CIA Won't Back an Afghan Resistance Anytime Soon, If Ever

Central Asia's former Soviet states are now back in Moscow's orbit, for starters, depriving the agency of once friendly staging grounds.

Appeals from Afghanistan’s last standing  resistance leaders for U.S. support are almost certainly going to fall on deaf ears in Washington, longtime observers say. Even if the U.S. and its NATO allies had a deep desire to re-engage the Taliban on the battlefield—which they don’t—the new political landscape across Central Asia essentially forbids it.

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