand held missiles. This caused (among other things) the bankruptcy of the old Soviet Union. The missiles were supplied by the U.S. Congress. So, being for the Taliban is revenge (financially and through blood) on the U.S. for ending the Soviet Union through "Charlie Wilson's War" in the 1980s which ended the Soviet Union completely by 1991.
begin quote from:
More
than 15 years into America’s war in Afghanistan, the Russian government
is openly advocating on behalf of the Taliban. Last week, Moscow hosted
Chinese and Pakistani emissaries to discuss the war. Tellingly, no
Afghan …
Stringer/Reuters
MY ENEMY’S ENEMY
Russia’s New Favorite Jihadis: The Taliban
In
its latest ploy to undermine NATO, Russia is urging cooperation with
the Afghan extremists even as their ties to al Qaeda grow deep.
01.02.17 9:00 PM ET
More than 15 years into America’s war in Afghanistan, the Russian government is openly advocating on behalf of the Taliban.
Last
week, Moscow hosted Chinese and Pakistani emissaries to discuss the
war. Tellingly, no Afghan officials were invited. However, the trio of
nations urged the world to be “flexible” in dealing with the Taliban,
which remains the Afghan government’s most dangerous foe. Russia even
argued that the Taliban is a necessary bulwark in the war against the
so-called Islamic State.
For its part, the American military
sees Moscow’s embrace of the Taliban as yet another move intended to
undermine NATO, which fights the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic
State every day.
After Moscow’s conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spoke with reporters and noted that
“the three countries expressed particular concern about the rising
activity in the country of extremist groups, including the Afghan branch
of IS [the Islamic State, or ISIS].”
According to Reuters, Zakharova added
that China, Pakistan, and Russia agreed upon a “flexible approach to
remove certain [Taliban] figures from [United Nations] sanctions lists
as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the
Taliban movement.”
The Taliban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, quickly praised the “Moscow tripartite” in a statement posted online on Dec. 29.
“It is joyous to see that the
regional countries have also understood that the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan is a political and military force,” Muhammad Sohail Shaheen,
a spokesman for the group’s political office, said in the statement.
“The proposal forwarded in the Moscow tripartite of delisting members of
the Islamic Emirate is a positive step forward in bringing peace and
security to Afghanistan.”
Of
course, the Taliban isn’t interested in “peace and security.” The
jihadist group wants to win the Afghan war and it is using negotiations
with regional and international powers to improve its standing. The
Taliban has long manipulated “peace” negotiations with the U.S. and
Western powers as a pretext for undoing international sanctions that
limit the ability of its senior figures to travel abroad for lucrative
fundraising and other purposes, even while offering no serious gestures
toward peace.
The Obama administration has
repeatedly tried, and failed, to open the door to peace. In May 2014,
the U.S. transferred five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo to
Qatar. Ostensibly, the “Taliban Five” were traded for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl,
an American who reportedly deserted his fellow soldiers and was then
held by the Taliban and its jihadist allies. But the Obama
administration also hoped that the exchange would be a so-called
confidence-building measure and lead to more substantive negotiations.
The Taliban’s leaders never agreed to any such discussions. They simply
wanted their comrades, at least two of whom are suspected of committing war crimes, freed from Guantanamo.
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Regardless,
Russia is now enabling the Taliban’s disingenuous diplomacy by
pretending that ISIS is the more worrisome threat. It’s a game the
Russians have been playing for more than a year.
In
December 2015, Zamir Kabulov, who serves as Vladimir Putin's special
representative for Afghanistan, went so far as to claim that “the
Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours” when it comes to
fighting ISIS head Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s loyalists. Kabulov even
conceded that Russia and the Taliban have “channels for exchanging
information,” according to The Washington Post.
The American commanders leading the fight in Afghanistan don’t buy Russia’s argument—at all.
During a press briefing on Dec. 2,
General John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support
and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, discussed “the malign influence of
external actors and particularly Pakistan, Russia, and Iran.” Gen.
Nicholson said the U.S. and its allies are “concerned about the external
enablement of the insurgent or terrorist groups inside Afghanistan, in
particular where they enjoy sanctuary or support from outside
governments.” Russia, in particular, “has overtly lent legitimacy to the
Taliban.”
According to Nicholson, the Russian
“narrative” is “that the Taliban are the ones fighting the Islamic
State, not the Afghan government.” While the Taliban does fight its
jihadist rivals in the Islamic State, this is plainly false.
The “Afghan government and the
U.S. counterterrorism effort are the ones achieving the greatest effect
against Islamic State,” Nicholson said. He went on to list the U.S.-led
coalition’s accomplishments over the past year: 500 ISIS fighters
(comprising an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the group’s overall force
structure) were killed or wounded, the organization’s “top 12 leaders”
(including its emir, Hafiz Saeed Khan) were killed, and the group’s
“sanctuary” has been reduced from nine Afghan districts to just three.
“So,
this public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on
fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan
government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents,” Nicholson
concluded. While Nicholson was careful not read too much into Russia’s
motivation for backing the Taliban, he noted “certainly there's a
competition with NATO.”
There’s
no doubt that ISIS’s operations in Afghanistan grew significantly in the
wake of Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration in 2014. However, as Nicholson
correctly pointed out, Baghdadi’s men are not adding to the territory
they control at the moment. Their turf is shrinking. The same cannot be
said for the Taliban, which remains the most significant threat to
Afghanistan’s future. At any given time, the Taliban threatens several provincial capitals. The Taliban also controls dozens of Afghan districts and contests many more. Simply put, the Taliban is a far greater menace inside Afghanistan than Baghdadi’s men.
Regardless, the Russians continue
to press their case. Their argument hinges on the idea that ISIS is a
“global” force to be reckoned with, while the Taliban is just a “local”
nuisance.
Kabulov, Putin’s special envoy to Afghanistan, made this very same claim in a newly-published interview with Anadolu Agency. Kabulov
contends that “the bulk, main leadership, current leadership, and the
majority of Taliban” are now a “local force” as a “result of all these
historical lessons they got in Afghanistan.”
“They gave up the global jihadism idea,” Kabulov adds. “They are upset and regret that they followed Osama bin Laden.”
Someone should tell the Taliban’s media department this.
Earlier this month, the Taliban released a major documentary video, “Bond of Nation with the Mujahideen.”
The video included clips of the Taliban’s most senior leaders rejecting
peace talks and vowing to wage jihad until the end. It also openly
advertised the Taliban’s undying alliance with al Qaeda. At one point,
an image of Osama bin Laden next to Taliban founder Mullah Omar is
displayed on screen. Photos of other al Qaeda and Taliban figures are
mixed together in the same shot.
An audio message from Sheikh Khalid
Batarfi, an al Qaeda veteran stationed in Yemen, is also played during
the video. Batarfi praised the Taliban for protecting bin Laden even
after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings. “Groups of Afghan Mujahideen have
emerged from the land of Afghans that will destroy the biggest idol and
head of kufr of our time, America,” Batarfi threatened.
A narrator added that the
mujahideen in Afghanistan “are the hope of Muslims for reviving back the
honor of the Muslim Ummah [worldwide community of Muslims]!” The Afghan
jihadists are a “hope for taking back the Islamic lands!” and a “hope
for not repeating defeats and tragedies of the last century!”
The Taliban’s message is, therefore, unmistakable: The war in Afghanistan is part of the global jihadist conflict.
All
of this, and more, is in one of the Taliban’s most important media
productions of 2016. There is no hint that the Taliban “regrets” allying
with al Qaeda, or has given “up the global jihadism idea,” as Kabulov
claims. The exact opposite is true.
There is much more to the Taliban-al Qaeda nexus. In August 2015, al Qaeda honcho Ayman al Zawahiri swore allegiance to Mullah Mansour, who was named as Mullah Omar’s successor as the Taliban’s emir. Mansour publicly accepted Zawahiri’s fealty and Zawahiri’s oath was prominently featured on the Taliban’s website. After Mansour was killed earlier this year, Zawahiri pledged his allegiance to Mansour’s replacement, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada. Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders regularly call upon Muslims to support the Taliban and reject the Islamic State’s Afghan branch.
In his interview with Anadolu
Agency, Kabulov concedes that not all of the Taliban has “given up” the
global jihadist “ideas.” He admits that within the Taliban “you can find
very influential groups like the Haqqani network whose ideology is more
radical, closer to Daesh [or ISIS].”
Kabulov
is right that the Haqqanis are committed jihadi ideologues, but he
misses the obvious contradiction in his arguments. Siraj Haqqani, who
leads the Haqqani network, is also one of the Taliban’s top two deputy
leaders. He is the Taliban’s military warlord. Not only is Siraj Haqqani
a “radical” ideologue, as Kabulov mentions in passing, he is also one
of al Qaeda’s most committed allies. Documents recovered in Osama bin
Laden’s compound show that al Qaeda’s men closely cooperate with Siraj Haqqani on the Afghan battlefields.
Kabulov claims that ISIS “operates
much more smartly” than al Qaeda and has “learned from all the mistakes
of al Qaeda.” He says Baghdadi’s enterprise has “brought more advanced
and sophisticated people to design, plan, and [execute] policy.” Once
again, the exact opposite is true.
Al
Qaeda has long known the pitfalls of ISIS’s in-your-face strategy, and
has smartly decided to hide the extent of its influence and operations.
Zawahiri and his lieutenants have also used ISIS’s over-the-top
brutality to market themselves as a more reasonable jihadi alternative.
And both the Taliban and al Qaeda are attempting to build more popular
support for their cause as much of the world remains focused on the
so-called caliphate’s horror show.
Al
Qaeda’s plan has worked so well that the Russians would have us believe
that the Taliban, al Qaeda’s longtime ally, should be viewed as a
prospective partner.
Kabulov
says that Russia is waiting to see how the “new president, [Donald]
Trump, describe[s] his Afghan policy” before determining what course
should be pursued next.
Here’s
one thing the Trump administration should do right away: Make it clear
that the Taliban and al Qaeda remain our enemies in Afghanistan.
Thomas
Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies (FDD) and senior editor of FDD’s Long War Journal.
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