Well yeah. I doubt the Taliban, even the leadership, had a clue that 911 was being planned. Chechnya in the late 90s is an obvious parallel -- you get all these rich pseudo-intellectuals from the Arab world coming in, buying space in exchange for cash and buying up support. Which is by the by why the jihadis in Chechnya so quickly changed sides and became pro-Moscow. They were mostly only jihadis-of-opportunity, realizing that waving a green flag around meant people in the Gulf would throw money at you, and immediately changed sides when somebody else started offering more money.
--- On Sun, 5/24/09, Max Sawicky <sawicky at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> 3. AQ and the Taliban do not and never had much in
> common. The
> Taliban needed OBL for money. More generally, the
> fundamentalists are
> profoundly anarchic in character, every element focused on
> their own
> parochial concerns. It's really only the dough that
> keeps them
> marginally tied together.
>