Sorry about the caption, I know there are better versions of it out there. Anyway the caption indicates the Afghans are “Taliban”, an obvious impossibility as Reagan was in office until 1989 while Mullah Omar founded the Taliban in 1994. Other versions of the picture indicate the date as being 1985. There is a woman on the far right side and the Taliban would obviously have not had a woman representative. I’ve never been able to find a caption explaining exactly who each of those people were. Who are they?
There is some kind of misunderstanding here. Yes I am aware they are Afghans and since they are meeting with Reagan probably members of the anti-Soviet reisstance. I meant WHO, as in what are their names and what did they go on to do later on. Since they are meeting with the POTUS they must be at least somewhat notable.
One of them is Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi who was one of the Mujahadeen commanders who supported the Taliban takeover in 1996, and was in fact a mentor to several young Taliban leaders.
Here’s a brief AP article about the 1983 meeting, though it doesn’t provide the names of the Afghans. Someone with a better news archive access than I will have to dig deeper.
Although the AP article characterizes them as guerrillas the brief descriptions make them sound more like ordinary Afghans testifying to Soviet atrocities. They could be both, but I doubt they were individuals of any great political or historical significance; just some folks with good stories that Charlie Wilson could put on a plane to DC.
Here’s another AP article concerning the Soviet response. (Though I wonder if “score” is a typo for “scorn” or something.) Reagan calls them “freedom fighters” and the Soviets called them “counterrevolutionary ringleaders”, which suggests that both sides agreed they were involved in resistance activities of some kind.
