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Taliban [tal-uh-ban]

Taliban

[tal-uh-ban]

Taliban or Taleban, Islamic fundamentalist militia of Afghanistan and later Pakistan, originally consisting mainly of Sunni Pashtun religious students from Afghanistan who were educated and trained in Pakistan. The Taliban emerged as a significant force in Afghanistan in 1994 when they were assigned by Pakistan to protect a convoy in Afghanistan, which marked the beginning of a long-term alliance between the group and Pakistani security forces. The Taliban subsequently won control of Kandahar, and by 1996 they had gained control over much of Afghanistan, including Kabul, either by force or through forming alliances with other mujahidin.

The Taliban established a government headed Mullah Muhammad Omar, the group's spiritual leader (and a military leader as well). Although the civil war continued, mainly with the Northern Alliance in N Afghanistan, Taliban rule ended much of factional fighting and corrupt rule that had afflicted Afghanistan after the collapse in 1992 of the Soviet-aligned government, but it also rigidly enforced puritannical laws that were influenced by Wahhabi Islam and Afghan tribal customs. The Taliban also provided a refugee for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and similar Islamic militant groups, and following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that Al Qaeda launched against the United States, the United States retaliated against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, providing support for a Northern Alliance offensive against the Taliban that led to their collapse and the entry of U.S. forces into Afghanistan. By Dec., 2001, the Taliban had surrendered their last urban stronghold, Kandahar, and they and Al Qaeda retreated into the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or dispersed among the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

Since then, the Taliban have survived several U.S. and NATO campaigns intended to eliminate them as a significant guerrilla force. Aided by the renewed warlordism and corruption, by tribal Pashtun ties, and by a largley moribund Afghan economy, they have reestablished training camps in Pakistan, mainly in North and South Waziristan and Baluchistan, and continue to draw students from religious schools there; they are widely believed to receive support from Pakistan's security forces, despite denials by Pakistan.

Since 2003, the Taliban have mounted ongoing, increasingly frequent guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan, mainly against government supporters and forces, school teachers, and foreign troops and aid workers, and have several times gained control of S Afghan districts and towns in larger operations. They also now use suicide-bomber attacks.

The Taliban's presence in Pakistan has led to the growth of a Pakistani Taliban as well. Drawn mainly from Pakistan's ethnic Pashtuns and consisting of a number of loosely allied militias, they have become an important militant force in Waziristan, Swat, and other areas, seeking to establish a rigid, estremely conservative form of Islamic law and fighting at times with government troops. The Pakistani government has accused members of the Pakistani Taliban of assassinating (2007) Benazir Bhutto. In 2009 the Pakistani military conducted major offensives again the Taliban in Swat and S Waziristan.

See study by A. Rashid (2001).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

Taliban

Political and religious faction and militia that came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Following the Soviet Union's 1989 withdrawal from Afghanistan (see Afghan Wars), the Taliban (Persian: “Students”)—whose name refers to the Islamic religious students who formed the group's main recruits—arose as a popular reaction to the chaos that gripped the country. In 1994–95, under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban extended its control in Afghanistan from a single city to more than half the country, and in 1996 it captured Kabul and instituted a strict Islamic regime. By 1999, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan but failed to win international recognition of its regime because of its harsh social policies—which included the almost complete removal of women from public life—and its role as a haven for Islamic extremists. Among these extremists was Osama bin Laden, the expatriate Saudi Arabian leader of Al-Qaeda, a network of Islamic militants that had engaged in numerous acts of terrorism. The Taliban's refusal to extradite bin Laden to the U.S. following the September 11 attacks in 2001 prompted the U.S. to attack Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, driving the former from power and sending the leaders of both groups into hiding. See also Islamic fundamentalism.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Taliban

The Taliban (طالبان , also anglicised as Taleban; translation: "students") is a Sunni Islamist, predominately Pashtun movement that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when its leaders were removed from power by Northern Alliance and NATO forces. Following this it regrouped and since 2004 it has made a strong revival as an insurgency movement fighting a protracted guerrilla war against the current government of Afghanistan, allied NATO forces participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). No longer operating only in Afghanistan, it is based in the Frontier Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

The Taliban movement is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. Mullah Omar's original commanders were "a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and Madrasah teachers, and the rank and file made up mostly of Afghan refugees who had studied at Islamic religious schools in Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of the Taliban movement were ethnic Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, along with a smaller number of volunteers from Islamic countries or regions in North Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. The Taliban received valuable training, supplies and arms from the Pakistani government, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and many recruits from Madrasahs for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, primarily ones established by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam JUI.

Although in control of Afghanistan's capital (Kabul) and much or most of the country for five years, the Taliban regime, or "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

While in power, the Taliban implemented the "strictest interpretation of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world, and became notorious internationally for their treatment of women.

Etymology

The word Taliban is from the Pashto طالبان , " students," loaned from Arabic طالب , plus the Indo-Iranian plural ending -an ان (the Arabic plural being طلاب‎ , طالبان being a dual form with the incongruous meaning, to Arabic speakers, of 'two students'). Since becoming a loanword in English, Taliban, besides a plural noun referring to the group, has also been used as a singular noun referring to an individual. For example, John Walker Lindh has been referred to as "an American Taliban" rather than "an American Talib."

Origin

The Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives explain the beginnings of the Taliban. One is that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals. The other is that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the "Afghanistan Transit Trade" and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed, and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.

Alhough there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war.

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns.

The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October-November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men. Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a few weeks later they freed "a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia" from another group of warlords attempting to extort money. In the next three months this hitherto "unknown force" took control of twelve of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the "heavily armed population" giving up their weapons. By September 1996 they had captured Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

Taliban ideology and its application

The Taliban's extremely strict and "anti-modern" ideology has been described as an "innovative form of sharia combining Pashtun tribal codes, or Pashtunwali, with radical Deobandi interpretations of Islam favored by members of the Pakistani fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) organization and its splinter groups. Also contributing to the admixture was the Wahhabism of their Saudi financial benefactors, and the jihadism and pan-Islamism of sometime comrade-in-arms Osama bin Laden. Their ideology was a departure from the Islamism of the anti-Soviet mujahideen rulers they replaced who tended to be mystical Sufis, traditionalists, or radical Islamicists inspired by the Ikhwan.

Sharia law was interpreted to ban a wide variety of activities hitherto lawful in Afghanistan, see below. Critics complained that most Afghans were non-Pashtuns who followed a different, less strict and less intrusive interpretation of Islam. Despite their similarity to the Wahhabis, the Taliban did not eschew all traditional popular practices. They did not destroy the graves of pirs (holy men) and emphasized dreams as a means of revelation.

Taliban have been described as both anti-nationalist and Pushtun nationalist. According to journalist Ahmed Rashid, at least in the first years of their rule, they followed Deobandi and Islamist anti-nationalist belief and opposed "tribal and feudal structures," eliminating traditional tribal or feudal leaders from "leadership roles. According to Ali A. Jalali and Mr. Lester W. Grau, the Taliban "received extensive support from Pashtuns across the country who thought that the movement might restore their national dominance. Even Pashtun intellectuals in the West, who seriously differ with the Taliban on many issues, expressed support for the movement on purely ethnic grounds.

In any case, the Taliban were very reluctant to share power, and since their ranks were overwhelmingly Pashtun the spread of their rule to non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan meant Pashtun rule over non-Pashtuns. At the national level, "all senior Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara bureaucrats" were replaced "with Pashtuns, whether qualified or not. As a result of this loss of expertise, the ministries by and large ceased to function. In local units of government like city councils of Kabul or Herat, Taliban loyalists, not locals, dominated, even when the Pashto-speaking Taliban could not communicate with the local Persian-speaking Afghans (roughly half of the population of Afghanistan spoke Dari or other non-Pashtun tongues.) Critics complained this "lack of local representation in urban administration made the Taliban appear as an occupying force.

Like Wahhabi and other Deobandis, the Taliban strongly opposed the Shia branch of Islam. The Taliban declared the Hazara ethnic group, which totaled almost 10% of Afghanistan's population, "not Muslims."

Along with being very strict, the Taliban were adverse to debate on doctrine with other Muslims. "The Taliban did not allow even Muslim reporters to question [their] edicts or to discuss interpretations of the Qur'an."

As they established their power the Taliban created a new form of Islamic radicalism that spread beyond the borders of Afghanistan, mostly to Pakistan. By 1998-1999 Taliban-style groups in the Pashtun belt, and to an extent in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, "were banning TV and videos ... and forcing people, particularly women to adapt to the Taliban dress code and way of life.

Governance

The Taliban government has been described as "a secret society run by Kandaharis ... mysterious, secretive, and dictatorial. They did not hold elections, as their spokesman explained:

The Sharia does not allow politics or political parties. That is why we give no salaries to officials or soldiers, just food, clothes, shoes and weapons. We want to live a life like the Prophet lived 1400 years ago and jihad is our right. We want to recreate the time of the Prophet and we are only carrying out what the Afghan people have wanted for the past 14 years.

Instead of an election, their leader's legitimacy came from "Bay'ah" or oath of allegiance in imitation of the Prophet and early Muslims. On 4 April 1996, Mullah Omar had the "the Cloak of the Prophet Mohammed," taken from its shrine "for the first time in 60 years." Wrapping himself in the relic, he appeared on the roof of a building in the center of Kandahar while hundreds of Pashtun mullahs below shouted "Amir al-Mu'minin!" (Commander of the Faithful), in a de facto pledge of support.

Also in keeping with the governance of early Muslims was a lack of state institutions or "a methodology for command and control" standard today internationally even among non-Westernized states. The Taliban didn't issue "press releases, policy statements or hold regular press conferences," and of course the outside world and most Afghans didn't even know what they looked like, since photography was banned. Their regular army resembled "a lashkar or traditional tribal militia force" with only 25,000 to 30,000 men, these being added to as the need arose. Cabinet ministers and deputies were mullahs with a "madrassa education." Several of them, such as the Minister of Health and Governor of the State bank, were primarily military commanders who left their administrative posts to fight when needed. If and when military reverses trapped them behind lines or led to their deaths, this created "even greater chaos" in the national administration. In the Ministry of Finance there was no budget or "qualified economist or banker." Cash to finance Taliban war effort was collected and dispersed by Mullah Omar without book-keeping.

Business dealings

In 1997, the Taliban and Unocal had meetings in Texas to negotiate arrangements for CentGas to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. Reportedly, a deal was struck but later failed. The cause of the failure was rumored to be competing negotiations with Bridas, an Argentinian company.

Consistency

The Taliban ideology was not static. Before its capture of Kabul, members of the Taliban talked about stepping aside once a government of "good Muslims" took power and law and order were restored. The decision making process of the Taliban in Kandahar was modeled on the Pashtun tribal council (jirga), together with what was believed to be the early Islamic model. Discussion was followed by a building of a consensus by the believers.

However, as the Taliban's power grew, decisions were made by Mullah Omar without consulting the jirga and without Omar's visiting other parts of the country. He visited the capital, Kabul, only twice while in power. Taliban spokesman Mullah Wakil explained:

Decisions are based on the advice of the Amir-ul Momineen. For us consultation is not necessary. We believe that this is in line with the Sharia. We abide by the Amir's view even if he alone takes this view. There will not be a head of state. Instead there will be an Amir al-Mu'minin. Mullah Omar will be the highest authority and the government will not be able to implement any decision to which he does not agree. General elections are incompatible with Sharia and therefore we reject them.

In 1999, Omar issued a decree stating the Buddha statues at Bamyan would be protected because Afghanistan had no Buddhists, implying idolatry would not be a problem. But in March 2001 they were destroyed after the previous decision was reversed with a decree stating that "all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed.

Criticism of ideology

The Taliban were criticized for their strictness toward those who disobeyed the (Bid‘ah) rule. Some Muslims complained that many Taliban prohibitions - such as bans on clapping during sports events; kite flying; beard trimming; or sports for women - had no validity in the Qur'an or sharia. Another source of objection was that the Taliban called their 20% tax on truckloads of opium "zakat," when zakat is limited to 2.5% of the zakat-payers' disposable income.

The bestowing of the title of Amir al-Mu'minin on Muhammad Omar was criticized on the grounds that he lacked scholarly learning, tribal pedigree, or connections to the Prophet's family. Sanction for the title required the support of all of the country's ulema, whereas only some 1200 Pashtun Taliban-supporting Mullahs had declared Omar the Amir. "No Afghan had adopted the title since 1834, when King Dost Mohammed Khan assumed the title before he declared jihad against the Sikh kingdom in Peshawar. But Dost Mohammed was fighting foreigners, while Omar had declared jihad against other Afghans.

Explanation of ideology

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) was important to the Taliban because the "vast majority" of its rank and file and most of the leadership, (though not Mullah Omar), were Koranic students who had studied at madrassas set up for Afghan refugees, usually by the JUI. The leader of JUI, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, was a political ally of Benazir Bhutto. After Bhutto became prime minister, Rehman "had access to the government, the army and the ISI," whom he influenced to help the Taliban.

Journalist Ahmed Rashid suggests that the devastation and hardship of the war against the Soviet Union and the civil war that followed was another factor influencing the ideology of the Taliban. The young rank and file Taliban were Koranic students in Afghan refugee camps whose teachers were often "barely literate," and did not include scholars learned in the finer points of Islamic law and history. The refugee students, brought up in a totally male society, not only had no education in mathematics, science, history or geography, but also had no traditional skills of farming, herding, or handicraft-making, nor even knowledge of their tribal and clan lineages.

In such an environment, war meant employment, peace unemployment. Domination of women was an affirmation of manhood. For their leadership rigid fundamentalism was a matter not merely of principle, but of political survival. Taliban leaders "repeatedly told" Rashid "that if they gave women greater freedom or a chance to go to school, they would lose the support of their rank and file.

Life under the Taliban regime

Sharia law was interpreted to ban a wide variety of activities hitherto lawful in Afghanistan: employment and education for women, movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events. One Taliban list of prohibitions included:

pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.

Men were required to have a beard extending farther than a fist clamped at the base of the chin. On the other hand, they had to wear their head hair short. Men were also required to wear a head covering.

Possession was forbidden of depictions of living things, including photographs of them, stuffed animals, and dolls.

Rules which according to some Muslims had no validity in the Qur'an or sharia included a ban on clapping during sports events, kite flying, beard trimming, and sports for women. These rules were issued by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice (PVSV) and enforced by its "religious police," a concept thought to be borrowed from the Wahhabis. In newly conquered towns hundreds of religious police beat offenders — typically men who shaved and women who were not wearing their burqa properly — with long sticks.

Theft was punished by the amputation of a hand, rape and murder by public execution. Married adulterers were stoned to death. In Kabul, punishments were carried out in front of crowds in the city's former soccer stadium.

Treatment of women

Women in particular were targets of the Taliban's restrictions. They were prohibited from working; from wearing clothing regarded as "stimulating and attractive," including the "Iranian chador," (viewed as insufficiently complete in its covering); from taking a taxi without a "close male relative"; washing clothes in streams; or having their measurements taken by tailors.

Employment for women was restricted to the medical sector, since male medical personnel were not allowed to examine women. One result of the banning of employment of women by the Taliban was the closing down in places like Kabul of primary schools not only for girls but for boys, because almost all the teachers there were women.

Women were also not permitted to attend co-educational schools; in practice, this prevented the vast majority of young women and girls in Afghanistan from receiving even a primary education.

Women were made to wear the burqa, a traditional dress covering the entire body except for a small screen to see out of. Taliban restrictions became more severe after they took control of the capital. In February 1998, religious police forced all women off the streets of Kabul and issued new regulations ordering "householders to blacken their windows, so women would not be visible from the outside. Home schools for girls, which had been allowed to continue, were forbidden. In June 1998, the Taliban stopped all women from attending general hospitals, leaving the use of one all-women hospital in Kabul. There were many reports of Muslim women being beaten by the Taliban for violating the Sharia.

Prohibitions on culture

Movie theaters were closed and music banned. Hundreds of cultural artifacts that were deemed polytheistic were also destroyed including major museum and countless private art collections. At the Kabul zoo most animals were killed or left to starve.

A sample Taliban edict issued after their capture of Kabul is one decreed in December 1996 by the "General Presidency of Amr Bil Maruf and Nahi Anil Munkar" (or Religious Police) banning a variety of things and activities: music, shaving of beards, keeping of pigeons, flying kites, displaying of pictures or portraits, western hairstyles, music and dancing at weddings, gambling, "sorcery," and not praying at prayer times. In February 2001, Taliban used sledgehammers to destroy representational works of art at the National Museum of Afghanistan.

Non-Western festivities were not exempt from bannings. The Taliban banned the traditional Afghan New Year's celebration of Nowruz as anti-Islamic, and "for a time they also banned Ashura, the Shia Islamic month of mourning and even restricted any show of festivity at Eid." The Afghan people were not allowed to have any cultural celebrations if the women were there. If there were only men at the celebration it would be allowed to go forth, so long as it did not go over the curfew time of 9:00 pm.

Taliban official Mullah Mohammed Hassan explained that "of course we realize that people need some entertainment but they can go to the parks and see the flowers, and from this they will learn about Islam." The Education Minister Mullahs Abdul Hanifi told questioners that the Taliban "oppose music because it creates a strain in the mind and hampers study of Islam."

Ethnic massacres and persecution

The worst attack on civilians came in summer of 1998 when the Taliban swept north from Herat to the predominantly Hazara and Uzbek city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the largest city in the north. Entering at 10 am on 8 August 1998, for the next two days the Taliban drove their pickup trucks "up and down the narrow streets of Mazar-i-Sharif shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved — shop owners, cart pullers, women and children shoppers and even goats and donkeys. More than 8000 noncombatants were reported killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and later in Bamiyan. Contrary to the injunctions of Islam, which demands immediate burial, the Taliban forbade anyone to bury the corpses for the first six days while they rotted in the summer heat and were eaten by dogs. In addition to this indiscriminate slaughter, the Taliban sought out and massacred members of the Hazara, a mostly Shia ethnic group, while in control of Mazar.

While the slaughter can be attributed to several factors — ethnic difference, suspicion of Hazara loyalty to their co-religionists in Iran, fury at the loss of life suffered in an earlier unsuccessful Taliban takeover of Mazar — the belief by some Sunni Taliban that the Shia Hazaras were guilty of takfir (apostasy) may have been the principle motivation. It was expressed by Mullah Niazi, the commander of the attack and governor of Mazar after the attack, in his declaration from Mazar's central mosque:

"Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. The Hazaras are not Muslims and now have to kill Hazaras. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan. Wherever you go we will catch you. If you go up we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair."

Hazara also suffered a siege by the Taliban of their Hazarajat homeland in central Afghanistan and the refusal by the Taliban to allow the UN to supply food to Hazara in the provinces of Bamiyan, Ghor, Wardak and Ghazni. A month after the Mazar slaughter, Taliban broke through Hazar lines and took over Hazarajat. The number of civilians killed was not as great as in Mazar, but occurred nevertheless.

During the years that followed, rapes and massacres of Hazara by Taliban forces were documented by groups such as Human Rights Watch.

Economy

Peace did not bring economic development to Afghanistan. The so-called "transportation mafia" operating out of Pakistan "cut down millions of acres of timber in Afghanistan for the Pakistani market, denuding the countryside as there was no reforestation. They stripped down rusting factories, ... even electricity and telephone poles for their steel and sold the scrap to steel mills in Lahore.

Conscription

According to the testimony of Guantanamo captives before their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the Taliban, in addition to conscripting men to serve as soldiers, also conscripted literate and numerate men to staff its civil service. Ironically, given the derivation of their name for themselves, some of the Taliban leaders were illiterate.

War with the Northern Alliance

Taliban's strict policies and condescending behavior toward their local allied troops caused an uprising in which thousands of the Taliban's best troops were killed.

In 1997, Ahmad Shah Massoud devised a plan to utilize guerrilla tactics in the Shamali plains to defeat the Taliban advances. In collaboration with the locals, Masoud had deployed his forces to be stationed at civilian dwellings and other hidden places. Upon the arrival of the Taliban, some locals, who had vowed pacts of peace with the Taliban, as well as Masoud's forces came out of hiding and in a surprise attack captured the north of Kabul. Soon after, the Taliban put a major effort into taking control of the Shamali plains, indiscriminately killing young men, uprooting and expelling the population. Kamal Hossein, a special reporter for the UN, had written a full report on these and other war crimes that further insinuated and inflamed the issue of ethnicity.

In August 8, 1998 the Taliban again took Mazar-i-Sharif this time avenging their earlier defeat and creating more international controversy with mass killings of thousands of civilians and several Iranian diplomats. This offensive left the Northern Alliance in control of only a small part of Afghanistan (10-15%) in the north. The Taliban retained control of most of the country until the 2001 9/11 attacks. On September 9,2001, a suicide bomber, posing as an interviewer and widely thought to be connected to Al-Qaeda, assassinated the Northern Alliance mujahideen military leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Despite his removal, the Taliban were driven from most of Afghanistan by American bombing and Northern Alliance ground troops a couple of months later in the 2001 War.

International relations

During its time in power, the Taliban regime, or "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia all of whom also provided aid. Most states in the world, including Russia, Iran, India, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and later the USA, opposed the Taliban and aided their enemy the Northern Alliance.

Officially Pakistan denied it was supporting the Taliban, but its support was substantial -- one year's aid (1997/1998) was an estimated US$30 million in wheat, diesel, petroleum and kerosene fuel, and other supplies. The Taliban's influence in its neighbour Pakistan was deep. Its "unprecedented access" among Pakistan's lobbies and interest groups enabled it "to play off one lobby against another and extend their influence in Pakistan even further. At times they would defy" even the powerful ISI.

Foreign powers, including the United States, were at first supportive of the Taliban in hopes it would serve as a force to restore order in Afghanistan after years of division into corrupt, lawless warlord fiefdoms. The U.S. government, for example, made no comment when the Taliban captured Herat in 1995 and expelled thousands of girls from schools. These hopes faded as it began to be engaged in warlord practices of rocketing unarmed civilians, targeting ethnic groups (primarily Hazaras) and restricting the rights of women. In late 1997, American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to distance the U.S. from the Taliban and the next year the American-based Unocal oil company withdrew from a major deal with the Taliban regime concerning an oil pipeline.

In early August 1998 the Taliban's difficulties in relations with foreign groups became much more serious. After attacking the city of Mazar, Taliban forces killed several thousand civilians and 10 Iranian diplomats and intelligence officers in the Iranian consulate. Alleged radio intercepts indicate Mullah Omar personally approved the killings. The Iranian government was incensed and a "full-blown regional crisis" ensued with Iran mobilizing 200,000 regular troops, though war was averted.

A day before the capture of Mazar, affiliates of Taliban guest Osama bin Laden bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa killing 224 and wounding 4500 mostly African victims. The United States responded by launching cruise missiles attacks on suspected terrorists camps in Afghanistan killing over 20 though failing to kill bin Laden or even many al-Qaeda. Mullah Omar condemned the missile attack and American President Bill Clinton. Saudi Arabia expelled the Taliban envoy in Saudi Arabia in protest over the Taliban's refusal to turn over bin Laden and after Mullah Omar allegedly insulted the Saudi royal family. In mid-October the UN Security Council voted unanimously to ban commercial aircraft flights to and from Afghanistan and freeze its bank accounts world wide.

The regime's isolation grew in March 2001 with the destruction of Afghanistan's most significant archeological treasures, the 1500-year-old giant Buddha statues, (the two largest were 55 and 37 meters high) in Bamiyan. That month the Taliban also issued a decree ordering non-Muslims to wear distinctive yellow patches.

Relations with the United Nations and aid agencies

A major issue during the Taliban's reign was its relations with the United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Twenty years of continuous warfare, first with the Soviets and then between mujahideen, had devastated Afghanistan's infrastructure and economy. There was no running water, little electricity, few telephones, motorable roads or regular energy supplies. Basic necessities like water, food and housing and others were in desperately short supply. In addition, the clan and family structure that provided Afghans with a social/economic safety net was also badly damaged. Afghanistan's infant mortality was the highest in the world. A full quarter of all children died before they reached their fifth birthday, a rate several times higher than most other developing countries.

Consequently international charitable and/or development organisations (NGOs) were extremely important to the supply of food, employment, reconstruction, and other services in Afghanistan. With one million plus deaths during the years of war, the number of families headed by widows had reached 98,000 by 1998. Thus Taliban restrictions on women were sometime a matter not only of human rights, but of life and death. In Kabul, where vast portions of the city had been devastated from rocket attacks, more than half of its 1.2 million people benefited in some way from NGO charity, even for water to drink. The civil war and its refugee-creation processes continued during the entire time the Taliban were in power. During that time, more than three-quarters of a million civilians were displaced by new Taliban offensives in the north around Mazar, on the Herat front, and in the fertile Shomali valley around Kabul. The offensives used "scorched-earth" tactics to prevent civilians from supplying the enemy with aid.

Despite the receipt of UN and NGO aid, the Taliban's attitude toward the UN and NGOs was often one of suspicion, not gratitude or even tolerance. The UN operates on the basis of international law, not Islamic Sharia, and the UN did not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Additionally, most of the foreign donors and aid workers, who had tried to persuade the Taliban to change its strict policies and allow women more freedom, were non-Muslims.

As the Taliban's Attorney General Maulvi Jalil-ullah Maulvizada expressed it:

Let us state what sort of education the UN wants. This is a big infidel policy which gives such obscene freedom to women which would lead to adultery and herald the destruction of Islam. In any Islamic country where adultery becomes common, that country is destroyed and enters the domination of the infidels because their men become like women and women cannot defend themselves. Anyone who talks to us should do so within Islam's framework. The Holy Koran cannot adjust itself to other people's requirements, people should adjust themselves to the requirements of the Holy Koran.

Frustrations of aid agencies were numerous. Taliban decision-makers, particularly Mullah Omar, seldom if ever talked directly to non-Muslim foreigners, so aid providers had to deal with intermediaries whose approvals and agreements were often reversed by Taliban higher-ups. In September 1997, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Emma Bonino, and 19 Western journalists and aid workers were arrested and held for three hours by the Taliban religious police in Kabul when photographs were taken of women patients. Around the same time the heads of three UN agencies in Kandahar were expelled from the country after protesting that a female lawyer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was forced to talk to Taliban officials from behind a curtain so her face would not be visible.

When the UN increased the number of Muslim women staff to satisfy Taliban demands for Muslim staff, the Taliban then insisted "all female Muslim UN staff traveling to Afghanistan to be chaperoned by a mahram or a blood relative." In July 20 1998, the Taliban closed "down all NGO offices by force" after those organization refused to move to a bombed out former Polytechnic College as ordered. One month later the UN offices were also shut down.

As food prices rose and conditions deteriorated, the Taliban Planning Minister Qari Din Mohammed explained the Taliban's indifference to the loss of humanitarian aid:

We Muslims believe God the Almighty will feed everybody one way or another. If the foreign NGOs leave then it is their decision. We have not expelled them.

Relationship with Osama bin Laden

In 1996, Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan from Sudan. He came without any invitation from the Taliban, and sometimes irritated Mullah Omar with his declaration of war and fatwa to murder citizens of third-party countries, and follow-up interviews, but relations between the two groups became closer over time, and eventually bonded to the point where Mullah Omar rebuffed its patron Saudi Arabia, insulting Saudi minister Prince Turki and refusing to turn over bin Laden to the Saudis as Omar had reportedly promised to earlier.

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. Several hundred Arab Afghan fighters sent by bin Laden assisted the Taliban in the slaughter at Mazar-e-Sharif. Taliban-al-Qaeda connections, were also strengthened by the reported marriage of one of bin Laden's sons to Omar's daughter. During Osama bin Laden's stay in Afghanistan, he may have helped finance the Taliban. Perhaps the biggest favor al-Qaeda did for the Taliban was the assassination by suicide bombing of the Taliban's most effective military opponent mujahideen commander and Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud shortly before September 9, 2001. This came at a time when Taliban human rights violations and extremism seemed likely to create international support for Massoud's group as the legitimate representatives of Afghanistan. The killing, reportedly handled by Ayman Zawahiri and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad wing of al-Qaeda, left the Northern Alliance leaderless, and removed "the last obstacle to the Taliban’s total control of the country ... After the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, Osama bin Laden and several al Qaeda members were indicted in U.S. criminal court. The Taliban protected Osama bin Laden from extradition requests by the U.S., variously claiming that bin Laden had "gone missing" in Afghanistan, or that Washington "cannot provide any evidence or any proof" that bin Laden is involved in terrorist activities and that "without any evidence, bin Laden is a man without sin... he is a free man. Evidence against bin Laden included courtroom testimony and satellite phone records. Bin Laden in turn, praised the Taliban as the "only Islamic government" in existence, and lauded Mullah Omar for his destruction of idols like the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Taliban in Pakistan

Closely tied with JUI party in Pakistan, the Taliban received manpower from Madrasahs in Pakistan’s border region. After a request for help from Mullah Omar in 1997, Maulana Samiul Haq shut down his 2500+ student madrassa and "sent his entire student" body hundreds of miles away to fight alongside the Taliban. The next year, the same religious leader helped persuade 12 madrassas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to shut down for one month and send 8000 students to provide reinforcements for the Taliban army in Afghanistan.

The Taliban returned the favor, helping spread its ideology to parts of Pakistan. By 1998 some groups "along the Pashtun belt" were banning TV and videos, imposing Sharia punishments "such as stoning and amputation in defiance of the legal system, killing Pakistani Shia and forcing people, particularly women to adapt to the Taliban dress code and way of life. In December 1998 the Tehrik-i-Tuleba or Movement of Taliban in the Orakzai Agency ignored Pakistan’s legal process and publicly executed a murderer in front of 2000 spectators Taliban-style. They also promised to implement Taliban-style justice and ban TV, music and videos. In Quetta, Pashtun pro-Taliban groups "burned down cinema houses, shot video shop owners, smashed satellite dishes and drove women off the streets". In Kashmir Afghan Arabs from Afghanistan attempted to impose a "Wahhabi style dress code" banning jeans and jackets. "On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts.

As of early 2007, Taliban influence in Pakistan continues in conjunction with the Taliban insurgency. Citing a suicide bombing of a restaurant in Peshwar in retaliation for the arrest of a relative of Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, the Associated Press states "... in Pakistan's frontier regions, ... scores of people have been executed over the past two or three years apparently for being too aligned with the Pakistani government or America — allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The formation of a Pakistan Taliban umbrella group called Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was announced in December 2007.

Buddhas of Bamiyan

In March 2001, the Taliban ordered the demolition of two statues of Buddhas carved into cliffsides at Bamiyan, one 38 metres (125 ft) tall and built in CE 507, the other 53 metres (174 ft) tall and built in CE 554. 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 linked financial aid to the preservation of the statues. However, after a few years, a decree was issued claiming all representations of humans and idols, including those in museums, must be destroyed in accordance with Islamic law which prohibits any form of idol worship.

The government of Pakistan (itself host to one of the richest and most ancient collections of Buddhist art) implored the Taliban to spare the statues. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates later denounced the act as savage.

Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a senior representative of the Taliban designated as the roving Ambassador visited the US in March, 2001. He represented the Taliban's action not as an act of irrationality, but as an act of rage over UNESCO and some western governments denying the Taliban use of the funds intended for the repairs of the war-damaged statues of the Buddha. He contended that the Taliban intended to use the money for drought relief.

Opium

Opium poppies have traditionally been grown in Afghanistan, and, with the war shattering other sectors of the economy, it became the number one export of the country.

The Taliban have provided an Islamic sanction for farmers ... to grow even more opium, even though the Koran forbids Muslims from producing or imbibing intoxicants. Abdul Rashid, the head of the Taliban's anti-drugs control force in Kandahar, spelled out the nature of his unique job. He is authorized to impose a strict ban on the growing of hashish, "because it is consumed by Afghans and Muslims." But, Rashid told me without a hint of sarcasm, "Opium is permissible because it is consumed by kafirs in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans.

But in 2000 the Taliban banned opium production, a first in Afghan history. In 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. According to opioids.com, by February 2001, production had been reduced from to only 17 acres. When the Taliban entered north Waziristan in 2003 they immediately banned poppy cultivation and punished those who sold it.

Another source claims opium production was cut back by the Taliban not to prevent its use but to shore up its price, and thus increase the income of poppy farmers and revenue of Afghan tax collectors.

The official verdict of the Taliban however was otherwise. Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition. "It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country."

However, with the 2001 US/Northern Alliance expulsion of the Taliban, opium cultivation has increased in the southern provinces liberated from the Taliban control, and by 2005 production was 87% of the world's opium supply, rising to 90% in 2006.

Hashemi also detailed this in his March 2001 lecture in California.

U.S.-led invasion and displacement of the Taliban

Prelude to invasion

After the September 11 attacks and the PENTTBOM investigation, the USA delivered this ultimatum to the Taliban:

Deliver to the US all of the leaders of Al Qaeda;

Release all imprisoned foreign nationals;

Close immediately every terrorist training camp;

Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities;

Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection.

On September 21, 2001, the Taliban responded that if the United States could bring evidence that bin Laden was guilty, they would hand him over, stating there was no evidence in their possession linking him to the September 11 attacks.

On September 22, 2001, the United Arab Emirates, and later Saudi Arabia, withdrew 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 Sharia law, but Pakistan refused the offer. On October 7, 2001, before the onset of military operations, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan offered to "detain bin Laden and try him under Islamic law" if the United States made a formal request and presented the Taliban with evidence. This counter offer was immediately rejected by the U.S. as insufficient.

American attack

Shortly afterward, on October 7, 2001, the United States, aided by the United Kingdom, Canada, and supported by a coalition of other countries including several from the NATO alliance, initiated military actions in Afghanistan, and bombed Taliban and Al Qaeda related camps. 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 alleged involvement in the September 11 attacks, and disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations. On October 14 the Taliban offered to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing, but only if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11. The U.S. rejected this offer as an insufficient public relations ploy and continued military operations.

The ground war was fought mainly 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. Mazari 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 from Kabul. 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 Kandahar and dispersed in various directions.

Resurgence of Taliban

As of 2008, 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. Most of the post-invasion Taliban fighters are new recruits, drawn again from that region's madrassas. The more traditional village schools are the primary source of the new fighters. Before the summer 2006 offensive began, indications existed that Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan had lost influence and power to other groups, including potentially the Taliban. The most notable sign was the rioting in May after a street accident in the city of Kabul. The continued support from tribal and other groups in Pakistan, the drug trade and the small number of NATO forces, combined with the long history of resistance and isolation, led to the observation that Taliban forces and leaders are surviving and will have some influence over the future of Afghanistan. A new introduction is suicide attacks and terrorist methods not used in 2001. Observers have suggested that poppy eradication policies, which destroy the livelihoods of rural Afghans, and civilian deaths caused by the bombing campaigns of international troops, are linked to the resurgence of the Taliban. These observers maintain that counter-insurgency policy should focus on the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and on the reconstruction of the Afghan economy, which could profit from the licensing of poppies to make medicine rather than their eradication. In September 2006, the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, an association of Waziristani chieftains with close ties to the Taliban, were recognized by the Government of Pakistan as the de facto security force in charge of North and South Waziristan. This recognition was part of the agreement to end the Waziristan War which had extracted a heavy toll on the Pakistan Army since early 2004. Some commentators viewed Islamabad's shift from war to diplomacy as implicit recognition of the growing power of the resurgent Taliban relative to American influence, with the US distracted by the threat of looming crises in Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran.

Other commentators view Islamabad's shift from war to diplomacy as a means to appease growing discontent in Pakistan. Because of its leadership structure, the assassination of Mullah Dadullah in May 2007 will not significantly affect the Taliban, but it may set-back the incipient relations with Pakistan.

Human rights violations

According to Human Rights Watch, bombings and other attacks which have led to civilian casualties are reported to have "sharply escalated in 2006" with "at least 669 Afghan civilians were killed in at least 350 armed attacks, most of which appear to have been intentionally launched at non-combatants.

Timeline

2006

During the summer of 2006, the Battle of Panjwaii took place.

June 6: A roadside bombing leaves 2 American soldiers killed, the attack took place in the province of Nanghar. Also a separate suicide bombing in Khost leaves three US soldiers wounded.

June 15: A bus carrying workers to an American base explodes killing 10 and wounding 15. The explosives were placed on the bus.

July 1: 2 British soldiers are killed when their base came under small arms fire including rocket propelled grenades.

August 8: 4 Canadian NATO soldiers are killed in two separate attacks. And a suicide bomber targeting a NATO convey detonates killing 21 people.

August 20: 3 American soldiers are killed and another 3 are wounded in a battle with Taliban militants after a roadside bomb hit an American patrol.

September 8: A major suicide car bombing near the US embassy in Kabul kills 18 including 2 US soldiers.

September 10: The governor of Afghanistan's southeastern Paktia province is killed alongside his bodyguard and nephew when a suicide bomber detonates himself beside the governor's car.

October 14: A suicide attack in Kandahar city leaves 8 dead including one NATO soldier.

October 15: 2 Canadian soldiers were killed when Taliban militants attacked NATO troops using small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades.

December 6: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a security contractor's office killing 7 including 2 Americans, the attack took place south of Afghanistan in Kandahar.

December 19: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Osmani, reportedly number 4 in the Taliban shura, is killed by an American airstrike in southern Afghanistan.

2007

January 23: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a US base in eastern Afghanistan killing 10 people who were waiting outside the base.

February 2: Taliban forces raided a southern Afghan town destroying the government center and briefly holding some elders captive.

February 19: The Taliban briefly seized a small town in western Afghanistan after police fled the town, the Taliban forces moved in for 30 minutes and seized three vehicles.

February 20: A suicide bomber blew himself up during an opening hospital ceremony injuring 2 NATO soldiers and a hospital worker.

February 27: 23 people are killed when a suicide bomber attacks an American military base, Bagram Airfield (BAF) in Bagram District, Parwan Province. The attack took place while US vice president Dick Cheney was in the compound, Cheney was unhurt in the attack and was the intended target of the attack as claimed by the Taliban. The dead included an American soldier, a Korean soldier, and an American contractor.

March 4: A suicide bomber attacks an American convoy which leaves 16 civilians dead in the aftermath as the American convey begins to sporadically fire at civilian cars around them. In a separate incident, two British soldiers were killed when a Taliban rocket was fired on them during clashes in Southern Helmand Province.

March 17: A suicide bomber targeting a Canadian military convoy leaves one dead and three injured, including one NATO soldier. The attack took place in Kandahar.

March 19: A car bomb blew up near a three-vehicle US embassy convoy injuring many in the convoy.

March 27: Four police officers are killed in the southern Helmand province after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police station.

March 28: A suicide bomber killed a top intelligence officer and three others in the capital Kabul.

April 6: A suicide bomber struck a police checkpoint in Kabul leaving four dead and four others wounded.

April 9: Six Canadian soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan when they struck a roadside bomb. A separate roadside bombing, also in south Afghanistan, left another NATO soldier dead and one wounded. In another incident, a statement from the Taliban's spokesperson claimed that they had beheaded a translator for a kidnapped Italian journalist.

April 15: A suicide bomber struck a US-private security firm, killing four Afghans working for the company.

April 16: A suicide bomber ran onto a police training field and detonating his explosive device, killing 10 police officers and wounding dozens of others. The attack took place in the relatively quiet city of Kunduz. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 20: Separate explosions in Southern Afghanistan leave two NATO soldiers dead.

April 22: A suicide bomber blew himself up an eastern city of Afghanistan, killing six. A roadside bomb also hit an Afghan intelligence service vehicle, killing all four who were inside.

April 30: Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets in western Afghanistan, accusing US soldiers of killing scores of civilians in fighting which the coalition said killed 136 Taliban in a three-week operation.

May 13: Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's top military commander in Afghanistan, is killed in fighting in the south.

May 23: The Taliban’s newly-named top field commander, Mullah Bakht Mohammed, brother and replacement of deceased field commander Mullah Dadullah, makes his first public statement, saying the Taliban will "pursue holy war until the occupying countries leave.

July 19: The South Korean hostage crisis involved the hostage taking of twenty-three South Korean Christian aid workers in the Ghazni Province which resulted in the death of two. The crisis ended on August 30 with the release of the remaining hostages as part of a deal with the South Korean diplomats of government.

August 31: A suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vehicle after ramming three military vehicles at the military gate of the Kabul International Airport. Two Afghan soldiers were killed and ten people were injured.

September 29: In an effort to reach a compromise with the Taliban leaders, the president, Hamid Karzai would make a quid quo pro by allowing militants to have a place in government if they stopped fighting. Taliban leaders replied by saying there would be no compromise unless intervening forces such as NATO and the U.S. left.

November 2: Mawlawi Abdul Manan, an important Taliban figure, is killed by Afghan Security forces. His death is confirmed by the Taliban.

2008

February 24: Poor military intelligence leads to conflicted reports of a possible Taliban spring offensive.
August 19: Reported that Taliban forces are closing in on Kabul, after killing 10 French troops.
October 6: CNN reports that, via Saudi intermediaries, the Taliban is negotiating to end the conflict in Afghanistan, and that the Taliban has split from al Qaeda.