Taliban

I

Introduction

Taliban, Islamic fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan that controlled most of the country from September 1996 to November 2001. The Taliban movement was created in 1994 by a senior mullah (Islamic priest), Mohammed Omar, in the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahār. The name Taliban, meaning “student,” refers to the movement’s origins in Islamic religious schools, or madrasas, although most members knew war all their lives and attended the madrasas only for rudimentary religious training. Although it was ousted from power by a United States-led invasion in 2001 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Taliban reorganized and by 2008 was leading an insurgency that reportedly controlled as much as 40 percent of Afghanistan.

II

Origins and Rise to Power

The Taliban movement emerged out of the chaos and uncertainty of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and subsequent civil war in Afghanistan. During the 1980s Afghanistan was occupied by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and ruled by a Soviet-backed government. Afghanistan’s long war with the USSR was largely fought by mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla) factions with assistance from the United States; Pakistan also provided places of refuge, military training, and other support. After the Soviets completed their withdrawal in 1989, civil war broke out between the mujahideen factions and the central government.

Afghanistan’s central government had long been dominated by the country’s majority ethnic group, the Pashtuns, but after the Soviet withdrawal a coalition government that included Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and other minority groups came to power. The Taliban emerged as a faction of mujahideen soldiers who identified themselves as religious students. The Taliban consisted mostly of Pashtuns intent on once again dominating the central government in Kābul. They were trained and armed by the Frontier Constabulary, a quasi-military unit in Pakistan, which also has a significant Pashtun population. The Taliban actively recruited thousands of young men in the Afghan refugee camps and the madrasas in Pakistan. Many war orphans also joined the movement. The Taliban promoted itself as a new force for peace and unity, and many war-weary Afghan people, particularly Pashtuns, supported the Taliban in hopes of respite from years of war.

In late 1994 and early 1995 the Taliban moved through the south and west of Afghanistan, taking control of Kandahār and many other towns and cities dominated by fellow Pashtuns. Herāt and most of the other towns along the main southern and western highway soon followed. In February 1995 the Taliban reached the outskirts of Kābul but was ousted by government forces in March. Again it advanced to the capital in October. While continuing to assault Kābul with rockets and bombs, Taliban soldiers advanced and took control of eastern Afghanistan, as well as the country’s central area. The Taliban continued its siege of Kābul off and on throughout 1996 until it was able to advance and capture the city in September. Government troops and officials, including President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, fled to the northern part of the country. Shortly after the capital fell to the Taliban, the country’s last Soviet-backed president, Mohammad Najibullah, and his brother, security chief Shahpur Ahmadzai, were seized and publicly hanged.

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III

Taliban Regime

After taking over Kābul, Taliban leaders began to institute an uncompromising regime. Their basic premise was to enforce a purist way of life based on their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They immediately created the Ministry for Ordering What Is Right and Forbidding What Is Wrong to impose and enforce their rules of conduct. Mohammed Omar led the Taliban as Amir-ul-Momineen (Commander of the Faithful). He was the supreme leader in a strictly hierarchical system of rule. He was advised on various matters by members of special shuras (councils) composed of high-ranking Taliban leaders. Ultimately Omar was the only individual who could issue an official edict. Many of the Taliban edicts had little to do with pure Islam or the teachings of the Qur’an and were actually based in ancient tribal rules and customs. Most of the rules reflected a disenchantment with modern life. The Taliban continually issued new rules and used Radio Kābul and trucks equipped with loudspeakers to announce them. The rules of conduct eventually covered almost every aspect of social behavior by the population, even forbidding things such as clapping, kite flying, and squeaky shoes.

The Taliban banned music and dancing, shut down movie theaters and television stations, destroyed public works of art that depicted living beings, and forbade the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Men were ordered to grow full, untrimmed beards (in accordance with orthodox Islam) and were rounded up and beaten with sticks in an effort to force prayer in the mosques. The Taliban strongly enforced the ancient custom of purdah, the veiling and seclusion of women from men. Women were ordered to cover themselves from head to toe in burkas (long, tentlike veils). Girls’ schools were closed, and women were forbidden to work outside their homes. As a result, hospitals lost almost all their staffs and children in orphanages were abandoned. In a country where hundreds of thousands of men had been killed in warfare, widows found themselves unable to work to provide basic necessities for their families.

The Taliban religious police enforced the new rules and punished anyone found disobeying. They inflicted many of the punishments on the spot, usually ruthlessly, without offering the offender any sort of judicial hearing. The Taliban allowed public beatings and stonings, sometimes fatal, of women who violated the dress code or were escorted by men not related to them. Any person found not praying at the required times was imprisoned. The Taliban leaders also mandated specific punishments for other types of crimes. They made murder, adultery, and drug dealing punishable by death, and theft punishable by amputation of the hand. Many of the Taliban laws and punishments alarmed human-rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation.

The Taliban takeover of Kābul in 1996 paved the way for additional territorial conquests, and Taliban soldiers advanced north toward the mountain strongholds of the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. By the late 1990s the Taliban had taken control of almost all of Afghanistan. Opposition forces, commonly known as the Northern Alliance, held a small portion of the country’s territory in the north. Most countries did not recognize the Taliban regime as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

IV

Collapse of the Taliban Regime

The Taliban regime provided safe harbor for Osama bin Laden, the militant Islamic leader of al-Qaeda who was identified by the United States as the mastermind of terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and U.S. landmarks in the United States on September 11, 2001. After the 2001 attacks, which killed thousands of people, the United States declared a war on terrorism. Taliban leaders refused U.S. demands to surrender bin Laden, and in October the United States began aerial bombings of terrorist training camps and Taliban military positions. Ground troops of the Northern Alliance, meanwhile, continued their front-line offensive against Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban lost its hold on power in November when the Northern Alliance, aided by U.S.-led bombardments, captured Kābul and other key cities. The Taliban surrendered its traditional stronghold of Kandahār in early December.

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