The US went into Afghanistan to steal all their shit and used 9/11 as an excuse. Plain and simple.

[DFW]

37. Ironically, much recent pilfering was done by the Taliban

They looted museums, and found huge caches of ancient bronze, silver and gold coins buried by the many groups of ancient Greek (Bactrian), Indian and Persian groups that traveled through there two thousand years ago. They also find groups of them uncovered when bombs explode. They have been selling these things for close to twenty years, mostly through Denmark, which never adopted Germany's restrictive "cultural protection" laws. The German laws are a joke, anyway, because they were passed as a public relations move, without ever hiring even one antiquities expert with enough knowledge to recognize that a coin dated "214 B.C." obviously wasn't.

Many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of these ancient Indian and Parthian (Persian) coins have been imported, quite legally, into the USA and sold to the public, usually through mass marketing programs (TV and magazines, I would assume). Since 99% of these coins do not constitute any kind of rarities, no one can tell a Taliban-sold coin from an identical one that somebody's grandfather bought on a trip to Afghanistan in 1960 for $3. Large, recent quantities, however, are of obvious provenance. All those "conserv'tive" people buying an old coin "from the time of Jesus" from some slick marketer with a story would probably have a fit if they knew they were supporting the Taliban. But maybe not, since they seem to find a way to rationalize all the other screwy shit they advocate.