unfriendly reminder that weaponizing Islam was CIA's idea to create a "green wall" against the spread of communism and directly funded for a bunch of rich, bored Saudis (including a young Osama Bin Laden himself) to do war vacations in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention. operation cyclone sowed the seeds of what would become Al Qaeda and Taliban, printing in Texas textbooks full of radicalizing material bastardizing Islam directed at children that are still used today
"More than just flood [Afghanistan] with weapons, they would have to train the Afghans to become a formal light infantry force. For that, Gust Avracados tapped CIA agent Michel Vickers. Vickers began a slow trickle of CIA paramilitary agents into the country to begin to help the Pakistani ISI turn nearly a half million Afghan fighters into a highly mobile Soviet-killing machine. Avracados also managed to persuade officials from Egypt, China, and Israel to get in on the game. He is also one of the people who convinced [then Pakistani president] Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to frame the conflict as more than just a regional one. This was not an Afghan war of independence, this was a religious war of Islam vs Godless Communism. ...Al-Haq himself pivoted to be more of an Islamic conservative using the American president Ronald Reagan as an example for how to interject religion into politics."
- Joe Kasabian
https://soundcloud.com/isaiah-john-254824742/sets/lions-led-by-donkeys-the
"More than just flood [Afghanistan] with weapons, they would have to train the Afghans to become a formal light infantry force. For that, Gust Avracados tapped CIA agent Michel Vickers. Vickers began a slow trickle of CIA paramilitary agents into the country to begin to help the Pakistani ISI turn nearly a half million Afghan fighters into a highly mobile Soviet-killing machine. Avracados also managed to persuade officials from Egypt, China, and Israel to get in on the game. He is also one of the...