I am wholeheartedly abhored and opposed to actions such as these, including Operation Timber Sycamore, but I think it’s worth adding context that there were other players in this field on all sides. The USA also cooperated with SA, UAE, Afghanistan, UK, and Israel in many such examples and the affiliations were usually public. Likewise, Russian was actively supporting the opponents in almost every single one of these conflicts and China is currently actively supporting and arming militants in nations west of India, in Iran, and in West Africa.

So yes, horrible things are happening and should stop. It’s not better that everyone else is also doing them, if anything it’s much worse, but to truly oppose these actions we need to find more direct and honest approaches to opposing the world’s largest dictatorships in the east.