3 ms·

I didn't care much for the review; way too much verbiage before he gets to talking about the film. I found the film difficult to consume. He mentions "wahaabi

I didn't care much for the review; way too much verbiage before he gets to talking about the film. I found the film difficult to consume. He mentions "wahaabism" very early on. Then he keeps linking the Taliban to wahaabism. Well, they're related, in that both are islamic revivalists. But from the start, the mention of "wahaabism" put me off, and led me to question his arguments. You see, there is nobody that refers to him/herself as a "wahaabist". The term is considered insulting. Saudi revivalists call themselves "salafists". So that got my ears pricked-up looking for propaganda. He then launches into a long chain of argument, claiming that the Taliban are the direct result of CIA interference in the Moslem world. I can't refute that claim, but I found many of the links in the chain rather tenuous; and his conclusions depend on all of those links. There is a lot of footage I've not seen before, and a bunch of material that was pretty interesting. But the Taliban and AQ were not cut from the same cloth; the Taliban are Afghan Pashtuns, and they regard AQ as "foreigners".

nyolfen 5y ago
aq & taliban are both the result of a chain of events you can draw to the post meccan siege shift in power among the saudi elite to the clerics that led to the mass establishment and funding of salafi madrassas abroad, sending young men and funds abroad to the afghan conflict, etc. the taliban come directly out of these madrassas. they are part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa. wahhabism is an exonym but is a perfectly valid descriptor.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to describe the Taliban as "part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa". The Taliban are interested in Afghanistan. In fact I suspect they are primarily interested in "Pashtunistan", or Waziristan. They are interested in western Afghanistan only insofar as it is primarily Shia, and the Taliban are very much sectarian Sunnis. I don't think many Taliban are particularly interested in what happens in faraway Saudi Arabia. AQ are interested in destroying the enemies of their kind of Sunni islam, especially in Saudi Arabia and the USA. So while the Taliban and AQ share a Sunni affiliation, the former want to run Afghanistan; the latter want to change the whole world.
  - remarkEon 5y ago
    This is accurate. The Sunni-Shia divide is something I think westerners struggle with understanding, likely because- and perhaps especially for Americans- Islam is a distant religion and the only analog they can come up is the Protestant Reformation, which for reasons that need not be said is not usefully similar. Your last sentence also helps explain why the current administration, assuming they understand and are aware of these distinctions in a way that actually informs policy, is giving so much deference to the Taliban right now.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      I didn't mean to over-emphasise the Sunni/Shia divide. I've been told by moslem friends that most ordinary moslems regard all fellow moslems as brothers, regardless of their sect affiliation. My point was that the Taliban have limited geographical ambitions; even within Afghanistan, the regions on the border with Iran (like Jalalabad) are not Taliban-friendly. In the north, the tajiks, turkmen and so on are likely to oppose the Taliban. They face a lot of internal opposition, even without the West interfering.
mc32 5y ago
The connection he was making was that wahhabism threatened the monarchy in the 1920s, and ever since the SA monarchy has dealt with the threat via deflection. A couple of those are the religious schools abroad in greater arabia and having their agitators release their vigor abroad in things like the afghan wars. There is a mix and struggle between warlords and taleban and aq. In the end the conflict in AF arose from SA exporting their internal conflict externally --various factions and ethnic group divisions in AF didn't help the situation. All in exchange for propping up the SA monarchy which the West contributes to as well due to the importance of energy to the world.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I got the chain of connections. But I don't think he adequately presented evidence for the various links in that chain. I mean, it all seems fairly plausible; but I felt after watching it that I wasn't convinced. I guess what I need reading material, with links to sources. I just found "The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom" on iPlayer. When it came out I only managed to see episode 1, which I liked a lot. So now I'm (re)watching the whole set of 3.
  - remarkEon 5y ago
    I’m not sure the point of the review was to make a convincing argument for the veracity of the preceding claim (SA exported their internal problems, the US unwittingly helped, leading to disaster across the greater Middle East). I haven’t watched the documentary yet but I suspect that wasn’t the “point” of the film either. It’s a complex claim (that I personally find very convincing) that is one historians get to make later with the gift of historical distance from the events in question. So, time will tell I suppose.

nyolfen 5y ago

aq & taliban are both the result of a chain of events you can draw to the post meccan siege shift in power among the saudi elite to the clerics that led to the mass establishment and funding of salafi madrassas abroad, sending young men and funds abroad to the afghan conflict, etc. the taliban come directly out of these madrassas. they are part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa. wahhabism is an exonym but is a perfectly valid descriptor.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to describe the Taliban as "part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa". The Taliban are interested in Afghanistan. In fact I suspect they are primarily interested in "Pashtunistan", or Waziristan. They are interested in western Afghanistan only insofar as it is primarily Shia, and the Taliban are very much sectarian Sunnis. I don't think many Taliban are particularly interested in what happens in faraway Saudi Arabia. AQ are interested in destroying the enemies of their kind of Sunni islam, especially in Saudi Arabia and the USA. So while the Taliban and AQ share a Sunni affiliation, the former want to run Afghanistan; the latter want to change the whole world.
- remarkEon 5y ago
  This is accurate. The Sunni-Shia divide is something I think westerners struggle with understanding, likely because- and perhaps especially for Americans- Islam is a distant religion and the only analog they can come up is the Protestant Reformation, which for reasons that need not be said is not usefully similar. Your last sentence also helps explain why the current administration, assuming they understand and are aware of these distinctions in a way that actually informs policy, is giving so much deference to the Taliban right now.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    I didn't mean to over-emphasise the Sunni/Shia divide. I've been told by moslem friends that most ordinary moslems regard all fellow moslems as brothers, regardless of their sect affiliation. My point was that the Taliban have limited geographical ambitions; even within Afghanistan, the regions on the border with Iran (like Jalalabad) are not Taliban-friendly. In the north, the tajiks, turkmen and so on are likely to oppose the Taliban. They face a lot of internal opposition, even without the West interfering.

mc32 5y ago

The connection he was making was that wahhabism threatened the monarchy in the 1920s, and ever since the SA monarchy has dealt with the threat via deflection. A couple of those are the religious schools abroad in greater arabia and having their agitators release their vigor abroad in things like the afghan wars. There is a mix and struggle between warlords and taleban and aq. In the end the conflict in AF arose from SA exporting their internal conflict externally --various factions and ethnic group divisions in AF didn't help the situation. All in exchange for propping up the SA monarchy which the West contributes to as well due to the importance of energy to the world.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I got the chain of connections. But I don't think he adequately presented evidence for the various links in that chain. I mean, it all seems fairly plausible; but I felt after watching it that I wasn't convinced. I guess what I need reading material, with links to sources. I just found "The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom" on iPlayer. When it came out I only managed to see episode 1, which I liked a lot. So now I'm (re)watching the whole set of 3.
- remarkEon 5y ago
  I’m not sure the point of the review was to make a convincing argument for the veracity of the preceding claim (SA exported their internal problems, the US unwittingly helped, leading to disaster across the greater Middle East). I haven’t watched the documentary yet but I suspect that wasn’t the “point” of the film either. It’s a complex claim (that I personally find very convincing) that is one historians get to make later with the gift of historical distance from the events in question. So, time will tell I suppose.