Some of the Saudi Royals.

Only three nations recognized the Taliban prior to September 11th, 2001: Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Needless to say, the latter two are clients of the U.S. and will obey orders while Pakistan had to suspend relations with the soon-to-be-overthrown Taliban after 9/11 or otherwise face a similar U.S. attack (as Colin Powell dictated to Mushraf). But while official relations have ceased, degrees of support have not.

The Taliban was overthrown, but such is the incompetence of the U.S.-led NATO effort that an unpopular and extremist movement is making a comeback in Afghanistan. One does not wish such a fate on Afghans, and it is their responsibility to see to it that the Taliban does not reestablish.

But beyond the ineffectiveness of Western troops, there is another reason the Taliban is making a comeback. A grouping of unproductive fighters whose opium corps are the sole source of income could not have enough money to purchase weapons and allies were it not for outside help. Thus decent Afghans and NATO are also facing a hidden monetary enemy. Who is funding the Taliban?

“More money is coming from the Gulf than is coming from the drug trade to the Taliban,” [stated U.S. Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan-Pakistan] Mr Holbrooke told journalists at Nato headquarters in Brussels. He didn’t identify the countries where the sympathisers were donating from, but nations located on the Persian Gulf include Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.

More money than the drug trade is coming from U.S. clients in the Gulf. Overwhelmingly if not all of the money is not official donations on behalf of states. Saudi Arabia, say, is not that stupid. Instead, the money is coming from personal donations amongst the royal families. The Saudi royal family is in the thousands and roughly half of them are Wahhabi fanatics who share the Taliban’s ideology and goals. So while U.S. troops fight the partially Saudi royal-funded Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. government is busy propping up a deeply unpopular regime whose members are funding the death of Americans.

Does this not prove the idiocy of American intervention aboard? Would not the U.S. be happier if it did not defend tyrannical regimes and did not engage in nation-building?

A case study for a non-interventionist foreign policy.