Britain secretly agreed to back Afghan fighters after Soviet invasion
World
Britain secretly agreed to back Afghan fighters after Soviet invasion
A British news agency has disclosed that Britain secretly agreed to back Afghan resistance fighters after the Soviet invasion of their country, some of whom would go on to form al-Qaeda.Telegraph UK says that newly published papers show one of the countrys top civil servants held a private summit with senior American, French and German politicians at which they decided to provide discreet support for Afghan guerrilla resistance.One faction of the Mujahideen fighters, who were also covertly funded by the CIA, went on to become founding members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.Declassified Government records, released by the National Archives, also detail Margaret Thatchers failure to stop British athletes competing at the Moscow Olympics in protest at the Afghan war.The Communist superpower had sent troops into Kabul in December 1979 to support a Marxist-Leninist regime that was under threat from Islamic opposition groups known as the Mujahideen.Its actions caused alarm around the world and less than a month later, leading Western governments were secretly discussing how they could counter the Soviet invasion.
