The names may have changed but the people didn't. We funded Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and provided numerous FIM-92 stingers which after the war was over turned into

The names may have changed but the people didn't. We funded Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and provided numerous FIM-92 stingers which after the war was over turned into the buyback fiasco, where many of these stingers were never recovered. Not to mention the third-party plausible denability effect, through which arms may not have passed directly to "Muj" or Taliban, but were supplied by the US. So to say the "Taliban" were never armed is completely factually incorrect, both in relevance to the Soviet war and the current one. If you want to learn more about the US involvement as the number one arms dealer in the word, the revised Shadow Factory book is out and worth the long read.