this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Pakistan had a lot to do with the rise of the Taliban, but "paramilitaries from Pakistan" is really not it. Not to undersell Pakistani support for them, but these people were Afghans who got a movement going and were then supported by Pakistan.
With tens of thousands of recruits from Pakistan in the 1990s, many of the native Afghans who joined the movement having been educated in Pakistani madrasas, and the Pakistani ISI being key in both recruitment and training of Taliban paramilitaries.
Not really sure what else you want to call a movement that got the majority of its recruits from Pakistan, got most of its early successes from Pakistani support, including direct military support and training, was educated in Pakistan, and had a long-standing relationship subordinate to Pakistani interests other than Pakistani paramilitaries.
Got a source for "got the majority of its recruits from Pakistan"? Also while you seem to focus on Pakistan, Saudi Arabia also had a lot to do with their early success, having for example funded the madrassas the Taliban would later recruit from. That aside, they were founded, led and supported by Afghans. At worst I'd call them co-opted Pakistani puppets, which is different from being straight up Pakistani paramilitaries.
Sure.
https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/cscoal/2001/en/52887
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pakistan+Taliban+Policy+1994-1999.-a0292423798
I mean, that's certainly true, but not even close to Pakistan's contribution.
On the other hand, in agreement with the broader point of blame, Saudi Arabia has invested a massive amount of resources in radicalizing impoverished Muslim countries worldwide by funding extremist mosques and schools under the cover of innocuous religious support.
I guess we're in the realm of semantics here. I would posit the question, though, with a theoretical example:
EDITED FOR A BETTER COMPARISON AND ALSO I JUST REALIZED THIS IS LITERALLY THE CASE IN SYRIAN KURDISTAN
If ethnic Turkmen living in Iraqi Kurdistan formed a paramilitary group, with their leaders having been educated in state schools in Turkiye and trained by Turkish military camps, getting the majority of their recruits from inside Turkiye, not Iraqi Kurdistan, receiving direct support in the form of both materiel supply and seconded troops and commanders from the Turkish military along with independent supporting strikes from the Turkish military, and advocating policy positions which conveniently line up with Turkish desires for Iraqi Kurdistan...
Would you call them Turkish paramilitaries, Kurdish paramilitaries, or Iraqi paramilitaries?
Yeah fair enough.