Western aid neglect forced Afghan commanders into jihadist funding or the drug trade

Evidence

As Barnett Rubin pointed out, the failure of international agencies or the West to provide significant aid to either Tajikistan or Afghanistan made the former totally dependent on the Russians and the latter dependent upon their Muslim civilizational kin. “Any Afghan commander who hopes for foreign aid today must either cater to the wishes of the Arab and Pakistani funders who wish to spread the jihad to Central Asia or join the drug trade.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 763

Categorization

• QUESTION: The drug-trade funding of Afghan commanders in the 1990s echoes recurring claims about Afghan poppy economics — worth verifying against counterfactuals of what Western aid was actually available and when.
• XREF: Connects to the classic ‘when the West withholds support, local actors turn to illicit or extremist funders’ pattern also visible in Cold War proxy politics and, later, in the Afghan-to-Al-Qaeda pipeline.