Daily reminder: the CIA directly and intentionally funded and fomented the rise of islamic fundamentalism in order to counter Soviet interests in Afghanistan through the Mujaheddin in 1976.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
to say the CIA just "misunderstood" religion is outright disinformation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0
And the CIA weaponizes religion for it's purposes including using Uyghur extremists or Isis members. One of the experts on that is the retired Graham Fuller:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_E._Fuller
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Graham Fuller's daughter used to be married to the uncle of the Boston marathon bombers and he had arranged their visas as well as the visa for the wanted "Islamic" fundamentalist cleric Gulen, who is the spiritual leader of the CIA's Islam and Enes Kanter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21692069
https://www.mintpressnews.com/celtics-cia-gulenist-hoops-sta...
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-nwTCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&red...
That seems incomplete enough to be a misleading statement. Ghost Wars (Steve Coll) is as authoritative and well-sourced treatment as I've found.
It lays out the imperative as "confront the Soviets in Afghanistan." To that end, the State Department and CIA continually bickered over who to best fund and arm in Afghanistan.
Add in the added complexity that most funding was run through the Pakistani ISI, but paid for by the Saudis and Gulf states, all of whom generally had no compunctions and/or outright preference for Islamic fundamentalists (Pakistan due to India, Saudis due to portions of the royal family).
And on top of that, you had a constant realpolitik (arm who will fight, and who our allies will support) vs ideological (arm who believes more in democracy) debate going on. Generally speaking, the Islamists were willing the right, but the moderates tended to find reasons to avoid committing their forces, despite being paid to do exactly that.
So an accurate statement would be "the CIA helped funnel Saudi money to Afghani mujahideen, with Pakistan's ISI steering large portions of that towards Islamist groups, a practice which the US generally knew about but saw no way around."
The Mujahid group that was the least Islamist was led by the heir of a religious order and structured as such.
The OP's assertion are fully accurate. The CIA knowingly funded and fomented the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
It is incorrect the relationship was fully indirect. The CIA directly met with militant Islamic fundamentalist groups, including inviting leaders to the USA, and directly funding them :
https://books.google.com/books?id=b95MAgAAQBAJ&q=cia%2C+bin+...
https://books.google.com/books?id=wcljXYTZVnUC&q=rABBANI,+re...
https://books.google.com/books?id=r3TLByMXsJkC&q=thatcher,+h...
https://books.google.com/books?id=N8Qxf-33dxMC&q=howard+hart...
https://books.google.com/books?id=-R13CgAAQBAJ&q=zalmay%2C+g...
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2008/07/11/afghan...
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/2012126145...
The evidence is absolutely crushing. The statement of the OP is not misleading at all - it is completely accurate.
And the primary reason the CIA met directly with groups was to cut the ISI out of the picture and give them more direct control over to whom and how aid was provided.
If you read the sources I linked, you will see that the CIA directly met with and financed Haqqani, which was one of the most extreme and who went on to be instrumental in the founding of Al Qaeda by greatly assisting Bin Laden in Afghanistan and allying with him.
That is to say, unequivocally, the CIA directly funded and abetted the rise of Islamist fundamentalism.
My impression was that effectively, their decision at the time was: (a) fund moderate elements who weren't gung-ho about actually risking their forces to kill Soviets vs (b) fund religious extremists who were a more militarily effective option.
And even given that calculus, they still spread the money around (or even skewed it towards moderates), because even at the time they were uncomfortable going all-in on someone who took his orders from God.
The CIA only ever directly financed the more extreme elements that I know of. The more moderate ones, ironically, got all of their funding through Pakistan, though Pakistan gave more to the extremists.
If the CIA gave them more money because they wore more effective, it doesn't change the fact that they directly fomented the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
I thought this was a photoshop and wasn't actually in the film?
"What you see here, are the Mujahedin soldiers, holy warriors.
To us, this war is a holy war.
And there is no true death for a Mujahedin,
because we have taken our last nights, and because we consider us already dead.
To us, death for our land and God is an honor.
So, my friend, what we must do is to stop this killing of our women and children.
If getting this man free, so he can tell to the free world, and tell what happens here, is necessary then of course we will help."
I'm not sure if that's praising or exalting, but it wasn't damning in the context of the movie.
My favourite (and probably most prescient and ironic) quote from the movie is:
"You can't defeat a people like that. We tried. We already had our Vietnam! Now you're gonna have yours!"
As was The Living Daylights, in which the Mujaheddin led by an Oxford-educated Afghan help James Bond destroy a rogue Soviet drug-running operation.
Indeed.
They definitely understood it, and they also understood that the USSR had 45,000 nuclear weapons pointed at your backyard.
On the other hand CIA handled instigators killed far in excess of 45,000 people during the 'cold' war.
23 million is the loss of expect natality, not dead children. It's people that weren't born.
As with all famine as atrocities narratives, I wonder if you apply this standard fairly. Is every poor country that had a famine responsible or only those whose economic system you don't agree with? In that case isn't the West responsible for 2 million deaths every year by forcing Africa to adopt an economic system that leads to starvation? Of course you will say no but to me these are equivalent. It turns out there are no good guys
If you're really being hunted by the FSB then I am sorry that Russia is doing this to you. I suggest that you would not post about it here as this forum is monitored and this information would be identifying to the FSB. I truly wish you the best of luck.
The earliest intact document suggests that there was 81 million of Ukrainians before Holodomor and 31 million after.
Nationality for 20 million ethnic Ukrainians was forcefully changed from Ukrainian to Russian (direct evidence of that filmed in 199x, when victims were still alive, and is available at YouTube[1]). 7 million adults starved to death (official number by RF[2]), 23 million children were dead also, but nobody counted them back then. 30 millions of Holodomor victims are hidden as victims of WWW2 («total» number of WWW2 victims raised from 12 million to 42 million).
Famine and starvation is not equal to mass murdering by starvation. You are trying to downplay the murder to just «a death».
[0]: https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2021/05/14/7293521/
The assertion that Schukin was assasinated by the Russian Federation is unsupported. I cannot find any non-Ukrainian media that supports this thesis and I can find many that don't from third countries that are unfavourable to Russia. Therefore I conclude that the theory of assassination by a violent anti-semite is the most likely. I doubt that the Ukrainian prosecution would shy from suggesting a Russian assassination if they thought so.
I don't doubt that the nationality of Ukrainians was changed to Russians. A lot of persecution of Ukrainians happened, which is a historical fact. The question is whether the famine was intended or if it was a mistake, and it seems clear that this was not the case. Then the question becomes if it was murder on the side of the Soviet government not to redistribute food, which it would have been if they had known the extent of the famine, but as we know now the corruption and incompetence was so high that it is wholly believable that they actually thought the situation was far from as bad as it was. From then on the immigration bans make sense and so does the maintenance of exports.
Now was this on the the absolute fault of the Soviet government? Yes, it is. But so is every single famine from 1900 onwards. If you consider it to be murder, so is every single other famine since the invention of fertilizer. I only ask that one is consistent.
As for your estimates, even the Kyiv court of appeals cites a much lower figure of 3.9 million : https://lb.ua/news/2010/01/14/19793_nalivaychenko_nazval_kol... and I can find no credible source that even approaches your numbers.
If the famine was indeed due to sheer incompetence, it could be argued that they were victims of the revolution that set up that incredibly incompetent government.
It's reads like joke. You are completely incompetent, right? Can you murder just 1 million of people and cover it for decades? What level of incompetence is required for that? Can you kill 1 million by mistake?
Communists party has a goal: kill bourgeoisie as class. Why you are trying to label the MAIN GOAL of communists party as "incompetence" or "mistake"?
Leaders of USSR created secret police, to watch transition of USSR from bourgeoisie past to communist future. Secret police found that majority of Ukrainians prefer freedom and free market, so Politbureau decided to eliminate Ukrainians as traitor nation, like many other nations. They created a plan and then performed it.
> The assertion that Schukin was assasinated by the Russian Federation is unsupported.
Yeah, nor passport nor business card were left by killer to help us. Same situation was with his science director: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Shytyuk , and many other scientists. Maybe, it's martians. What you think?
It doesn't look like a comment about nukes. It's more like "OMG, CIA killed 45,000 enemies during the war!" It's CIA job to kill mad Russians to protect USA. What's wrong with that?
> I suggest that you would not post about it here as this forum is monitored and this information would be identifying to the FSB.
They know that I know.
>They know that I know.
It doesn't matter. Any comment you make online that can be linked to your identity will bite you in the ass in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. I also have personal experience in that domain.
It's 13 years later, they can't have been trying very hard.
And USSR understood that immediately after WWII end, USA planned to finish what Nazis started. Using also nuclear bombs which USSR didn't have at the time.