Taliban Bounties Would Be a New Low Even for Putin
Putting a price on American heads today is not at all like the U.S. arming anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Too friendly.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images
As Americans consider news reports that Russia offered Taliban fighters bounties to kill U.S. service members, it’s worth recalling the tortured history the two nations have in Afghanistan.
Going back to the days of the Afghan mujahideen and “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Washington provided weapons — notably, surface-to-air missiles — and training to Soviet adversaries in the 1980s. When I visited Moscow as the NATO commander of the Afghan mission almost 30 years later, I met with the man who had been the last Soviet general in Afghanistan (he had retired and gone into politics). He said to me that we Americans had “Russian blood on your hands.”