Amazing that after all these years, most importantly the experiment in the 1970s of funding the groups that became the Taliban, Americans haven’t learned their lessons about funding foreign militaries.
Having people you trained and armed turn around to fight against you is obviously not ideal but also the Taliban is much less of a threat than the Soviet Union so it might have been a good trade.
It came to mind a few days ago when I was noticing how Azov in many reputable newspapers is now seemingly being downgraded from 'neo-nazi' to 'right-wing militia'.
To add a little more context, from what I've read they definitely had a large (actual) Nazi element in 2014, but that has been less and less true over the intervening years. The more extreme political leaders were kicked out and they grew in size significantly based on their military success rather than their ideological leanings.
