The Taliban

The Taliban have often been labeled as the Afghan Government and America’s greatest enemy in Afghanistan. This is only partially true; the Taliban are not as united as some might think, and in the end their divisions may prove their downfall more than any kinetic operation or government negotiations. Either way, after six years, it is clear that kinetic operations alone will not defeat them. As opposed to their rapid ascension to power in the mid-1990s, the Taliban at this point is committed to a “protracted war.” The Taliban ideology is a schizophrenic distortion of Pashtunwali (“the Way of the Pashtun,” the Pashtun moral code) and fundamentalist Islam. Often times, the Taliban itself confuses the two, and this confusion is part of the larger divide in the Taliban: is it a jihadist organization, or a Pashtun one? Born supposedly in 1994, during a particularly tumultuous time in Afghan history, the Taliban went on to control Kabul in 1996 and had five years in which they ruled Afghanistan tyrannically with a crude mixture of theocratic intolerance, ethnocentrism, and anarchic brutality. Women were cruelly treated in a legal system that disqualified their testimony and made rape, unless witnessed by four corroborating males, the same as adultery and therefore punishable by death. Ethnic and Islamic minorities were cleansed, and development was all but ceased as the youth were turned out of secular education to memorize the Qur’an and females forced out of public life altogether. The Taliban mythology cites their creation as a reaction to the injustices that were perpetrated during the mujahedin era of Afghan politics. In 1992 the Najibullah socialist regime was finished, and Afghanistan was divided between rival warring factions. In the Southern Pashtun homelands these divisions were most critical, with a plethora of armed bands competing for territory. At one point, it was rumored that there were twenty-odd checkpoints between Kandahar and the Pakistani border at Spin Boldak, a distance of less than 100 kilometers. At one checkpoint two girls were taken from their vehicle and assaulted. A local village mullah was called upon to rescue the girls, and together with thirty compatriots, he did. This brought him and his band to the notice of the transport cartel in Quetta, who had been severely hindered by the anarchic state across the border. The mullah was Mullah Omar, and the transport cartel began to fund his militia in order to drive away the others. Within three months it had rolled on to capture twelve Southern provinces with little or no resistance. At some point it is assumed Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) came to notice the village mullah and his rag-tag bunch of Islamic student/fighters (Taliban) and began to lend support. The Taliban rose to power as a popular movement, at least in the Pashtun homelands. They brought stability, law and order, albeit at a cost. Still, crime by individuals plummeted and male civilians could venture out of their homes in relative freedom, provided they were bearded and attended regular prayers.