The US supplied billions to mujahideen who later became its top enemies

Evidence

As it had done in other proxy wars with the Soviet Union, the United States provided nearly $3 billion in arms and funding to non-state fighters in Afghanistan, self-described as Islamic mujahideen. But when the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan and collapsed soon thereafter, the global threat was no longer Communism. Islam now became the menace impeding American global hegemony. And Al-Qaeda and the mujahideen went from being freedom fighters to terrorists. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 687

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the familiar blowback narrative also covered in coverage of US proxy-war arming, e.g. Milgrom’s institutions work and broader US foreign policy histories. — connects to: The US trained the mujahideen from which al-Qaeda later emerged — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 396