In a newly released video, the Taliban blamed the United States for the 9/11 attacks, which were done by al Qaeda at a time when the Taliban was connected with al Qaeda.
“The nearly 40-minute film, which was broadcast on Afghanistan’s national RTA television station, is intended to commemorate the Taliban’s victory over the U.S.-backed government and Western forces. The Taliban describes America as the true ‘terrorist’ party, while blaming the U.S. for the 20-year war,” Long War Journal reported. “The September 11, 2001 ‘attacks were the result of the United States’ policy of aggression against the Muslim world,’ the narrator says. Reenactments and archival footage of the 9/11 hijackings are shown on screen as the narrator faults America and the West for al Qaeda’s deadliest day.”
The film, titled “Victorious Force 3,” further claims the U.S. and its allies “launched a military invasion without considering the reasonable stance of the Islamic Emirate on the issue.” It claims an old Taliban conspiracy theory that the war was actually intended to topple the Taliban’s Islamic government.
The United States “invaded Afghanistan and deprived Afghans [of an] Islamic system,” the film says. It adds that the West “inflicted on Afghans the most notorious type of democracy, [with] the most infamous faces in modern history.” The U.S. supposedly “insisted on changing the intellectual and ideological boundaries of Afghans, and did not refrain from any kind of cruelty and atrocities to force Afghans to accept their aggression.”
The Long War Journal points out that the “Taliban has never accepted responsibility for harboring and working with al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The two remain intertwined to this day.”
Beginning within weeks of the 9/11 terrorist attack when Taliban founder Mullah Omar, who would not hand Taliban ally Osama Bin Laden over to America, said in an interview, “America has created the evil that is attacking it,” adding this “evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama [bin Laden] dies and others die.”
The Long War Journal added, “In mid-2019, for instance, the Taliban claimed that 9/11 was a ‘heavy slap on their dark faces,’ adding it ‘was the consequence of their interventionist policies and not our doing.’ … In more recent weeks, the Taliban’s spokesman has claimed that there is ‘no proof’ Osama bin Laden was even responsible for 9/11. This is an obvious lie, as al Qaeda itself has repeatedly boasted of its responsibility for the hijackings.”
