did the US encourage the taliban to enforce the strictest version of islam possible
i know we armed them to beat the sovietsbut i cant think what possible foreign policy strategy would include banning music and movies because they were 'haram'
your timeline is a little bit off there, friend.
The Taliban was not armed to beat the Soviets, that was the Mujahideen. The Taliban played no part at all in beating the Soviets. In fact, parts of the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) and certain powerful warlord (Gulbodin Hekmatyar) who would later on be big players in the Taliban, were assisting the Soviets.
As for the US, I don't think they encouraged anything. They just put questionable people with very sketchy backgrounds in charge (such as Mullah Omar). The United States gave them power and did not care how they ran it, and left it all for Pakistan to control and dictate.
In fact, the great Ahmad Shah Massoud (may Allah have mercy on his soul) who was the leader of the Northern Alliance and simply a hero, had one meeting with the Taliban, and he walked out very quickly. He was later quoted as saying something to the effect of "I saw these people had no power, they were simply puppets following orders from higher up", he was referring to Pakistan. Immediately after, the Taliban officials who met him were killed by Senior Taliban for not killing Massoud there and then.
Long after the Taliban had shown their colors, the United States government had even invited some of their officials to the White House to set up further ties (this was actually shown on Fahrenheit 9/11 - which surprised me). This was almost a year before September 11.
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They completely transformed that place
I just remembered that the US basically aided Al-Qadea because they wanted to look good to defeat communism (which support wise, communism had begun tanking in the 70's) only to bite them in the ass as soon as 1998-1999 came around.
