Mujahideen Quotes:

When I went to Afghanistan in 2003, I walked into a war zone. Entire neighborhoods had been demolished. There were an overwhelming number of widows and orphans and people who had been physically and emotionally damaged; every 10-year-old kid on the street knew how to dismantle a Kalashnikov in under a minute. I would flip through math textbooks intended for third grade, fourth grade, and they would include word problems such as, "If you have 100 grenades and 20 mujahideen, how many grenades per mujahideen do you get?" War has infiltrated every facet of life.

- Khaled Hosseini

source: "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2009.

topic: War, Kids, Math, Mujahideen, Grenade

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: War, Europe, Important, Mujahideen, American Hegemony

Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: Breakup, Regret, War, Mujahideen, Demoralization

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: Military, Army, Reality, Military Intervention, Mujahideen

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

- Robin Cook

source: "The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means" by Robin Cook, www.theguardian.com. July 8, 2005.

topic: Agency, Occupation, Als, Miscalculations, Mujahideen

I think if you're going to do a movie about Reagan, you do it about the fact that he created the huge deficit, that he armed the Mujahideen, that he armed Saddam, that he armed Iran, that he armed two-thirds of the Axis of Evil, and that he funded terrorists in Central America. He was, in my mind, a terrible president.

- Al Franken

topic: Thinking, Axes, Iran, Mujahideen, Central America

There was a time when the women of Afghanistan - at least in Kabul - were out there. They were allowed to study, they were doctors and surgeons, walking free, wearing what they wanted. That was when it was under Soviet occupation. Then the United States starts funding the mujahideen. Reagan called them Afghanistan's "founding fathers." It reincarnates the idea of "jehad," virtually creates the Taliban.

- Arundhati Roy

source: Source: www.truth-out.org

topic: Father, Doctors, Ideas, Mujahideen, Kabul

The list of American grievances is long: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons while promising the United States that it would not; the United States helped arm and train Mujahideen against the Soviets during the 1980s, but Pakistan chose to keep these militants well armed and sufficiently funded even after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989; and, from the American perspective, Pakistan's crackdown on terrorist groups, particularly after 9/11, has been halfhearted at best.

- Husain Haqqani

topic: Long, Perspective, Lists, Mujahideen, Terrorist Groups