Title: Ronald Reagan dedicated the Space Shuttle Columbia to the people of Afghanistan Source:
you tube URL Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abkg94I_uWo Published:Aug 25, 2010 Author:NA Post Date:2010-08-25 20:01:57 by Ferret Mike Keywords:None Views:14520 Comments:24
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"These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's Founding Fathers" ~President Ronald Reagan 1985
'In 1982, Ronald Reagan dedicated the Space Shuttle Columbia to the resistance fighters in Afghanistan.'
The Taliban was a group that sprang up in Afghanistan amongst the Pashtu in the mid 90s. The Mujahadeen fighters of Afghanistan during the 80s and early 90s were not the Taliban, and the Taliban rose up as a local group not connected to them.
I understand your confusion, I even believed that, too, for a while. In the late 90s and around 9-11 there were a lot of reports that the Taliban was the same group, largely because of it's connection to Usama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Since then we've learned a lot more abou them. The Taliban was a local group who sprang up in the Pashtu region of Afghanistan in 96 as a reaction against the lawlessness of the warlords who were dividing Afghanistan. They had strict laws and violent enforcement of them, and as the defeated a couple of the warlords, they were joined by others, including some of the remnants of the mujahadeen. The warlords they were fighting were also remnants of the mujahadeen, though, so you could even argue that the Taliban rose up against the mujahadeen.
Later, when Clinton tried to capture Bin Laden and Bin Laden hid out in Afghanistan, the leaders of the Taliban allied with him, and Bin Laden began helping the Taliban to train its soldiers. But in the beginning the Taliban was a completely separate group.
