Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Mujahideen, Jihadis, and Other Afghans

In discussions on Afghanistan, it is distressing to see even serious academics with a background in Pakistan conflate all of the resistance in Afghanstan to the Soviets under the "Jihadi" label. Ahmed Shah Masood, for example, was very much one of the Afghan Mujahideen, but was no "Jihadi"...most of the warlords in that war were nowhere near the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or Pakistani Jihadis in ideology. Of course, the US and Pakistani governments had a weakness for Jihadis like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and later found they could best do business with the Taliban, but that's another story.

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