Religion:History of Taliban

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Short description: Historical overview of the Taliban

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This is a timeline of the background of the history of the Taliban. It details the Taliban movement's origins in Pashtun nationalism, and briefly relates its ideological underpinnings with that of broader Afghan society. It also describes the Taliban's consolidation of power, listing persecutions by Taliban officials during both its five years in power in Afghanistan and its war with the Northern Alliance. It further covers the Taliban's time in power, its fall following the US invasion, and its fight against the invasion, as well as its eventual return to power.

Background

Mujahideen praying in 1987.

Taliban, literally meaning 'students of Islam' or 'seekers of knowledge', have been part of Kandahar's 'Quran Belt' for centuries.[1] They were teachers, dispute mediators, and comforters of the dying.[1] They would also study in madrasas, living off charitable givings.[2] After their studies, they could become mullahs, the 'givers' of knowledge.[2] This provided a form of Islamic civil service in absence of state.[2]

In 1978, the Saur Revolution brought into power the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan backed by the Soviet Union, which subsequently unleashed a Marxist campaign against religious leaders.[3] Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution was spreading militant Islamism from the neighbouring country through underground networks.[4] Supporters of it started spreading their ideas across the desert, especially to the accessible Herat, which also had many Shia Muslims like Iran.[5] Nevertheless, the communist government continued to campaign against traditional and Islamic practices.[5] In March 1979, the Herat uprising began in response to the announcement of a compulsory literacy program for girls.[4] This gave rise to a spreading rebellion in the western countryside.[4] Eventually, a larger insurgency by the mujahideen began.[6] After the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, Islamic mujahideen fighters engaged in war with those Soviet forces.

Foreign influence

The Central Intelligence Agency began soon to support the insurgency through Pakistan .[7] Although no documentation has surfaced that the CIA directly supported the Taliban, it has been argued that military support was indirectly provided to the Taliban because, in the 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services 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.[8] The Pakistani leader Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq pursued a religious and political agenda in Afghanistan.[9] Zia believed that political Islam should be embraced, saying that religion and ideology were the main sources of the country's strength.[10] He also saw jihad as a political weapon.[10] Zia insisted that all CIA support to the mujahideen go through Pakistani hands.[11] Pakistani support for them was overseen by the Inter-Services Intelligence.[12]

Zia and Akhtar Abdur Rahman, the leader of ISI, supported the construction of madrassas, Islamic religious schools, along the border to educate young Afghans, with their number in all of Pakistan increasing from 900 in 1971 to about 33,000 by 1988.[10][13] Many of these had been financed by patrons from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf.[13] Saudi religious ideology was introduced in these institutions.[2] Many senior leaders of the Afghanistan Taliban were closely associated with and had attended the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Akora Khattak in Pakistan, including Mullah Omar, and its role in supporting the Taliban.[14][15] The seminary was run by Maulana Sami-ul-Haq of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, who is often referred to as the "Father of the Taliban".[14][16] It blended Islamist politics with the teachings of the conservative Deobandi movement.[2]

During the power vacuum created by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the country was torn apart by warring mujahideen groups. President Mohammad Najibullah warned that "Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism".[17] The Pakistani intelligence initially supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's forces, with former Afghan military officers directly under its command.[18] However, he failed when Ahmad Shah Massoud captured Kabul in 1992.[19] Javed Nasir, the new head of ISI, was an open preacher of Islamic values and the most religious leader of the Pakistani intelligence in a generation.[20] As the new Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto wanted to develop Pakistan's economy through overland trading in Central Asia.[21] Her interior minister Naseerullah Babar was a Pashtun notable who had organised guerrilla training for Afghans in the 1970s.[22] He supported using Pashtunistan to reach the Central Asian markets.[22]

In October 1994, Babar organised a trial convoy of Pakistani exports being delivered to Turkmenistan.[23] As the convoy arrived at the Pakistani border, the Taliban had just begun operating in the area.[23] The ISI grasped the chance to wield power in the region by fostering a previously unknown Kandahari student movement.[24] They continued to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.[25]

Emergence in Afghanistan

Kandahar had traditionally been the center of Pashtun power and culture, as well as one of the major centres of power in the country, but had by 1994 fallen into disarray.[26] Hekmatyar's forces, trucking mafias and local warlords, such Mullah Naqib, were around the city, with hundreds of roadblocks on the main roads and with widespread violent and sexual crime occurring inside.[26] The rise of the Taliban was subsequently portrayed as creating Islamic order against crime and chaos.[1] This connected popular Islamic values with returning the glory of Durrani Pashtuns.[1] This happened as wealthy Pashtun leaders in Kandahar were looking for common cause.[1]

Military campaign

A small Taliban militia first emerged near Kandahar in the spring and summer of 1994, committing vigilante acts against minor warlords, with a fund of 250,000 USD from local businessmen.[27] They soon began to receive backing from local Durrani Pashtun leaders.[28] These included Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, Hamid Karzai, and the Popalzai.[29] Their backing gave legitimacy to the militia in its early moment.[28] Their aim was to bring back the exiled former King Mohammed Zahir Shah.[30] Mohammed Omar began to meet Pashtun delegations and was made the head of the movement's supreme council.[31]

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns.[32] Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords.[33] One story is that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mohammed Omar (Mullah Omar) and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals.[34] Another motivation was 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.[35]

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.[36] Either private Pakistani trucking interests or the Pakistani government aided its first military breakthroughs.[23] It captured a weapons dump in mid-October with equipment for tens of thousands of soldiers in 17 tunnels created by Saudi and Pakistani intelligence near the border crossing of Spin Boldak by buying it from an Afghan commander supposedly loyal to Massoud.[23] A Pakistani government convoy was soon aided across checkpoints by the Taliban.[23] By mid-November, the Taliban ruled Kandahar with six Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 fighters and four Mil Mi-17 helicopters captured from the airport.[23]

After Herat fell in September 1995, all of southern Afghanistan was held by the Taliban.[37] 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.[38] In the spring of 1996, Mullah Omar held a meeting of over a thousand Pashtun leaders for two weeks in Kandahar.[39] The assembly ratified him as the Amir al-Mu'minin and declared the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with a jihad against Ahmad Massoud.[39]

The Taliban launched a surprise attack against Jalalabad in August 1996.[40] Osama bin Laden may have supported with up to three million USD to buy off the remaining commanders on the way to Kabul.[40] Other sources of funding may have included Saudi and Gulf individuals, local trucking mafia, heroin traders, and the ISI.[40] Armed with technicals, the Taliban advanced from Surobi District and the plains south of Kabul.[40] On September 26th, Massoud withdrew from the capital to Panjshir Valley and the Taliban entered it the next day.[41] Within a day, every government building and military base had been occupied.[41] President Mohammad Najibullah and his brother were killed violently and hung above a traffic circle.[41]

Foreign support

The ISI got interested in the early Taliban and Javed Ashraf Qazi met with them, agreeing to provide support.[42] The support subsequently grew from fuel to materiel to cash.[42] Eventually Bhutto described it as carte blanche.[42][./History_of_Taliban#cite_note-FOOTNOTEColl2005293-39 [39]][./History_of_Taliban#cite_note-FOOTNOTEColl2005293-39 [39]] By spring 1995, ISI was sending military officers and guerrilla leaders to help Taliban.[42] Inside the country, Shahnawaz Tanai's troops were repairing and operating their tanks and aircraft.[42] In eastern Afghanistan, local leaders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani swore loyalty to the Taliban.[42] Money and materiel helped create these alliances.[42] Meanwhile, volunteer fighters were arriving from the border madrassas.[37] The aim for Pakistan was to succeed in Zia's aim of an Islamist, Pashtun-led government loyal to Islamabad.[43]

The Saudi intelligence also met with the Taliban, who asked for support to create an Islamic state.[44] Saudi-based charities, such as the International Islamic Relief Organization, gave funding to the Taliban during its rise.[45] The Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice supported its new Afghan equivalent.[45] Direct subsidies and training made it stronger than other parts of the Taliban government.[46] The Saudis saw this support as a way to buttress their power and form of Islam against Iran.[46]

At the early stage, the then Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robin Raphel, strongly supported efforts to engage with the Taliban. She also supported a Unocal-led, Taliban-supported pipeline project on trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in April and August 1996. She was one of the first senior American officials to meet personally with Taliban.[47] Raphel called on the international community to engage the Taliban shortly after its takeover of Kabul.[48] She welcomed their taking of Kabul in September 1996 as a "positive step".[49][50] Her consistent support for the Taliban from its earliest days earned her the sobriquet "Lady Taliban" in the Indian press.[51]

Consolidation of power

Radio Kabul was renamed Voice of the Sharia and used to announce new religious rules.[41] Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to ban a wide variety of activities hitherto lawful in Afghanistan: employment, education and sports for women, movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and beard trimming. 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.[52]


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.[53] Possession was forbidden of depictions of living things, whether drawings, paintings or photographs, stuffed animals, and dolls.[53]

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 Saudis.[41] In newly conquered towns hundreds of religious police beat offenders (typically men without beards and women who were not wearing their burqas properly) with long sticks.[54]

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

Main page: Religion:Treatment of women by the Taliban
A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on 13 September 2001. The footage, which was filmed by RAWA.

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" (mahram); washing clothes in streams; or having their measurements taken by tailors.[55]

Employment of women was restricted to the medical sector because male medical personnel were not allowed to examine women. One result of the Taliban's ban on employment of women was the closing down of many primary schools, in places such as Kabul, not only for girls but for boys too, because almost all the teachers there were women.[56]

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.[57][58]

Women were made to wear the burqa, a traditional dress covering the entire body, with a small screen covering the face through which the wearer could see. 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."[59] Home schools for girls, which had been allowed to continue, were forbidden.[60] In June 1998, the Taliban stopped all women from attending general hospitals,[61] 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 Taliban interpretation of the Sharia.

Prohibitions on culture

Movie theaters were closed and music was banned. Hundreds of cultural artifacts that were deemed polytheistic were also destroyed including a major museum and countless private art collections.[62]

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.[55] In February 2001, Taliban used sledgehammers to destroy representational works of art at the National Museum of Afghanistan.[63]

Local festivities were not exempt from prohibitions. The Taliban banned the traditional Afghan New Year's celebrations and "for a time they also banned [Ashura] the Shia Islamic month of mourning and even restricted any show of festivity at Eid."[64] The Afghan people were not allowed to have any cultural celebrations if women were present. If there were only men at the celebration it would be allowed, so long as it ended by 7:00 p.m, a set time.

Many Taliban officials were slightly opposed to the idea of no entertainment, but even they wanted it to follow many of the religious restrictions.

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 carved in 507 CE, the other 53 metres (174 ft) tall and carved in 554 CE. 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.[65] 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 portrayed 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 meant for the repairs of the war-damaged statues of the Buddha. He contended that the Taliban intended to use the money for drought relief.[66] However, the Taliban spent much money and effort on destroying the statues, resources which they could have instead used for drought relief.

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."[67] More than 8000 noncombatants were reported killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and later in Bamyan.[68] 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.[69] 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-i-Sharif.

While the slaughter can be attributed to several factors – ethnic difference, suspicion of Shia Hazara loyalty to their co-religionists in Iran, fury at the loss of life suffered in an earlier unsuccessful Taliban takeover of Mazar – the takfir (acusation of apostasy) by the Sunni Taliban of the Shia Hazaras may have been the principal motivation, as apostasy in Islam is punishable by death. 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 we 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.[70]

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.[71] 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.[72]

During the years that followed, massacres of Hazara by Taliban forces were documented by groups such as Human Rights Watch.[73]

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 men to staff its civil service.[citation needed]

US invasion and insurgency

Following the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban was defeated and many Taliban fighters left the movement or retreated to sanctuaries in Pakistan. In May and June 2003, high Taliban officials proclaimed the Taliban regrouped and ready for guerrilla war to expel US forces from Afghanistan.[74][75] Omar assigned five operational zones to Taliban commanders such as Dadullah. Dadullah took charge in Zabul province.[74]

In late 2004, the then hidden Taliban leader Mohammed Omar announced an insurgency against "America and its puppets" (i.e. transitional Afghan government forces) to "regain the sovereignty of our country".[76]

While The Taliban spent several years regrouping, they launched a re-escalation of the insurgency campaign in 2006.[77]

Return to power

On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed a peace agreement in Doha, Qatar, officially titled the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan.[78] The provisions of the deal include the withdrawal of all American and NATO troops from Afghanistan, a Taliban pledge to prevent al-Qaeda from operating in areas under Taliban control, and talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.[79] The United States agreed to an initial reduction of its force level from 13,000 to 8,600 by July 2020, followed by a full withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban keeps its commitments.[80] The deal was supported by China, Russia and Pakistan, although it did not involve the government of Afghanistan.[81] In September 2020, over 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including 400 of whom were accused and convicted of major crimes such as murder, were released by the Afghan government as part of the Doha Agreement between the United States and the Taliban.[82] According to Afghanistan's National Security Council, many of the released prisoners who were "experts" returned to the battlefield and strengthened the Taliban's hand.[83]

In early 2021, both the Pentagon and Afghan leadership believed in a continuous US support for Kabul. However, President Biden continued President Trump's persistent will to move the US away from an endless foreign war, even while Afghan leadership continued to rely on the US' manpower and support.[84] The Biden administration announced in April 2021 that it would continue the withdrawal beyond the initial deadline, with an expected completion date by 11 September 2021.[85] On 8 July, Biden shifted the U.S. withdrawal deadline to 31 August.[86] The Taliban and allied militant groups began a widespread offensive on 1 May 2021, simultaneous with the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Following its rapid defeat across the country, the Afghan National Army was left in chaos, and only two units remained operational by mid-August: The 201st Corps and 111th Division, both based in Kabul. The capital city itself was left encircled after Taliban forces had captured Mihtarlam, Sharana, Gardez, Asadabad, and other cities as well as districts in the east. Kabul, the capital city, fell to Taliban forces on 15 August 2021. The capture took place hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

See also

  • Afghan Civil War (1996–2001)
  • Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
  • Northern Alliance
  • Talibanization
  • Inter-Services Intelligence activities in Afghanistan
  • 2021 Taliban offensive, as Taliban again took power in Afghanistan after US/NATO withdrawal

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Bibliography

Further reading

Status of women