No, America Didn’t Create the Taliban, and It’s Not Responsible for Afghanistan’s Pre-2001 Woes

In the wake of the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, reflection has turned to America’s role in the Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted from 1979 to 1989. The widespread story about this war is that the CIA provided arms and other forms of support to anti-Communist jihadist rebels fighting the Soviets and their Afghan allies—and thereby drawing the Kremlin into a costly protracted conflict it couldn’t win. According to this version of events, the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahidin were an earlier form of the Taliban, who would—in a supposed tragic irony—go on to attack America and engage Washington in a costly, protracted conflict of its own. Though satisfying to a certain kind of anti-imperialist, writes Emran Feroz, this story gets much wrong: