Thread by @FriedrichPieter

1978: Soviets back coup in Afghanistan to topple government.

1979: Soviets invade to squash rebellion against puppet government by the mujahideen. US backs rebels.

1989: Soviets withdraw in failure, leaving a Soviet-backed dictator.

1992: Soviet-backed Afghan dictator is toppled by rebels from the mujahideen.

1994: Taliban rises, consisting mostly of former mujahideen fighters who fought the Soviets in 1980s.

1996: Taliban takes power. A former mujahideen fighter named Osama Bin Laden settles there.

2001: Bin Laden attacks US, which responds by invading Afghanistan after Taliban refuses to hand him over without evidence of charges against him. Taliban then returns to its mujahideen roots as an insurgency.

2021: After 20 years of occupying Afghanistan and attempting to transform it into a democracy with reliable security forces, US withdraws. Within a month, the Taliban sweeps across nearly the whole country.

Thus, 40 years after the US first armed, trained, and funded a group of rebels in Afghanistan, it is now withdrawing as it discovers that its sponsorship of that rebellion was so unintentionally successful that it has now lost to the offspring of the mujahideen it cultivated.

The disaster in Afghanistan began with the Soviets. It originated with a ceaseless wave of foreign meddling that’s lasted nearly half a century. The roots of the Taliban, religious radicalization, poverty and devastation lie in foreign interference in the country.

Afghanistan got independence from the British in 1919. For over half a century, it was generally calm, civilized, and peaceful.

For the past 43 years, the violence has not stopped.

And foreign interference started it.