Afghanistan: a Tale of never ending Tragedy -- by Prof. John Ryan

It must be recalled that the mujahedeen had been initially created by the CIA to fight the USSR. They were later defeated by the Taliban and were confined to about 10 percent of the country in the north. But in 2001 they were recruited by the USA as allies, and were renamed “the Northern Alliance,” and so they came back in the wake of US bombing to take over the country. But these people are basically the same as the Taliban, just a different variety. These new found "allies" who helped to rout the Taliban are the same forces that had routed the Soviet army in the 1980s. And they are also the forces who, upon defeating the Afghan Marxist government in 1992, launched a campaign of rape and pillage, and the torture and execution of government supporters, then turned their guns on one another. In the ensuing four-year fratricidal war more than 50,000 people were killed and Kabul was reduced to the ruins of a Stalingrad – and it’s still largely in that condition.