Gwynne Dyer might have mentioned in his Oct. 1 article, "An imperfect Afghanistan," that before the intervention of major world powers, Afghanistan was not a perfect country but, as I and thousands of other visitors in the 1960s and the '70s can vouch for, it was peaceful and quiet — no land mines, no machine guns. The Russians made the Afghans want to resist outside interference. Then the United States financed and armed [the likes of] Osama bin Laden to do just that. There was no Islamist fundamentalism before that, as now.
from the japan times online
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