the american contribution dollar for dollar, the mujahideen started to get better equipment. we begin to procure weapons, import them and get them to pakistan, where the pakistani army built the beginning of what grew into an enormous support structure to receive weapons that would come in by sea, move them to the borders, get them to camps, in some instances train mujahideen, who would then take the weapons inside afghanistan and attack the soviets. all the weapons that we gave them were made, most of them were made in communist countries, wejust bought them from the communists and then sent them into afghanistan. they used polish aks, czechoslovakian aks, hungarian aks, chinese aks, everybody s aks, and within a year of beginning the programme, we had armed about 400,000 mujahideen.
the pakistanis were backing gulbuddin hekmatyar to come into power. the iranians and the indians were backing rabbani and massoud. the un was trying to put together a coalition government with communist elements, as well as mujahideen elements. so everybody was doing their own thing. by 1992, two of the strongest mujahideen parties were closing in on kabul. those coming down from the north were led by ahmad shah massoud. his bitter rival gulbuddin hekmatyar was moving up from the south east. najibullah s government collapsed and he took shelter in the united nations compound in the city. on 25th april, 1992, hekmatyar and massoud s men both entered kabul.
in february 1980, president carter s security adviser zbigniew brzezinski visited the refugee camps along the afghan pakistan border. that land over there is yours. you ll go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail, and you ll have your homes, your mosques back again, because your cause is right and god is on your side. as more and more afghans poured over the border into pakistan, a lot of them did not want to stay in pakistan as refugees, they wanted to go back and fight, but they wanted weapons to go and do it with, and other kinds of assistance. that was an opportunity that president carter took advantage of. the americans knew the local arms industry could never supply the demand for weapons, and with the saudis matching
and their international supporters. weapons were pouring in, and the distribution was controlled by the pakistan intelligence service, the isi. the isi gave out bullet per bullet to their favourites. and who were their favourites? but the most ruthless and hardline islamists. this was a way for the pakistani army to really exert its influence inside afghanistan, because what they hoped eventually was that the islamists would win and the soviets would leave, and pakistan would have its proxies inside kabul. the mujahideen, with better weapons and knowledge of the terrain, were not an easy force to defeat. the afghan government and the soviets controlled the main cities and communication routes. but vast tracts of the country were beyond their control.
with chaos and anarchy across afghanistan, a new force emerged on the scene. radical islamist students known as the taliban joined the fight for control of the country. the taliban came with a very simple message. they said, we will bring peace, we will disarm the population, which is exactly what the public wanted in other words, disarm the warlords. and we will then refer to our elders and we will liberate the country and we will then, we will not take power ourselves, we will call a jirga, which is a tribal council, of all the elders of the country and they will decide who should rule the country. the taliban had been trained in schools or madrassas in pakistan, which had been funded by saudi arabia. they swept into southern afghanistan and took kandahar