The ever-increasing chaos and never-ending infighting among rival Mujahideen factions in the post-Soviet Afghanistan gave birth to a group formed of young seminary students in the Pashtun-dominated south of Afghanistan in late 1994.




The aim of those religious students, or Taliban, was to put an end to disorder and get free the people from the tyranny of local warlords in their respective areas. The first of such armed groups emerged in the country's southern province of Kandahar, which later became the de facto capital of the Taliban movement.




Taliban is a plural of the word "talib," which means a student of a religious seminary in the Pashto language. Madrasah or seminary students have long been a much respected class in Afghanistan.




Unlike students of ordinary schools and universities, who usually make core of the Afghan political parties, the Taliban were always alien to the world of politics. That is why when they surfaced in southern Afghanistan, neither the students themselves, nor the war-weary people of Afghanistan, nor the unchallengeable warlords expected that they would prevail over the country and become a new chapter in the history of Afghanistan by controlling 95 percent of the country's area, disarming the ever-powerful warlords, ensuring exemplary security and bringing the poppy cultivation to almost zero level.




New-Generation Mujahideen








Factbox:

• The Taliban first appeared in the Afghan scene in 1994.

• The nascent movement captured the Afghan capital Kabul in 1996.

• The Taliban managed to control 95% of the Afghan territory.

• Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, & the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to recognize the Taliban government.

• The US invasion in October 2001 brought an end to the rule of Taliban.




Many observers saw the emergence of the Taliban as a joint US-Pakistani project aimed for securing Afghanistan by sweeping the warring Mujahideen factions and collecting their arms. However, the interests of the two "backers" differed as each one held a separate strategic concern based on its position, one as a superpower while the other as a close neighbor. While America's direct hand behind the Taliban is largely doubted, Pakistan's link in the development of the Taliban is out of doubt.




A significant part of the Taliban was made of the younger generation of the Afghan refugees and Mujahideen who fled to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The refugees sent their children to Pakistani madrasahs and other madrasahs funded by the Mujahideen's international supporters, mostly with curriculum of old Islamic subjects. Most of these madrasahs were under supervision of Pakistan's Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) party led by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman.




The students impressed by the way of thinking of JUI's madrasahs returned home to become later the Taliban after the Mujahideen took power. When the Taliban movement developed and captured Kabul, a big number of officials kept their loyalty to their teachers and madrasahs. The JUI was the biggest channel through which the Pakistani government, at top of it its military intelligence (ISI), exercised its influence.




Generally, Pakistan did use its influence over the Taliban in some decisions, especially peace and reconciliation issues, but it is erroneous to assume that the Taliban were Pakistani puppets and that Kabul consulted Islamabad on leadership level. In many cases, the Taliban have vehemently dismissed Pakistan's demands that it viewed as harmful to its interests. For instance, the Taliban declined to officially accept the controversial border division between the two countries known as the Durand Line.




"Angels of Peace"




Whoever they actually were, the Taliban were welcomed in the beginning as "peace angels" who gave the Afghans a new breath of life amid a terrible ambience of civil strife under the Mujahideen government. As soon as the Taliban sprang in some areas of Kandahar, the illegal checkpoints that were set for looting were wiped away, armed robberies and kidnappings came to an end, and order returned to the area. The Taliban collected arms wherever they went and brought security. Their initial success to bring security in the area encouraged many people, especially fellow Talibs and mullahs, to push ahead with their campaign against the vicious warlords. Even many militia commanders and government officials who wanted peace and security joined the Taliban.




The dozens-strong group found by an at-the-time obscure local mullah, Muhammad Omar, quickly turned to a growing force. Its ranks swelled with volunteers from across the south. They first marched from Maiwand district and captured Kandahar city. They announced the enforcement of Islamic Shari`ah in the captured areas immediately. Southern provinces fell to the Taliban one after another without any big fighting within less than two years. Most of the Mujahideen factions could not resist and some did not want to.




All efforts of the Taliban were concentrated on recruiting more people rather than preparing for governance. The cities and provinces captured were simply ruled by mullahs who made all the cadres from police to judges. However, when they captured Kabul in September 1996 after sweeping almost all ethnic Pashtun-dominated provinces in the south and east, the naive movement faced the tough challenge of forming and running government in a country hit by two decades of war. The Taliban, with no experience or knowledge of politics and leadership, took it simply as an adventure.




The Taliban's focus of strategy did not shift, concentrating further on warfare. They went ahead with conquering more and more provinces moving toward the north. Remnants of the Mujahideen militias were pushed into northern Afghanistan. The de jure Mujaideen president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved with his forces to the north and later left Afghanistan. The main resistance group left was Shura-e-Nizar militias under direct command of Mujahideen defense minister and powerful commander Ahmad Shah Masood. Other remaining small militia groups, including one Shia faction and another led by a Communist ethnic Uzbek commander, also joined the anti-Taliban Mujahideen militias. With the convergence of the anti-Taliban groups, the coalition was named as the Northern Alliance and held its aim to work both militarily and politically against the Taliban. They were nominally operating under the leadership of President Rabbani, but the main command remained with his more powerful defense minister, Masood who took his stronghold from the strategic Panjsher Valley.




The Northern Alliance remained the biggest headache for the victorious Taliban fighters till the last minute. The Taliban captured all but three provinces that made around 5 percent of the Afghan territory.




Although areas under the Taliban control were as calm as never before in the past two decades, the frontline in the north was always hot. Fighting never paused against the Northern Alliance in an effort to conquer the remaining parts of the country. This aim was never achieved. In addition to ensuring security, another success of the Taliban was the 95 percent elimination of poppy cultivations it managed to achieve by the end of its rein in the areas it controlled.




Osama Controversy




One of the most controversial issues with the Taliban was harboring Al-Qaeda network along with its leaders including Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri. This controversy is apparently what brought the Taliban rule in Afghanistan to its ultimate end.




As a matter of fact, the Taliban did not bring Bin Laden to Afghanistan, but they inherited his case from the Mujahideen. Bin Laden, who joined the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in 1984, left to Sudan after victory of the Mujahideen in 1992. After pressure from Saudi Arabia and the US on Sudan to hand him over, Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996 with the help of three Mujahideen commanders just before Taliban's ascendance to power. When the Taliban captured the eastern city of Jalalabad in September of that year, Bin Laden was already settled there.




Bin Laden found new and more welcoming hosts, however. The Taliban assured him protection and not to hand him over to any third party. It was September 11, 1996, when the Al-Qaeda leader and the Taliban met — the day the Mujahideen lost Jalalabad. Bin Laden built several big training camps for his men in various provinces of Afghanistan. His relations with the Taliban were boosted after he started funding the frontline battles. He also announced his allegiance to the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. The Taliban kept Bin Laden, their most important guest, parallel to the movement's leader, and they did not give in to huge pressures from US, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the international community. Neither incentives nor threats worked to convince the Taliban to extradite Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia recognized the Taliban regime in an effort to convince the Taliban to strike a deal over Bin Laden, only to cut it off the diplomatic relations after it failed to make the Taliban leader to sit for talks on Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia was one of the only three countries that recognized the Taliban regime.




Mullah Omar continued to harbor Bin Laden in the face of not only international pressures, but also increasing dissatisfaction at home and even from within the Taliban administration. When the US threatened to topple the Taliban if it does not hand over Bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks, more than 1,000 clerics from across the country gathered and asked Mullah Omar to pave way for ending the Bin Laden ordeal in an honorable way. But the Taliban leader, who had been given the title of Amir-ul-Momineen (Arabic for: commander of the faithful), failed to pay heed to such demands. He had earlier, too, turned a blind eye to frequent calls of an important group from within the Taliban administration to get rid of the "Bin Laden's headache." At the top of those demanders was Mullah Omar's secretary, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who was later shifted to Kabul to be foreign minister. It was later revealed that Mutawakil's "expulsion" to Kabul was to keep him away from Kandahar where he can influence Mullah Omar's decision on Bin Laden.




Bin Laden's case was not the only one in which Mullah Omar acted on his own views without heeding to the other voices of reason. The Taliban leader is known for being self-willed and headstrong in decision-making, whatever important the case at hand is. From direct instructions to commanders on the front line to the most fateful political decisions, the most preferred word to be acted on was the Taliban leader's personal opinion. Although there was a Shura Council sitting in Kabul to make some decisions, but its suggestions and decisions were not compulsory for Mullah Omar as he was holding the position of Amir-ul-Momineen — a title that was given to the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and some of their successors as leaders of the Ummah. Mullah Omar's unchallengeable decisions were giving the impression as if he were a real Amir-ul-Momineen or leader of the Muslims.




Mullah State




The Taliban leader's wayward behavior was a tip of an iceberg in the crisis that led to the failure of the state. After capturing the capital and widening its grasp, the Taliban faced the mammoth task of forming a government that should answer the Afghan people's worldly needs and also be a jurisprudentially reliable Islamic state. They had also to deal with foreign policy affairs and big domestic issues in accordance to contemporary world situations. But the Taliban turned at odds with whoever and whatever they thought were "Un-Islamic." Instead of advancing its system of governance, the Taliban spent most of the available energy on winning wars.




Everyone of a valuable job in the government was a mullah — a man who studied traditional religious books authored as back as 10 centuries ago. By giving all the high-profile posts to mullahs, the Taliban formed a so-called mullahic government. People with academic and modern studies were not allowed to attain high-status government positions.




The result of such bigotry was that every sensitive post went to mullahs, many of them totally ignorant of what should be their responsibility. They brought the ages old thinking of their madrasahs to be implemented in the government. For example, the Justice Minister believed reading newspapers was merely waste of time and suggested to the Taliban leadership to ban newspapers. Generally, the Taliban's worldview had its roots in the traditionally conservative and rural culture, rather than a comprehensive study of Islam. Under the Taliban's ruling, leaving the beard and wearing Afghan baggy clothes and turban were strong religious musts with offenders severely punishable.




The means of change the Taliban believed to work in the complex Afghan society was force. Their police for "Promoting the Virtue and Prohibiting the Vice" attracted a terrible notoriety for the regime. Cases like young boys being stopped and detained for leaving long hairs, having their beards shorter than the "Shari`ah standard" and beating women by these police were widely circulated to add to the infamy of the once "angels of peace." Television was deemed un-Islamic and was banned. Women were totally deprived of the rights to education and work. The tough regulations were put in place one by one, drawing hard international criticism as well as national dissatisfaction.




It was not only the ignorance of politics and governance that prevented the Taliban from being popularly accepted, but also their lack of knowledge about Islam and their approach to enforcing Shari`ah contributed to the isolation of the "Islamic emirate" nationally and across the Muslim World and even in the eyes of Islamic movements.




"Andiwali" System




In addition to failing to manage public affairs, the Taliban also did not pay heed to strengthening their own governmental establishments. No regular police, army, and intelligence service existed. The Taliban did not feel a need for developing these establishments. Their most valued men were those who fight well. With no trained police and armed forces, it was inevitable for the entire administration to collapse swiftly when its moment came.




The Taliban's governmental structure was based on Andiwali — a term that means friendship in Pashto. In the Andiwali system, all the people loyal to a commander, minister, or other officials accompany that person wherever he takes job. The loyalists were like a personal team that shift to anywhere the patron goes. Be it a minister, military corps commander, police chief, or intelligence chief, he would have a big group of andiwalan or friends. The strongest link in recognizing each other among the Taliban ranks was therefore the Andiwali system; the question when knowing somebody was not in which department he works, but whose Andiwali or friend he was. Thereby, personal loyalties were working in place of the regular establishments even in the government's most sensitive departments.




No Reconciliation




One of the big opportunities that the Taliban, like their predecessors in the conflict years, missed was that they did not promote peace and reconciliation and instead pushed further for war. They went ahead with fighting to annihilate their antagonists rather then sitting with them for talks. The fighting between the Northern Alliance mainly ethnic Tajiks and the Taliban predominantly Pashtuns meant for many an ethnic war with no reconciliation.




When the Taliban felt they were powerful enough, they opted to eliminate their opponents. They even did not give a positive response to frequent appeals for working together from the once Mujahideen premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who, ironically, became their ally today in their war against the Americans. Their term for all Mujahideen leaders was Shar and Fasaad or evil and corrupt, while there were many elements in the Mujhaideen who could have worked well together with the "Islamic emirate" of the Taliban. Exclusion of well-educated cadres and Mujahideen leaders largely contributed to undermining the Taliban government both professionally (technically) and popularly.




Theater for Jihadists




Another element that brought actual threat to the "Islamic emirate" was the fact that the Taliban openly harbored several jihadist groups from across the region. From the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan of Tahir Yuldashev to the Chinese separatist organization of East Turkistan Islamic Movement and to the predominantly Arab Al-Qaeda network, all were operating and being trained in Afghanistan. Both the Taliban and these groups were overtly boasting of spreading their activities to the entire region and later to the rest of the world — something that never concurred with their conditions and the situation they lived.




Afghanistan was then home to Jihadist groups who had announced a holy war against Tajik, Uzbek, Indian, Western, Chinese, and Arab governments. Surrounded by countries hostile to the Taliban for harboring their enemies and embargoed by the UN, the landlocked Afghanistan had only one ally, even if not in the true sense of an ally, beside it, and that was Pakistan.




The nascent government already facing a bad establishment system and poor popularity made Afghanistan an explosive place for regional powers. While little, actually nothing, was done to first make the country stand on its feet in terms of development and resources, increasing focus on military activities on both national and international fronts put the "Islamic emirate" on the verge of an international war and an imminent collapse, while the utopia of establishing a caliphate based on Shari`ah the Taliban believed in never materialized. Even the more humble goal of establishing an Islamic state, in the true sense of a state, was not achieved on a land where more than one and a half million sacrificed their lives for the Islamic cause.