>Afganistan is probably the best example. It was never easy to govern, but after the US trained a guerilla resistance to the Soviet invasion it became impossible. Most of the Islamic fundamentalism that the USA is fighting today can be traced back to that one event.
I disagree, but with some context. If you just go back to the cold war, you would be correct, but in a longer time-frame context, I would posit instead it was mostly at the British backing of the Saud's that created the later environment exploited in the 80s and then again later. I recently read a book, sorry I can't remember the name right now, written by an AQ guy turned intel-asset who actually spent time inside the Afghan camps. He mentioned enough times for it to stick in my mind how the funding came from SA, and how the more powerful people in the groups (trainers, etc) were either from SA or Wahhabists. That sent me on a journey of reading up on SA that left me really feeling a lot of it was due to Britain wanting to maintain the tendrils of Empire, not taking into account the possibility of blowback later, or rather, finding it an acceptable price to pay.
Mark Curtis wrote a book that I found most illuminating on the subject, "Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam":
"As Britain withdrew its military forces from the Middle East in the late 1960s, Islamist forces such as the Saudi regime and, once again, the Muslim Brotherhood, were often seen as proxies to maintain British interests in the region, to continue to destabilise communist or nationalist regimes or as ‘muscle’ to bolster pro-British, right-wing governments. By the 1970s, Arab nationalism had been virtually defeated as a political force, partly thanks to Anglo–American opposition; it was largely replaced by the rising force of radical Islam, which London again often saw as a handy weapon to counter the remnants of secular nationalism and communism in key states such as Egypt and Jordan."..." Britain continued to see some of these groups as useful, principally as proxy guerilla forces in places as diverse as Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Libya; there,they were used either to help break up the Soviet Union and secure major oil interests or to fight nationalist regimes," ... "Whitehall not only tolerated but encouraged the development of ‘Londonistan’–the capital acting as a base and organising centre for numerous jihadist groups –even as this provided a de facto ‘green light’to that terrorism.I suggest that some elements, at least, in the British establishment may have allowed some Islamist groups to operate from London not only because they provided information to the security services but also because they were seen as useful to British foreign policy, notably in maintaining a politically divided Middle East –a long-standing goal of imperial and postwar planners –and as a lever to influence foreign governments’ policies."... "Churchill later wrote that 'my admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us'"
Yes, as another commenter said, I can also recommend Ghost Wars as one of my favorite books on Afghanistan, and Steve Colls more recent work Directorate S is also extremely well written in the same vein.