@Mattster
I will try my best not to be biased. The thing goes back to the time of your nation's involvement in the Soviet invasion. When the US decided to get involved, there was a large scare presumably in Pakistan. This was important concern for the Pakistanis since due to cold war politics, they did not want to get stranded in between Soviet Union and us (both of whom were in the same camp) and especially after Khrushchev had threatened to nuke Pakistan off the map.
As a part of the battle strategy to create "religious warriors" or mujahideen, the then dictator of Pakistan General Zia Ul Haq, changed the entire education and law and even fabric of society for Pakistan. Blind religious hardliners were employed to radicalize the youth for "holy war against kuffar Soviets". This tactic was effective as US did not need to engage Soviets directly and saved the trouble of engaging them for Pakistanis. In the name of religion, thousands of illiterate and 'pious' families send their youth to fight for "religion" against the non-believers the atheist Soviets. Mujahideen from Somalia, east Africa, possibly Caucasus but largely from Pakistan's northern regions (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, the Pushtuns who share connections to Afghanistan) as well as many other regions joined up for war against USSR.
To ingrain this radical hate mentality, drastic changes were made in 'social orientation'. Religious discourses now became more political and more and more youth would be radicalized (part of the 72 virgins brainwashing) to hate the non-believer invaders. This began to emerge as a suicidal tendency. Backed by your country the US and the NATO, these people now completely brainwashed, began to fight without concern for their life since they assumed to be fighting for "religion". The Soviets, who were masters of warfare in European plains as they had trained to fight you and rest of Europeans, began to suffer defeats and were massacred by these hate-filled and brainwashed fighters.
Despite immense technological capability, their combat skills in the mountains were useless as they mostly had conscript soldiers who were either teenagers or in their early 20s. Many were killed. There were a few engagements between Pakistani air force and Soviet fighter jets but the menace of Mujahideen and your backing saved the Pakistani nation in general from the Bear's fury.
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Now comes the real part: After you and your allies left Afghanistan post Soviet withdrawal, The mujahideen had nothing to do. Still filled with the same level of madness, they were growing restless. That is when the Pakistani military intelligence picked your cue of using asymmetric warfare against us in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, beginning 2 decades of violence and bloodshed. Sanctioned by you and hurt, Pakistan began using the largely simple Muslim population of the state of Kashmir and using religion to radicalize them all while pumping in the jobless Mujahideen who got a new arena to vent their savagery. This was a perfect and smart strategy of "bleeding India with thousand cuts".
Initially after the massacre of thousands of Kashmiri pandits, sikhs and Buddhists and many more hundreds of thousands who fled the valley in the largest ethnic cleansing post World War 2, there were no "kuffar" or non-believers. Thus began the radicalization of Kashmiri Muslims who being duped by religious sentiments began to buy the lies and started revolting against the state of India. Initially, we suffered badly.
Lot of factors contributed to India's sufferings:
-Weak government
-Collapse of sole military ally USSR
-Pathetic economy
-Rising financial problems
-Low foreign currency reserve
-Terrible and confused defense policy (there was a drastic cut in defence made just when Kashmir's Jihad started)
At that time, these mujahideen began to achieve great successes and Indian military due to lack of good weapons suffered a lot. However, this kept continuing and became an ingrained mentality of whoever came across brainwashed by sentiment of "religion" by fundamentalist clerics for:
-Jihad
-Fighting against non-believer
-Not giving up at any cost
-Gift of 72 Virgins
etc etc
All this was going happy and skippy until the infamous Kargil War of 1999 and a couple of planes flew into your 2 fine tall buildings called Twin Towers. Until then, US repeatedly ignored our requests to check terrorism on Pakistan. But then as soon as the 9/11 happened, all that changed. This began to show how years of radicalization fostered despite Soviet Union's death and how this was going to affect US. Soon Pakistan was pressed into WOT by Bush Jr and began the long story of attacks.
Taliban until now was a stooge of Pakistan in Afghanistan post USSR-demise. Using religion as a bond, they continued their barbaric activities what they were taught and brainwashed during the 80s. However, due to your pressure, Musharraf was forced to change alliances overnight. Being emotionally unstable and stubbornly radical, Taliban felt betrayed.
Your country began to be visible to Taliban in the same image that you had made for them in their minds about USSR. Apart from that, the asymetric warfare gave our troops immense understanding of how to gain expertise in this form of new warfare in mountainous areas. On top of the chaos Pakistan's economy began to slide as ours started sky-rocketing.
Frustration mounted and radicalization began even more in madrassas where local street clerics began to command more power than a loose ruling elite. To these radical clerics, you look the same as Russians once did.
the rest..... you know it all....
