From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Aug 06 2002 - 19:00:28 MDT
Go to:
http://www.unomaha.edu/afghanistan_atlas/talhist.html
or read below:
{PRIVATE}University of Nebraska at Omaha
{PRIVATE}Afghanistan Atlas Project
Where did the Taliban come from?
The first devotees came from the poverty-stricken refugee camps
that sprung up along the Pakistani border during the Afghan-
Soviet war. The young men of these camps learned a fierce and
fundamental strain of Islam through the madrassas, Islamic
schools that dotted the Afghan-Pakistani border. In September
1994, Mohammad Omar, then a mullah and today the leader of
the Taliban, created the militia in the southern Afghan province of
Kandahar. From the start, its goal was to unite a divided and war-
plagued Afghanistan under a strict and unyielding version of
Sharia -- Islamic law as written in the Koran, the life of
Mohammed and his followers, and Muslim scholars through the
ages.
Initial victories
The Taliban's growing power in Kandahar attracted the attention
of the Pakistani government, which hired the Taliban in
November 1994 to protect convoys traveling between Pakistan
and Central Asia. Taliban successes against local warlords
attracted more followers and emboldened the Taliban to take
control of Jalalabad, the eastern city bordering Pakistan on Sept.
11, 1996. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was occupied by the
Taliban on Sept. 27, 1996.
Support
Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the mujahedeen --
Islamic warriors -- once united against the Soviets, divided along
ethnic and regional lines.
During this civil war, the Taliban promised an end to the
corruption and chaos plaguing much of the country. That young
men followed, to the word, the teachings of mullahs was neither
unusual nor radical within the context of Afghanistan's history.
Since the Anglo-Afghanistan wars of the 19th century, religious
leaders have played a major role in galvanizing opposition.
The Taliban gained the support of both disaffected mujahedeen as
well more recent graduates from the madrassas. Ethnic allegiance
also secured Taliban membership. Most of its members are
Pashtun, the majority ethnic group that ruled Afghanistan for 2 1/2
centuries but lost power following the Soviet occupation. The
Taliban's popularity and predominant military might gave it a
tentative legitimacy to rule the country, and by June 1997 the
militia controlled two-thirds of the country.
Building an Islamic State
After seizing control, the Taliban instituted strict enforcement of
Sharia, Islamic religious law. Modern conveniences such as
computers, televisions, movies and radios were banned under the
pretext that they diverted minds from the tenets of Islam. Any
depiction of living things, including photography, paintings and
sculpture was banned. Men were required to wear beards at least a
fist-length below the chin. Women and girls were banned from
schools and the workplace and ordered to wear burqas, a one-
piece gown with a built-in mesh screen from which to see and
breathe. Enforcement for breaking Taliban law is meted out by
the Department for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice.
Infractions such as improper beard lengths may merit a public
beating. More serious crimes such as theft or blasphemy could
result in an amputation or execution.
Global recognition
Despite armed resistance from warlords in the countryside, the
Taliban has managed to gain control of 90 percent of the country.
The assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood on Sept. 15, 2001, may
help the Taliban take control of the far north, Afghanistan's last
anti-Taliban stronghold. Nevertheless, the Taliban's dominance
has earned it little outside recognition. U.N. sanctions were
imposed in 1999 and increased in 2001 in hopes of forcing the
Taliban to hand over bin Laden. Only two countries -- Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia -- officially recognize the Taliban. The United
Arab Emirates withdrew its recognition some two weeks after the
attacks.
Challenges
War and its aftermath have laid waste to Afghanistan. Cities lack
potable water and sanitation facilities. According to the United
Nations, there are between 9 million and 10 million land mines in
the countryside. Meanwhile, drought has pushed parts of the
nation into famine. So far, the Taliban has been unable to
demonstrate feasible administrative, technological and
governmental solutions to the problems.
The current situation threatens not only specific military action by
U.S. led forces, but also the end of outside financial support.
The policy has boomeranged. The editor of the international
Arabic paper Al-Hayat met Osama bin Laden six months ago and
said that the aides and bodyguards who surrounded him, almost
200 people, were all Saudis. In an article in the current Spectator
of London, Stephen Schwartz points out that every major terrorist
attack against the West in recent years has been conducted by
people who have embraced Wahhabism. "Bin Laden is a
Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian
allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at
Luxor... So are the Algerian terrorists... So are the Taliban-style
guerrillas in Kashmir." It is clear that Saudi Arabia now exports
two products around the globe-oil and religious fanaticism.
Egypt's problem is more familiar. It has turned into something
resembling a police state, repressing political dissent with a
brutality that Hafez Assad of Syria would have admired. It censors
all information that enters the country. It jails intellectuals for
even the slightest criticism of the regime. The result is a society
that is utterly dysfunctional, a regime deeply unpopular and
furtive opposition movements that are increasingly extreme.
We think of our allies in the Middle East as "moderates." And
certainly compared with the barbarians of Al Qaeda , they are
cautious, conservative rulers. But for decades now the
governments in Riyadh and Cairo have resisted economic and
political modernization with disastrous results. (And Saudi Arabia
is the richest Arab country and Egypt the most populous, so they
are watched closely in the Middle East.) There is another path.
Those governments that have chosen to walk ever so slowly on it-
being modern and tolerant and easing up on the police apparatus-
are actually in better shape politically. There have been few
terrorists from Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Qatar. None of these
regimes are democracies-elections in the Middle East would
simply bring more Talibans into power-but they have opened up a
little political and civil space and tried to show that Islam is
compatible with modernity.
It has been said that Africa is the basket case of today's global
market, but in many ways the Arab world is in worse shape, with
65 percent of its population under 18, stagnant economies and a
fetid political culture. By the thousands young men are
increasingly taking comfort in radical religious and political
doctrines that promise salvation through a struggle with the West.
But the focus of their hatred is their own regimes. In fact, the
Qaeda network began in the early 1990s as a series of disparate
groups in Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that were seeking to
topple their respective governments. When those efforts failed,
they decided to attack what they saw as the power behind the
thrones, the upholder of order in the Middle East: the United
States of America. We are now searching for the roots of this
conflict in Islam and in theories about the clash of civilizations.
But the roots may lie much closer, in our association with
dysfunctional Arab regimes that have spawned violent opposition.
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