In my previous blog on Afghanistan being a pawn in the power
game of superpowers, I had promised to write about the Taliban, its origin and
nature in my next blog. So here is the story. Though things are politically
quiet as of now in Kabul, no nation so far has recognized the Taliban as the
legitimate regime in Afghanistan. The UN is worried about the humanitarian
plight of the ordinary Afghan people, who have not received their salaries, and
are selling their goods at home to buy provisions for their families. Some of
the Western countries like Germany are contemplating distributing aid to Afghan
people, not through Taliban, but directly, may be through some NGOs. We are yet
to see that drama unfolding.
Taliban mainly consist of Pashtun tribe, who live on both the
sides of the un-demarcated border with Pakistan. The Taliban governor of
Kandahar, the one-legged Mullah Mohammed Hassan Rehmani, (Hassan for short) was the founder member of Taliban. He had taken part in the
war to oust Russians in 1989. He is number two to Mullah Omar, who rules from
Kandahar, and refuses to shift to Kabul even after they had won it, and refuses
to visit any other place or let foreign delegates visit him. Mullah Omar is
one-eyed leader. Many of Taliban leaders are disabled in similar way, a
reminder of 20 years of constant warfare. To fight Soviet forces USA, Saudi
Arabia and some Western and Islamic countries spent around $10 billion to arm
and equip the Mujahidin. CIA of USA and ISI of Pakistan kept pumping funds to Mujahidin,
but without reckoning that another force was rising up in Afghanistan.
Durrani Pashtuns started to resist in Kandahar and won it
after a bloody fight in 1980s. Kandahar is Afghanistan's second largest city
after Kabul. Ahmad Shaw Durrani from Kandahar had established Durrani dynasty in
1761 and his descendants had ruled Afghanistan for 300 years. He was the one
who united the Afghan territory to form the Afghanistan nation. Kandahar was
famous for fruit orchards, growing grapes, melons, mulberries, figs, peaches
and pomegranates, as it is an oasis town set in the desert. These fruits were
exported to India and Iran.
Taliban emerged as a force to reckon with by the end of 1994.
Durranis had lost Kabul, the capital and the country was divided into warlord
fiefdoms, all fighting one another and switching sides, in an array of
alliances, betrayals and bloodshed. Non-Pashtun leaders in Kandahar sold off
everything to Pakistani traders to make money and to buy weapons. The warlords
seized homes and farms, threw out the occupants and handed them over to their
supporters. The Commanders abused the population of Kandahar by kidnapping
young girls and boys for their sexual pleasures. The local population fled as
refugees from Kandahar to Quetta in Pakistan. Mujahidin leaders from Kandahar
like Mullah Omar, Hassan, etc., who had gone to Kandahar and Quetta to study in
the madrassas there often discussed such
misuse of their population by the bandits, the so-called leaders. Many were
searching for a solution.
After much discussion these divergent groups who were deeply
concerned about the country, gathered around Mullah Omar in Kandahar and formed
an agenda which will become the declared aims of Taliban: to restore peace, disarm
the population, enforce Sharia law,
and defend the integrity and Islamic character of Afghanistan. Most of them
were full or part-time students of madrassas.
They chose the name Taliban for themselves. A talib is an Islamic student, one who seeks knowledge, a student.
Taliban is the plural of Talib. They
distanced themselves from the party politics of Mujahidin and proclaimed
themselves a movement for cleansing the society rather than to grab power and
rule. Many of them were born in Pakistan refugee camps, educated by the
half-educated mullahs in Pakistani madrassas
and learnt their fighting skills from the Mujahedin parties based in Pakistan.
These young Taliban hardly knew their own history, but learnt from the madrassas the ideal Islamic society established
by Prophet Mohammed in 7th century and wanted to establish such a
society in Afghanistan as an answer to its problems.
Mulla Muhammed Omar, born near Kandahar, a Pashtun,
was selected as their leader. Their main aim was to save the Afghan people from
the hands of Mujahidin. He functions from Kandahar which they capture in 1980
and rarely goes outside. Several secretaries take notes of his discussions and
decisions and Omar dishes out Afghani notes from a tin trunk to his commanders
and people in need; in another trunk he keeps US dollars. These tin trunks are
the treasury of Taliban movement! This small group of Omar started to help
people by releasing captured teenage girls and boys by the warlords and the
public started to come to them to settle their local disputes as well. Omar
said they were fighting Muslims who had gone wrong, almost like a Robin Hood,
helping the poor against the rapacious commanders. He asked for no rewards or
money but asked people to follow the Islamic system that he will set up.
October 1994, some 200 Taliban from Kandahar and Pakistani madrassas attacked the garrison in Spin
Baldak in the border of Pakistan and with the help of Pakistan captured a large
dump of arms. They captured Kandahar by November 1994. By December 1994, their
strength went up to 12,000 with Afghani and Pakistani madrassa students joining them. Some of them were as young as 14
years and 24 years old. Taliban started to implement their agenda – they closed
down girl’s schools, banned women from working outside the home, smashed TV
sets, forbade sports and recreational activities, and ordered all males to grow
long beards. Within the next three months Mullah Omar and his army of students
had taken control of 12 of Afghanistan’s 31 provinces.
Taliban had spent most
of their young lives in refugee camps in Baluchistan and NWFP of Pakistan,
imbibing Koranic education given in dozens of madrassas in the borders, run by Afghan mullas or Pakistan’s Islamic fundamentalist parties. They had no
formal education in mathes or science or history or geography. These boys were
from a generation that had seen no peace in their country. They were what the
war had thrown up in the shores of Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. They were
literally orphans of the war, rootless, jobless and economically deprived. The
only thing they knew was Koran and to fight. They were under an all-male
brotherhood, for they knew nothing else. They had grown up without women –
mothers or sisters or aunts or cousins. The boys lived rough and tough lives,
and never knew the company of women. They felt threatened by women whom they
have never interacted with in their conservative madrassas and subjugated them, a fundamental marker of difference
between Taliban and the former Mujahidin. They fought well and were invincible;
even when they lost they kept coming back till they won. Recruitment was no
problem, as willing students from Pakistani madrassas
kept joining them in hoards.
Haret, a major city, with non-Pashtun population, fell to the
Taliban in 1995. In April 1996, Mullah Omar was nominated as the ‘Commander of
the Faithful’, and the country was renamed as the Emirate of Afghanistan. Kabul
fell to the Taliban in September 1996. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia switched from
Mujahidin and started to fund and support Taliban. By then they controlled 22
provinces of the 31 in Afghanistan. Omar continued to rule from Kandahar and
never even visited Kabul, which was the capital and had non-Pashtun population.
I suppose the rest is history.
Welfare of the population was hardly a concern for Taliban.
They believed that Allah will take care of them one way or the other. Either
they die or live! It is all Allah’s mercy. By 2000, as Taliban was sheltering
Osama Bin Laden, Saudi Arabia stopped funding them. Pakistan became its sole
supporter; the only country in the whole world to help and bolster Taliban, for
it was their own creation. The Taliban were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated
in Pakistani madrassas, and learnt their
fighting skills from Mujahidin based in Pakistan. How could they disown them! But
what is the price that Pakistan will pay for this foolhardy support of a terrorist
group close to its border! Talibanization of Pakistan is the result of such a policy.
Pakistan might soon face a Taliban-style Islamic revolution in their country. Afghanistan
itself has become a haven for Islamic internationalism and terrorism. Taliban has remained today internationally
isolated and a pariah in the world of politics.[1]
