Taliban

Taliban redirects here. For other uses, see Taliban (disambiguation).

Flag flown by the Taliban. It is white, with the shahadah, or Islamic creed, written in black.

The Taliban Movement or just Taliban(Persian and Pashto طالبان, Iranian, from the dual form of Arabic طالب ṭālib, "student"), is a Sunni Islamist nationalist pro-Pashtun Movement which effectively ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. It gained diplomatic recognition from only three States: the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the unrecognized government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The most influential members, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Movement, were simple village mullahs (junior Islamic religious scholars), most of whom had studied in Madrassas in Pakistan. The Taliban movement derived mainly from Pashtuns of Afghanistan and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, but also included many non-Afghan volunteers from the Arab world, as well as Eurasia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Rise to power

After the overthrow of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, Afghanistan was thrown into civil war between competing warlords that emerged from the Mujahideen forces that the U.S. had helped to bankroll. Out of this, the Taliban eventually built a miltary force capable of enforcing its order on the country. The rise of the Taliban helped the economy by eliminating the payments that warlords demanded from business people; it brought political benefits by reducing factional fighting (the Taliban fought aggressively against their enemies and their intolerance and relative hegemony led to a reduction of the number of factions) and brought relative stability by imposing a set of norms on a chaotic society. The radical ideology of the Taliban would later alienate many observers who initially considered its emergence as a positive development.

Taliban legend has it that in the spring of 1994, upon hearing of the abduction and rape of two girls at a Mujahidin checkpoint in the village of Sang Hesar near Kandahar, local Mullah Omar, a veteran of the Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami faction of the Mujahidin, gathered thirty other Taliban into a fighting force, rescued the girls and hanged the commander of the Mujahideen. After this incident, Taliban legend goes, the services of these pious religious fighters were in much demand from villagers plagued by unruly Mujahidin, and thus the Taliban were born.

Following this incident, Omar fled to the neighboring Balochistan province of Pakistan, from where he emerged in the fall of 1994, reportedly with a well-armed and well-funded militia of 1,500 followers, who would provide protection for a Pakistani trade convoy carrying goods overland to Turkmenistan. However, many reports suggest that the convoy was in fact full of Pakistani fighters posing as Taliban, and that the Taliban had gained considerable arms, military training, and economic aid from the Pakistanis. Some claim that support also came from the U.S., which would have preferred a Pakistan-installed government over the Iranian/Russian-backed Northern Alliance. This scenario would be much more likely if the US had actually recognized the Taliban instead of militating for the world not to recognize them.

After gaining power in and around Kandahar through a combination of military and diplomatic victories, the Taliban attacked, and eventually defeated, the forces of Ismail Khan in the west of the country, capturing Herat from him on September 5, 1995. That winter, the Taliban laid siege to the capital city Kabul, firing rockets into the city and blockading trade routes. In March, the Taliban's opponents, Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar ceased fighting one another and formed a new anti-Taliban alliance. But on September 26, 1996, they quit the city of Kabul and retreated north, allowing the Taliban to capture the seat of government and establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Upon taking Kabul, Taliban forces took former PDPA president Mohammad Najibullah, who had been residing in a UN compound, and hanged him and his brother from a traffic light post.

On May 20, 1997, brother Generals Abdul Malik Pehlawan and Mohammed Pehlawan mutinied from under Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum's command and formed an alliance with the Taliban. Three days later, Dostum abandoned much of his army and fled from his base in Mazar-i Sharif into Uzbekistan. On May 25, Taliban forces, along with those of the mutinous generals, entered the undefended Mazar-i Sharif. That same day, Pakistan recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, followed by recognition from Saudi Arabia the following day. However, on May 27, fierce street battles broke out between the Taliban and Malik's forces. The Taliban, unused to urban warfare, were soundly defeated, with thousands losing their lives either in battle or in mass executions afterward. Nearly fifteen months passed before the Taliban re-captured Mazar-i Sharif on August 8, 1998. During the re-capture the Taliban executed the entire diplomatic corps of the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif. This resulted in the mobilisation of the Iranian army and the near outbreak of hostilities between the Taliban and Iran.

On August 20, 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered the United States Navy to fire cruise missiles on four sites in Afghanistan, all near Khost (and one in Sudan), which the U.S. claimed were terrorist training camps. This was known as Operation Infinite Reach. The sites included one run by Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, who had allegedly directed the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Three other villages, whose legitimacy as targets was strongly disputed by many sources, were also struck.

At its height, the Emirate was diplomatically recognised by Pakistan, by the United Arab Emirates and by Saudi Arabia. It then controlled all of Afghanistan, apart from small regions in the northeast which were held by the Northern Alliance. Most of the rest of the world, and the United Nations continued to recognize Rabbani as Afghanistan's legal Head of State, although it was generally understood that he had no real influence in the country.

The Taliban received logistical and humanitarian support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. An estimated $2 million came each year from Saudi Arabia's major charity, funding two universities and 6 health clinics and supporting 4,000 orphans. The Saudi King Fahd sent an annual shipment of dates as a gift. The relationship with Iran was considered poor due to the Taliban's strong anti-Shi'ah policy. Relations between Iran and the Taliban deteriorated further in 1998 after Taliban forces seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif and executed Iranian diplomats. Iran went to the brink of war over this. Following the incident, and the military de-escalation Iran stepped up support for the Taliban's rivals, the Northern Alliance.

Recognition

Neighboring Pakistan recognized the Taliban Government. The extent of and reason for Pakistans support of Taliban has been controversial. Pakistan's interior minister at the time, Naseerullah Babur said in an interview,

The Taliban was a purely indigenous movement. We came in where we rightly assessed that the Taliban were restoring peace in Afghanistan and our chief interest being that there would be no peace in Pakistan unless there was peace in Afghanistan. Our policy was based on purely humanitarian grounds and the cornerstone being the unity and integrity of Afghanistan. We were not interested in individuals but the well being of the Afghan people.[2]

A more cynical view is that the Taliban movement was created, at least in part, by Pakistan's extremely powerful army intelligence Inter-Services Intelligence and that the movement provided (and provides) religiously motivated guerilla fighters (or terrorists) in Pakistan's never-ending dispute with India over Kashmir. These fighters wage asymmetrical warfare against India, tying down significant forces and bleeding India's army, much in the same way that the CIA supported muhajadin bled the Red Army in Afghanistan. It is ironic that the ISI itself gained power in Pakistan through it being the conduit of CIA aid to the muhajadin.

Culture

In the languages spoken in Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, (Persian and Pushtu), Taliban means those who study the book (referring to the Qur'an). It is derived from the Arabic word for seeker or student, talib. Through certain Pakistani madrasahs, the Taliban may have also been influenced by the Deobandi School of thought which emphasizes piety, austerity, and the family obligations of men. They emerged from the ethnically Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. Many of the Taliban grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan.

Life under Taliban government

Islamic law

Once in power, the Taliban instituted a form of Shari'ah (Islamic law). The Taliban's reform of government was in part directed by scholars of Islamic law. Among the laws applied were criminal punishments, administered by a religious police force, including amputation of one or both hands for theft and stoning for adultery.

The Taliban banned all forms of television, imagery, music and sports. In response to this ban the International Olympic Committee suspended Afghanistan from participation in the 2000 Summer Olympics. Men were required to keep their beards at a specified length.

Opium trade

The Taliban banned opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in late 1997. But by 2000, Afghanistan's opium production still accounted for 75% of the world's supply. On July 27, 2000, the Taliban again issued a decree banning opium poppy cultivation. By February 2001, production had reduced by 98%. ^[1] Following the fall of the Taliban regime, the areas controlled by the Northern Alliance resumed opium production and by 2004 production was 87% of the world's opium supply.^[2] Most Afghan opium is sold in Europe and not the United States.

There was comment from the international human rights community on the brutality of the Taliban's anti-drug interdictions, including violent punishment of offenders.

The U.S. State Department noted in 2001 that "Neither the Taliban nor the Northern Alliance has taken any significant action to seize stored opium, precursor chemicals or arrest and prosecute narcotics traffickers. On the contrary, authorities were said to continue to tax the opium poppy crop at about ten percent, and allow it to be sold in open bazaars, traded and transported."

However, the Taliban had succeeded in cutting annual poppy production from a CIA-estimated 4,042 tons per year to only 81.3 tons per year. In 2001 The United States provided $43 million worth of supplies (primarily wheat) to humanitarian relief organizations for distribution to the people of Afghanistan, while continuing to criticise the Taliban's activities. This was widely reported by critics of U.S. policy (such as Robert Scheer) to be a $43 million reward to the Taliban for reducing poppy production. The Taliban subsequently raided the shipments, but no evidence has been offered to indicate that this was the United States' intention.

Poppy production hit a record high since the fall of the Taliban government. In 2004, under the U.S. occupation, an estimated 4,950 metric tons of opium gum potentially producing 582 metric tons of heroin were harvested.[3]

Women

File:Talibanbeating.jpg

A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on September 26, 2001; photograph taken from footage filmed by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) [1]. The footage can be seen here.

The Taliban were widely criticized by Western countries for their oppression of women. Women were strictly limited in their ability to work in public places. However, they were allowed to set up their own businesses from their houses; if they had the means to do so. They were also permitted to work in certain medical positions, but they could only treat female patients. Women with children were not permitted to do any work. The Taliban believed women should stay home in order that their children did not have to grow up in the care of another, and also believed that work is the duty of the male in the house and to reject this duty was haraam.

The Taliban religion minister, Al-Haj Maulwi Qalamuddin, told the New York Times that "To a country on fire, the world wants to give a match. Why is there such concern about women? Bread costs too much. There is no work. Even boys are not going to school. And yet all I hear about are women. Where was the world when men here were violating any woman they wanted?"

Yet women were always an important issue for the Taliban and the Mujahideen movement from which they originated. Under the PDPA government the Mujahideen resistance were notorious for throwing acid in the faces of women not covering their faces with the burqa or some other form of veil, and for killing teachers that were teaching young girls how to read and write as part of the PDPA's literacy campaign.^{[citation needed]}

While in power the Taliban claimed that the education of girls in rural Afghanistan was increasing, a UNESCO report said that there was "a whopping 65% drop in their enrollment. In schools run by the Directorate of Education, only 1 per cent of the pupils are girls. The percentage of female teachers, too, has slid from 59.2 percent in 1990 to 13.5 percent in 1999."^{[citation needed]}

Supporters of the Taliban suggested that the depression and the other problems plaguing Afghani women were the result of dire poverty, years of war, the bad economy, and the fact that many were left war widows, and could no longer provide food for their families without some sort of international aid.^{[citation needed]}

Women were also obliged to wear the burqa when appearing in public, and failure to do so could attract a public beating [4] (video). The Taliban stated that women were obliged to wear the burqa due to Islamic teachings which state that women must cover up her body in front of non-mahram men, and that both men and women should dress modestly. Some feminists saw the repression under the Taliban as a form of misogyny and gender apartheid.[[5]]

Children

Girls

Most young girls were required to cover most of their bodies, but were normally not required to cover their entire body. The clothing they had to wear still allowed for more movement, and was more revealing, than the adult women's clothing. However, they could still be beaten for appearing in public without a male escort. They couldn't go to school. They were, however, able to go out for water alone.

Boys

Boys had more freedom than girls. They were allowed to go outside alone, go to school, and have a job. They were also counted as escorts for women and girls of any age. However, they still weren't allowed to use kites or any other children's toys. Some girls dressed as boys so that they could provide for their family if their father had died or been sent to prison.

Religious Minorities

On June 19, 2001, the Taliban instituted a policy of requiring all Hindus living in their territories to wear distinguishing labels on their clothing to mark them as non-Muslims. The Taliban stated that this was done to keep them from being targeted by religious police enforcing Islamic law, but opponents claimed that this might have the opposite effect. Hundreds marched in Bhopal, India, in a demonstration against this law. [6]

Hazaras under the Taliban

Minority groups, especially Hazaras, were persecuted and oppressed by the Taliban. [7]

Patrolling the streets in pickup trucks, Taliban members, under the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Amr-bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar), searched houses and destroyed any television sets, radios, cassettes, and photographs and "punished" the owners.

Numerous Taliban leaders are known to have made comments advocating the persecution and, in some cases, genocide of the Hazaras: [8]

"The policy of the Taliban is to exterminate the Hazaras." Maulawi Mohammed Hanif, Taliban Commander announcing their policy to a crowd of 300 people summoned to a mosque (after killing 15,000 Hazaras people in a day).

"Hazaras are not Muslims. You can kill them. It is not a sin." Mullah Manon Niazi, Taliban Governor of Mazar-e Sharif speaking to a crowd in a mosque after the fall of Mazara-e-Sharif city in 1998.

"Tajiks may go to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan and Hazaras to "Goristan" (Graveyard). Afghanistan doesn't belong to you." Mullah Manon Niazi, Taliban Governor of Mazar-e Sharif speaking to a crowd in a mosque after the fall of Mazara-e-Sharif city in 1998.

Because international media and press had minimal access to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, very little account of human rights violations and massacres under the Taliban really exists. Stories of these events can be heard throughout Afghanistan by eyewitnesses and by the mass graves discovered in Bamiyan, Mazar e Sharif, Dashth e Laili, Yakaolang, Sarobi and many other places.^{[citation needed]}

However two incidents that have come to the public knowledge through the Human Rights Watch are the January 2001 Yakaolang massacre [9] and the May 2000 Robatak Pass massacre [10].

Buddhas of Bamiyan

In March 2001, the Taliban ordered the demolition of two statues of Buddha carved into cliffsides at Bamiyan, one 38 metres tall and about 1800 years old, the other 53 metres tall and about 1500 years old. The act was condemned by UNESCO and many countries around the world.

The intentions of the destruction remain unclear. Mullah Omar initially supported the preservation of Afghanistan's heritage, and Japan offered to pay for the preservation of the statues. However, after a few years, a decree was issued claiming all idols must be destroyed as per Islamic law that prohibits any form of idol worship as shirk (i.e., a sin).

Locals claim that Pakistani and Saudi engineers were onsite as volunteers to help with the statues' destruction, and that Afghanistan's treasures were ferried across the border to be plundered by private collectors. The government of Pakistan (itself host to one of the richest and most antiquated collections of Buddhist art) implored the Taliban to spare the statues. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates later denounced the act as savage. The destruction of these priceless historical monuments made the Taliban look barbarous in the eyes of many in both the West and the East.

Relationship with Osama bin Laden

In 1996, Saudi Islamic dissident Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan upon the invitation of the Northern Alliance leader Abdur Rabb ur Rasool Sayyaf. When the Taliban came to power, bin Laden was able to forge an alliance between the Taliban and his Al-Qaeda organization. It is understood that al-Qaeda-trained fighters known as the 055 Brigade were integrated with the Taliban army between 1997 and 2001. The Taliban and bin Laden had very close connections, which were formalized by a marriage of one of bin Laden's sons to Omar's daughter.

NATO invasion and Occupation (2001 to Present)

On September 20, 2001, as the U.S. strongly suspected Osama bin Laden and his hosts, the Taliban, were behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. made a five point ultimatum to the Taliban: (1) deliver to the US all of the leaders of Al Qaeda; (2) Release all imprisoned foreign nationals; (3) Close immediately every terrorist training camp; (4) Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities; (5) Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection [11]. The Taliban rejected this ultimatum on September 21, 2001, stating there was no evidence in their possession linking Bin Laden to the September 11 attacks [12].

In 2004 before the US elections Bin Laden did in fact take personal responsibility for ordering the attacks on New York and Washington.

On September 22, 2001, the United Arab Emirates and later Saudi Arabia withdrew their recognition of the Taliban as the legal government of Afghanistan, leaving neighboring Pakistan as the only remaining country with diplomatic ties. On October 4, 2001, it is believed that the Taliban covertly offered to turn Bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial in an international tribunal that operated according to Islamic shar'ia law [13]. Pakistan is believed to have rejected the offer. On October 7, 2001, before the onset of military operations, the Taliban made an open offer to try Bin Laden in Afghanistan in an Islamic court[14]. This counteroffer was immediately rejected by the U.S. as insufficient.

Shortly afterward, on October 7, 2001, the United States, aided by the United Kingdom and supported by a coalition of other countries including the NATO alliance, initiated military actions, code named Operation Enduring Freedom, and bombed Taliban and Al Qaeda related camps[15][16]. The stated intent of military operations was to remove the Taliban from power because of the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his involvement in the September 11 attacks, and disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations[17]. On October 14 the Taliban openly counteroffered to hand Bin Laden over to a third country for trial, but only if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Ladens involvement in 9/11[18]. The U.S. rejected this offer as well and continued with military operations.

Hostilities against the Taliban continued according to NATO plans. The ground war was mainly fought by the Northern Alliance, the remaining elements of the anti-Taliban forces which the Taliban had routed over the previous years but had never been able to entirely destroy. Mazar-i-Sharif fell to U.S.-Northern Alliance forces on November 9, leading to a cascade of provinces falling with minimal resistance, and many local forces switching loyalties from the Taliban to the Northern Alliance. On the night of November 12, the Taliban retreated south in an orderly fashion from Kabul. This was sufficiently orderly, that on November 15, they released eight Western aid workers after three months in captivity (see Attacks on humanitarian workers). By November 13 the Taliban had withdrawn from both Kabul and Jalalabad. Finally, in early December, the Taliban gave up their last city stronghold of Kandehar and retired to the hilly wilderness along the Afghanistan - Pakistan border, where they remain today as a guerilla warfare operation, drawing new recruits and developing plans for a restoration of power.

Most of these post-invasion Taliban fighters are new recruits, drawn again from that region's madrassahs (madrassah means "school" in Arabic). The more traditional Qur'anic schools are claimed by the U.S. to be the primary source of the new fighters.

The insurgency, in the form of a Taliban guerrilla war, continues. However, the Pashtun tribal group, with over 40 million members, has a long history of resistance to occupation forces in the region so the Taliban themselves may comprise only a part of the insurgency.

By June 2006, the unrest was sufficiently noteable that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, had taken the extraordinary measure of publically criticizing the methods of western powers who worked to place him in power: "And for two years I have systematically, consistently and on a daily basis warned the international community of what was developing in Afghanistan and of the need for a change of approach in this regard." He added, “The international community [must] reassess the manner in which this war against terror is conducted”

Before the summer 2006 offensive began indications existed that NATO peacekeepers in Afghanistan had lost influence and power to other groups, including potentially the Taliban. The most noted of this is the riots in May after a street accident in the city of Kabul.

Though it is very hard to gain any visibility about what is happening in Afghanistan it is possible to deduce a number of reasonable possibilities given general knowledge of the situation. The continued support from tribes and other in Pakistan, the drug trade and the small number of NATO forces combined with the long history of resistance and isolation all combine to the conclusion that if not gaining power, Taliban forces and leaders are likely surviving and will play a significant role in Afghanistan in to the future.

A troubling turn of events is the introduction of suicide and terrorist methods in the war not used in 2001. This points to a possible expansion of foreign Jihadist influence in the war and the growth of a global movement able to deploy hundreds of suicide attackers in many different countries. Since survival of such movements depends of their ability to remain hidden from Western Intelligence it is impossible to form a good understanding of how one works while it still exists.

Previous Western links

The Taliban have had negotiations with U.S. and Argentinian petroleum companies. In 1997, a delegation from the Taliban went to Texas for talks about the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The Taliban spent several days in Sugar Land, Texas, at UNOCAL's company headquarters. In spite of the civil war in Afghanistan at the time, both Unocal and Argentinian Bridas were in competition to construct the pipeline [19]. In 1998, the Taliban were in discussion with UNOCAL in the USA and with Bridas in Argentina in an attempt to agree the building of a gas pipeline across Afghanistan.[20]

References

External links

Afghanistan: Taliban on the Rise Documentary
The Role of U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the Rise of Afghan Fundamentalism
Brother, can you spare a tear for the Taliban by Kaleem Kawaja
Endgame
Taliban's point of view
An obituary of King Fahd. Considers past and current financial supporters of mujahideen and the Taliban including the U.S. government, King Fahd and Osama bin Laden.
Amir Butler: Understanding the reasons for Taliban defiance
Interview with two foreign Taliban fighters. November 22, 2001.
Afghani Roving Ambassador on NPR's Talk of the Nation March 21, 2001, about women's treatment, statue destruction and other "lies"
Afghani Ambassador Speech at USC
Who is responsible for the Taliban
"Bush's Faustian Deal with the Taliban", by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001