MYTHS, MISCONCEPTIONS & CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT AFGHANISTAN
INTRODUCTION:
In this meetup, we'll explore various myths, misconceptions and conspiracy theories about Afghanistan that have proliferated over the last 20 years that have obscured the public's understanding of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the unsuccessful U.S. attempt at nation building there.
In the first section, we'll look at some common misconceptions about Afghanistan's history. We'll examine the commonly held view of Afghanistan as the "graveyard of empires". This narrative claims that the region not only led to the demise of the Soviet Union after the Soviet-Afghan War, but also the British Empire after the three Anglo-Afghan Wars, and perhaps even some empires further back in history, like the Mongol Empire & Alexander the Great's empire. This view of Afghanistan tends to emphasize the country's mountainous terrain, fortress-like qalats & networks of caves, as well as its "barbarous" people who are divided by "impregnable clan loyalties" that will never allow the region to be "civilized". We'll contrast this view with the less common narrative that still occasionally crops up among some Boomers of Afghanistan as a "lost paradise" along the hippie trail of the 1960s & '70s, which used to boast bustling markets welcoming to foreigners, hookah parlors with great hashish, and liberated Afghan women who walked the streets of Kabul in miniskirts. We'll see how this ties in with older Afghans' memories of the period between 1963 and 1973 which some refers to as their country's "Golden Age" when the country had a semblance of political stability under a constitutional monarchy and Kabul was known as “the Paris of Central Asia.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_of_Empires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Afghanistan
In the second section, we'll look at various conspiracy theories about the "real reasons" for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, stretching from the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s to the invasion & occupation of Afghanistan after 2001 as part of the Global War on Terror. We'll start by looking at the CIA's role in arming & financing the "mujahideen" as part of "Operation Cyclone", from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the socialist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The PDPA had came to power through a military coup known as the Saur Revolution in 1978, ousting the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan, who had been leader of the 1973 Afghan coup d'état which overthrew the Afghan monarchy. As we'll see, many critics have argued that by sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists to fight the local socialist government & the Soviets, the U.S. essentially created the predecessors of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden
We'll also discuss some of the alleged motives for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that don't involve fighting the spread of communism, namely a desire to either control the lucrative opium trade that originates with poppy farmers in Afghanistan or to facilitate the mining of the estimated $1 Trillion of largely untapped mineral resources that the country has, with the idea that the U.S. will "steal" these resources - especially lithium - that has a strategic importance due to its use in batteries needed by the tech industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Afghanistan
In the third section, we'll examine some of the myriad of conspiracy theories about the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the SEAL Team 6 raid on his secret compound in Abbotobad in 2011 that killed him. As we'll see, there's a wide range of conspiracy theories ranging from allegations that bin Laden had died many years prior to the 2011 raid, to theories that claim he's still alive today. Conspiracy theories about the 2011 raid also sometimes discuss alternative scenarios, like the journalist Seymour Hirsch's claim that Pakistan had kept bin Laden under house arrest since 2006, that the U.S. had learned of bin Laden's location through a Pakistani intelligence official (not tracking a courier), and that elements of the Pakistani military aided the U.S. in killing bin Laden. Wilder conspiracy theories claim that the members of SEAL Team Six who participated in the raid were later killed by the U.S. government under the guise of "training accidents" to cover up some secret. As we'll see, the source of many of the general public's doubts about bin Laden's death were fueled by the U.S. military's supposed disposal of his body at sea, the decision to not release any photographic or DNA evidence of bin Laden's death to the public, the contradicting accounts of the incident (with the official story on the raid appearing to change or directly contradict previous assertions), and the 25-minute blackout during the raid on bin Laden's compound during which a live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the U.S. special forces was cut off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden_death_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden
In the last section, we'll look at the NY Times' article in June of 2020 about "Russian bounties" being paid to Taliban by the GRU's Unit 29155 for killing U.S. troops. (As you may remember, these claims were called into question less than a year later in April-May of 2021 by multiple US news media outlets.) We'll see how this relates to the news media criticisms of Trump's negotiations with the Taliban in the summer of 2020, and allegations that the CIA orchestrated claims of "Russian bounties" as a hoax to foil the negotiations for withdrawal from Afghanistan. We'll also discuss Glenn Greenwald's recent allegations that the news media have suddenly become far more critical of Joe Biden not merely because of the bungled nature of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, but because the US intelligence agencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_troops_from_Afghanistan_(2020–2021)
