What are the Taliban and Al Qaida fighting for?

Question

I'm looking for simple, honest answers. I would appreciate if someone from Middle East gives me their views!

Answer 1

Here's a long answer:

Firstly, I agree with kenhallonthenet's excellent and factually accurate response here.

If you actually look into the history and reality of the current conflict, you'll see that the rhetoric of "they hate our freedom" or "they want world dominance" is a lie.

Iraq doesn't have any Taliban. The insurgency consists of Iraqi national who want the US/UK out now. They're fighting for their freedom. There are some non Iraqi’s fighting the occupation. These are estimated to be just a few percent of the people and are called Al-Qaeda by America, but not by most of the Iraqi people.

They are seeing their families be slaughtered, their wealth from oil go to America & their funds for restructure in Iraq build new US military bases for permanent occupation.

What people need to see is that Iraq was never about 9/11, WMD, an evil dictator, terrorism or democracy. It was part 1 of a plan to re-shape the Middle East and to bring the region under western imperial rule.

This is why the permanent military bases are there. It's why Bush & Blair refuse to say their policy isn't working. Because the policy is not about improving life for Iraqi's, it's about building a springboard, or base to enable expansion of the war on terror (a.k.a take control of the Middle East)

Afghanistan does have the Taliban. In fact they never really went.

Did you ever stop and consider how America beat the Taliban so easily and with so few casualties, when the Taliban were trained by the CIA and SAS and defeated Russia in war?

The Taliban were a Pakistan controlled force that received arms, training and finance from the US and UK. They were the front-line in the Afghanistan war against the Soviets.

As time progressed, Muslim nations like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran etc. saw an opportunity to empty their prisons of the militant and violent radical groups and send them to Afghanistan to help the Taliban (and never come back). This is how the Taliban changed from a Pakistan controlled force to a collection of radicals that grew out of control.

Anyway, before America declared war on Afghanistan, it cut a deal with Pakistan to allow the Taliban's escape. They left before the bombing.

After the bombing phase was over, America decided to offer cash bounties for Afghan terrorists that were handed over.

That's when the Taliban came back into Afghanistan. They kidnapped villagers, goat herders and so on, then sold these innocent men to the USA as terrorists.

All the US soldiers knew was a terrorist looked Arab like, perhaps with a beard. Terrorists always denied being terrorists (until tortured.)

That's why the Taliban are so strong in Afghanistan still, and why Guantanamo Bay is full of confused innocent men. Men that admitted to any accusation, just to stop the pain of torture.

Afghanistan was in rubble and there was little restructure by the US/UK. The US forces moved towards the new oil pipeline that America were desperate to complete but only had opportunity after the war. So the oil was protected, but the rest of Afghanistan was neglected.

With everything destroyed, the Afghan people looked to crop production for income. Therefore, the Taliban saw a 2000% (20 times) increase in Heroin production.

This was and still is the only stable income. This attracted major international drug barons & private armies to protect this multi-billion dollar business. Now we're facing a stronger Taliban than before the fake war, backed by international narcotics cartels with access to arms & explosives.

So the Taliban want to remove the US/UK and want to protect the opium production. That's their reason for fighting.

Afghanistan did have elections last year. They're not mentioned as much as Iraq's election.

Members of the Taliban and other warlord figures, including Mullah Rocketi, a master of terror won seats in the rigged election. It wasn't just terrorists & warlords, a number of drug barons won a seat in Parliament too.

This is why Heroin production is up and we are fighting a tough enemy.

Al-Qaeda isn't really a structured entity with members around the world. Al-Qaeda is more of an ideological concept that has been used as a name for enemies of the US, whether real, assumed or other. It was used by the CIA to give a group name to various terrorist suspects being hunted, including Bin Laden.

Answer 2

Yep, I agree. Al- Qaeda did the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. It is their ideology that continues to radicalise young men and make more suicide bombers. The Taliban is just an extreme entity of a government. Just like the Junta, US military, KGB etc... The Taliban were the law makers, how can they be the rebels if it was their country to begin with. The war is a farce and the true enemies of the world (Al-Qaeda, Osama) are hiding somewhere. The objective of the US military is to kill an entire belief system (Taliban) impossible. The aim should be to have peace talks with the Taliban and to actively seek out Al-Qaeda's ideologies by crushing its corrupt message. The way of fighting terrorism is not by becoming terrorists but development and re-twisting the messages of Al-Qaeda. The US war in Afghanistan has killed 370,000 people The US war in Iraq has killed 1,650,000 people The US involvement in Pakistan has killed 40,000 people How does that help anything, we need to pull all western troops from these countries and then use inteeligent Muslim scholars who deplore terrorism to become the vocal points to the affected youth. There should also be serious development programmes as well as negotiations with the Taliban and other 'belief' system groups.

Answer 3

They are fighting against Western intrusian into there world- and exploitation of there oil by the west, for the past 70 years. Example, In 1956-58 The CIA and British Intelligence Service M-16 did an Overthrow of the Iranian Gov, which was elected and ligit- they Set up the Shan as Dictator- and he let them steall Iranian oil at below market prices. Oil Companies,

Answer 4

If China invaded America because they thought our way of life was wrong. Americans would fight back anyway they could but the thing is China and their allies would call them terrorist. This is to feed the public misconceptions to make the war right.

Most middle Eastern countries have lived how they do for thousands of years. Why should they change the way they live and accept the policy of another country? Also 100,000 plus people have died in Iraq, old people, men, women and kids. It is mostly the family members of these that have been killed who take up arms and fight back.

Do you think terrorist are terrorist because they have nothing better to do? its suppression that causes all this.

Answer 5

an intricate and informed answer is required for your question. But to offer my most enlightened perspective in brief;

They are fighting for the preservation of a way of life and a psychological independence from the American Empire. They percieve (and probably quite rightly) America and the 'Civilized' West to be an expression of a spiritual corruption/psychic infection, whereby man is insanely driven by fear of death and the subsequent slavery for GAIN. This 'gain' is manifesting very quickly across our planet in the form of financial Globalisation, whereby men and women work their lives out in jobs the purpose of which is to provide them with money with which they can surround themselves in material comforts that vainly protect them from the chill of spiritual emptiness. Al Qaida are an extreme force within the Taliban group who are out to maintain what they believe to be the pure way, the spiritual way.

In short, they are fighting for what they believe to be the authentic way of life.

Answer 6

Anybody who says, To convert the world to islam is buying the Bush neo-con propaganda wholesale and is totally wrong.

The taliban is fighting for their homeland and they are trying to expel the infidel invaders from their land.

Al Queda was setup be western intelligence agencies to train, fanatasize and arm and funnel fighters to fight, first the Soviets, and then the Balkan Kosovan war. Al queda was partially on our side until 2000. They where happy enough to fight alongside us in Bosnia and Kosovo, but they wanted the west to remove their bases from Saudi soil. Something the US has complied with.

Since then there has been an uprising in Israel, and the Alqueda people use this as a further excuse to attack the west. since then there has been the wholy illegal and needless invasion of Iraq. 500,000+ Iraqis have died in that conflict and those deaths are attributable to the conflict tens of thousand have died in Afghanistan.

Al queda and other Islamic extremist groups are fighting a Jihad, which is actually a defensive war. They are fighting to preserve THEIR way of life. They attack us, NOT because we are a threat to their way of life, but because we are actively invading and murdering muslims and trying to liberalise and democratise their nations. We already ARE destroying their way of life. This kind of western democracy is alien to them and their way of life and many of them do not want it.

They can see how massively corrupt and how much of a total sham that western democracy actually is. In Iraq they had elections. when the USA did not like who eventually became Prime Minister, The USA had him removed from power. Some Democracy!!!

To summarise, they are fighting a defensive war and if you want it to end, get your countries to stop messing with the middle east.

1. Pullout the troops, let them butcher each other, they cannot do it faster than we can.
2. Stop propping up Israel. If Israel was a legitimate state and lived by and upheld international laws, then they would live in peace.

How many more of Americas children must be sacrificed?
How many more billions of billions of dollars must be wasted on this adventure before you say enough is enough.

This war is happening because the Western Governments pushed by the international banks, want a one world government, one electronic currency and the entire planet's population chipped and enslaved.

any country that is harbouring thoughts of nationalistic independence is being lined up to be subsumed into a larger multinational block or eliminated by being broken up into other sub-regions within a multinational block.

It's a simple policy of comply or die.

They do not want to destroy our way of life, the Bush cabal are doing that already by imposing laws removing habeus corpus, warrantless search and seazure, warrantless wiretapping etc,

They want us to STOP destroying their way of life.

If I was President, I would stop the war on terror in 1 day, and it has NOTHING to do with appeasement.

Iwoud issue the following statement:

To the middle east. I am with immediate effect removing our troops from the middle east. We have paid a fortune for a massive nuclear deterrant. We are modifying the threat. we will leave you alone if you leave us alone. you have a chance to have a regional peace. Work with the UN to build your region in peace and harmony and you will know peace and prosperity. If you step out of line and start wars, or if you attack us, we will Nuke every capital city in the middle east starting with Mecca and the Hajj. ending with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The choice is yours.

That would be my plan, But I guess AIPAC and Halliburton wouldn't be too pleased.

Answer 7

They want the US out of the Middle Eastern area.

They have been angry because they feel the US stepped on sacred land and made it unholy, when teh fact of the matter is that Osama BinLaden is angry that Saudi Arabia kicked him out, the US supported it, and he piled up a group of outcasts to get revenge.

Answer 8

They want to make the whole world convert to the Muslim religeon. A bit like Hitler wanted everyone to have blonde hair and blue eyes.

Answer 9

Psychopaths hiding behind a cause.

Answer 10

The right to be able to force everyone to be Muslim or die. The right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want without consequence.