Afghanistan’s Taliban Disaster
In previous Toplist rankings, Afghanistan was noted as possibly the most advanced country in the Middle East in the 1950s. In 2017, General James Mattis exploited this history to try to persuade President Trump to extend American presence in the hope of restoring Afghanistan to that level.
That is ironic because it turns out that American Cold War efforts were a major contributing factor in Afghanistan's transformation into a Muslim theocracy. According to common belief, the US started aiding the Mujahideen in an effort to drive out the Soviet invasion. The truth is that America was sponsoring religious radicals like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was launching acid attacks against Afghan women, even before a single Soviet boot set foot in Afghanistan.
By 1994, the Taliban had allied with US-backed Mujahideen militants after defeating the Soviet military and helping to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. They had taken control of Kabul by 1996. If the Bush and Obama administrations are to be believed, this resulted in the destruction of numerous civil liberties, notably for women, in the years that followed. These rights were ultimately not restored following the US's 20-year occupation from 2002 to 2021.
- Time: Mid-1990s - 2001
