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Taliban redirects hre. For other uses, see Taliban (disambiguation).

The Taliban Movement or just Taliban (Persian and Pashto طالبان (plural), from the Arabic طالب(singular), "seeker" or "student" (of knowledge), is a Sunni Islamist nationalist Movement which effectively ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, despite having diplomatic recognition from only three countries: the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as the unrecognized government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The most influential members, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Movement, were simple village mullahs (junior Islamic religious scholars), most of whom had studied in Madrassas in Pakistan. The Taliban movement derived mainly from Pashtuns of Afghanistan and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, but also included many non-Afghan volunteers from the Arab world, as well as Eurasia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Rise to power

After the fall of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, Afghanistan was thrown into civil war between competing warlords. The Taliban eventually emerged as a force capable of bringing order to the country. The rise of the Taliban helped the economy by eliminating the payments that warlords demanded from business people; it brought political benefits by reducing factional fighting (although the Taliban fought aggressively against their enemies, their relative hegemony reduced the number of factions) and brought relative stability by imposing a set of norms on a chaotic society. Although the radical ideology of the Taliban would later alienate many, several observers initially considered its emergence as a positive development. Taliban legend has it that in the spring of 1994, upon hearing of the abduction and rape of two girls at a Mujahidin checkpoint in the village of Sang Hesar near Kandahar, local Mullah Omar, a veteran of the Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami faction of the Mujahidin, gathered thirty other Taliban into a fighting force, rescued the girls and hanged the commander of the Mujahideen. After this incident, Taliban legend goes, the services of these pious religious fighters were in much demand from villagers plagued by unruly Mujahidin, and thus the Taliban were born. (Note: This is legend. The Taliban were already making international news in such papers as the Irish Times as early as first quarter 1990. The part about Mullah Omar's involvement may be true, but not about it causing the rise of the Taliban movement as a whole.)

Following this incident, Omar fled to the neighboring Balochistan province of Pakistan, from where he emerged in the fall of 1994, reportedly with a well-armed and well-funded militia of 1,500 followers, who would provide protection for a Pakistani trade convoy carrying goods overland to Turkmenistan. However, many reports suggest that the convoy was in fact full of Pakistani fighters posing as Taliban, and that the Taliban had gained considerable arms, military training, and economic aid from the Pakistanis. Some claim that support also came from the U.S., which would have preferred a Pakistan-installed government over the Russian-backed Northern Alliance. This scenario would be much more likely if the US had actually recognized the Taliban instead of militating for the world not to recognize them. Pakistani support (recruitment and education from wahhabite madrassas in Pakistan, military training of taliban fighters, and generous material support in money and weaponry) of the Taliban is attested, though, rumors even ran that the movement was a Pakistani creation aimed at bringing low their hated neighbor, Afghanistan.

After gaining power in and around Kandahar through a combination of military and diplomatic victories, the Taliban attacked, and eventually defeated, the forces of Ismail Khan in the west of the country, capturing Herat from him on September 5, 1995. That winter, the Taliban laid siege to the capital city Kabul, firing rockets into the city and blockading trade routes. In March, the Taliban's opponents, Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar ceased fighting one another and formed a new anti-Taliban alliance. But on September 26, 1996 they quit the city of Kabul and retreated north, allowing the Taliban to capture the seat of government and establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

On May 20, 1997, brother Generals Abdul Malik Pehlawan and Mohammed Pehlawan mutinied from under Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum's command and formed an alliance with the Taliban. Three days later, Dostum abandoned much of his army and fled from his base in Mazar-i Sharif into Uzbekistan. On May 25, Taliban forces, along with those of the mutinous generals, entered the undefended Mazar-i Sharif. That same day, Pakistan recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, followed by recognition from Saudi Arabia the following day. However, on May 27, fierce street battles broke out between the Taliban and Malik's forces. The Taliban, unused to urban warfare, were soundly defeated, with thousands losing their lives either in battle or in mass executions afterward. Nearly fifteen months passed before the Taliban re-captured Mazar-i Sharif on August 8, 1998.

On August 20, 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered the United States Navy to fire cruise missiles on four sites in Afghanistan, all near Khost (and one in Sudan), which the U.S. claimed were terrorist training camps. This was known as Operation Infinite Reach. The sites included one run by Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, who had allegedly directed the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Three other villages, whose legitimacy as targets was strongly disputed by many sources, were also struck.

At its height, the Emirate was diplomatically recognised by Pakistan, by the United Arab Emirates and by Saudi Arabia. It then controlled all of Afghanistan, apart from small regions in the northeast which were held by the Northern Alliance. Most of the rest of the world, and the United Nations continued to recognize Rabbani as Afghanistan's legal Head of State, although it was generally understood that he had no real influence in the country.

The Taliban received logistical and humanitarian support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). An estimated $2 million came each year from Saudi Arabia's major charity, funding two universities and six health clinics and supporting 4,000 orphans. The Saudi King Fahd sent an annual shipment of dates as a gift. The relationship with Iran was considered poor due to the Taliban's strong anti-Shi'ah policy. Relations with the Taliban deteriorated further in 1998 after Taliban forces seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif and executed Iranian diplomats.

Culture

In the languages spoken in Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, Persian and Pushtu), Taliban means those who study the book (referring to the Qur'an). It is derived from the Arabic word for seeker or student, talib. Through certain Pakistani madrasahs, the Taliban may have also been influenced by the Deobandi School of thought which emphasizes piety, austerity, and the family obligations of men. They emerged from the ethnically Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. Many of the Taliban grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan.

Life under the Taliban rule

Islamic law

Once in power, the Taliban instituted a form of Shari'ah (Islamic law). The Taliban's reform of government was in part directed by scholars of Islamic law. Among the laws applied were criminal punishments, administered by a religious police force, including amputation of one or both hands for theft and stoning for adultery.

The Taliban banned all forms of television, imagery, music and sports. In response to this ban the IOC suspended Afghanistan from participation in the 2000 Summer Olympics. Wearing white shoes - the color of the Taliban flag - was illegal and men were required to keep their beards at a specified length.

Opium trade

Although the Taliban reportedly banned opium poppy cultivation in late 1997, opium production in Afghanistan may have increased through the year 2000, accounting for 72% of the world's illicit opium supply, according to U.S. government sources. Most Afghan opium is sold in Europe and not the United States.

On July 27, 2000, the Taliban again issued a decree banning opium poppy cultivation. The announcement of the ban caused prices to rise from $30 per kilogram to $500 per kilogram.

There was comment from the international human rights community on the brutality of the Taliban's anti-drug interdictions, including violent punishment of offenders.

The U.S. State Department noted in 2001 that "Neither the Taliban nor the Northern Alliance has taken any significant action to seize stored opium, precursor chemicals or arrest and prosecute narcotics traffickers. On the contrary, authorities were said to continue to tax the opium poppy crop at about ten percent, and allow it to be sold in open bazaars, traded and transported."

However, the Taliban had succeeded in cutting annual poppy production from a CIA-estimated 4,042 tons per year to only 81.3 tons per year. In 2001 The United States provided $43 million worth of supplies (primarily wheat) to humanitarian relief organizations for distribution to the people of Afghanistan, while continuing to criticise the Taliban's activities. This was widely reported by critics of U. S. policy (such as Robert Scheer) to be a $43 million reward to the Taliban for reducing poppy production. The Taliban subsequently raided the shipments, but no evidence has been offered to indicate that this was the United States' intention.

Poppy production increased with the fall of the Taliban government.

Women

File:Talibanbeating.jpg

A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on September 26, 2001. Photograph taken from footage here filmed by the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA). [1]

The Taliban were widely criticized by Western countries for their oppression of women. Women were strictly limited in their ability to work in public places. However, they were allowed to set up their own businesses from their houses; they were also permitted to work in certain medical positions so they could treat female patients. Women could not work if they had a baby, in which case they had to stay home and care for their children. The Taliban believed women should stay home in order that their children did not have to grow up in the care of another, and also believed that work is the duty of the male in the house and to reject this duty was haraam.

The Taliban religion minister, Al-Haj Maulwi Qalamuddin, told the New York Times that "To a country on fire, the world wants to give a match. Why is there such concern about women? Bread costs too much. There is no work. Even boys are not going to school. And yet all I hear about are women. Where was the world when men here were violating any woman they wanted?"

Although the Taliban claimed that the education of girls in rural Afghanistan was increasing, a UNESCO report said that there was "a whopping 65% drop in their enrollment. In schools run by the Directorate of Education, only 1 per cent of the pupils are girls. The percentage of female teachers, too, has slid from 59.2 per cent in 1990 to 13.5 per cent in 1999."

Supporters of the Taliban suggested that the depression and the other problems plaguing Afghani women were the result of dire poverty, years of war, the bad economy, and the fact that many were left war widows, and could no longer provide food for their families without some sort of international aid.

Women were also obliged to wear the burqa when appearing in public, and failure to do so could attract a public beating [2] (video). The Taliban stated that women were obliged to wear the burqa due to Islamic teachings which state that women must cover up her body in front of non-mahram men, and that both men and women should dress modestly.

Hazaras under the Taliban

Minority groups, especially Hazaras, were brutally persecuted and oppressed by the Taliban. More than 15,000 Hazaras were killed in central highlands known as Hazarajat, their women were enslaved and later sold to tribal leaders in Pakistan. [3]

Patrolling the streets in the pickup trucks, the Taliban members, under the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Amr-bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar), search houses and destroyed any television sets, radios, cassettes, and photographs and "punished" the owners.

Taliban leader On Genocide of Hazaras: [4]

"The policy of the Taliban is to exterminate the Hazaras." Maulawi Mohammed Hanif, Taliban Commander announcing their policy to a crowd of 300 people summoned to a mosque (after killing 15,000 Hazaras people in a day).

"Hazaras are not Muslims. You can kill them. It is not a sin." Mullah Manon Niazi, Taliban Governor of Mazar-e Sharif speaking to a crowd in a mosque after the fall of Mazara-e-Sharif city in 1998.

"Tajiks may go to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan and Hazaras to "Goristan" (Graveyard}. Afghanistan doesn't belong to you." Mullah Manon Niazi, Taliban Governor of Mazar-e Sharif speaking to a crowd in a mosque after the fall of Mazara-e-Sharif city in 1998.

Hazaras were brutally massacred thoroughout Afghanistan. The two well known accounted by Human Rights Watch are:

Massacred IN YAKAOLANG, JANUARY 2001 MASSACRE AT ROBATAK PASS, MAY 2000

Because international media and press had minimal access to the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, therefore very little account of human rights violations and massacres under the Taliban really exists. Stories of these events can be heard throughout Afghanistan by eyewitnesses and by the mass graves discovered in Bamiyan, Mazar e Sharif, Dashth e Laili, Yakaolang, Sarobi and many other places.

Buddhas of Bamiyan

File:Khar.jpg

A Taliban fighter smiles to the cameras after the completion of the destruction of the two Buddhas in Bamiyan

In March 2001, the Taliban ordered the demolition of two statues of Buddha carved into cliffsides at Bamiyan, one 38 metres tall and about 1800 years old, the other 53 metres tall and about 1500 years old. 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 offered to pay for the preservation of the statues. However, after a few years, a decree was issued claiming all idols must be destroyed as per Islamic law that prohibits any form of idol worship as shirk (i.e., a sin).

Locals claim that Pakistani engineers were onsite to help with the statues' destruction, and that Afghanistan's treasures were ferried across the border to be plundered by private collectors. The Pakistani government's ministry of religious affairs issued a statement saying that the destruction of the Buddhas was in accordance with Islamic law. Nevertheless, the destruction of these priceless historical monuments made the Taliban look barbarous in the eyes of many in both the West and the East.

Relationship with Osama bin Laden

In 1996, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan upon the invitation of the Northern Alliance leader Abdur Rabb ur Rasool Sayyaf. When the Taliban came to power, 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. The Taliban and bin Laden had very close connections, which were formalized by a marriage of one of bin Laden's sons to Omar's daughter.

U.S. invasion

File:Taliban controlled area.JPG

map of Afghanistan during the 2001-02 conflict.

On September 22, 2001, as the U.S. blamed Osama bin Laden and his hosts, the Taliban, for the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United Arab Emirates and later Saudi Arabia withdrew their recognition of the Taliban as the legal government of Afghanistan, leaving neighboring Pakistan as the only remaining country with diplomatic ties. When threatened with retributive attack by the U.S. for harboring al-Qaeda, the Taliban government offered to judge Osama bin Laden in an Islamic court, and later, to hand him over to a neutral country for a war crimes trial. These offers were rejected by the United States, which instead offered an ultimatum[5] demanding, among other things, the handover of all al-Qaeda leaders and the closure and inspection of all "terrorist training camp[s]".

Shortly afterward, the United States, aided by the United Kingdom and supported by a coalition of other countries including the NATO alliance, initiated military action against the Taliban. The stated intent was to remove the Taliban from power because of the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his involvement in the September 11 attacks, and in retaliation for the Taliban's aid to him. The ground war was mainly fought by the Northern Alliance, the remaining elements of the anti-Taliban forces which the Taliban had routed over the previous years.

Mazar-i-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 in an orderly fashion from Kabul. On November 15, they released eight Western aid workers after three months in captivity (see Attacks on humanitarian workers).

The UN Security Council, on January 16, 2002, unanimously established an arms embargo and the freezing of identifiable assets belonging to bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining Taliban.

The Taliban later retreated from Kandahar, and regrouped in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most post-invasion Taliban fighters are new recruits, drawn again from that region's madrassahs (madrassah means "school" in Arabic). The more traditional Qur'anic schools are claimed by the U.S. to be the primary source of the new fighters.

Their insurgency, in the form of a Taliban guerrilla war, continues to this day.

Previous Western Links

The Taliban have previously been around a negotiating table in both Argentina and the USA.

In 1997, the Taliban were in Texas for talks about the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The Taliban spent several days in Sugarland at Unocal's company headquarters. In spite of the civil war in Afghanistan at the time, both Unocal and Argentinian Bridas were in competition to construct the pipeline. Source

In 1998, the Taliban were in discussion with UNOCAL in the USA and with Bridas in Argentina in an attempt to agree the building of a gas pipeline across Afghanistan. Source

Other References

External links

The Role of U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the Rise of Afghan Fundamentalism
Brother, can you spare a tear for the Taliban by Kaleem Kawaja
Endgame
Taliban's point of view
An obituary of King Fahd. Considers past and current financial supporters of mujahideen and the Taliban including the U.S. government, King Fahd and Osama bin Laden.
Amir Butler: Understanding the reasons for Taliban defiance
Interview with two foreign Taliban fighters. November 22, 2001.
Afghani Roving Ambassador on NPR's Talk of the Nation March 21, 2001, about women's treatment, statue destruction and other "lies"
Afghani Ambassador Speech at USC
Who is responsible for the Taliban

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 === Women ===
-Yo
 {{Main|Taliban treatment of women}}
 [[Image:Talibanbeating.jpg|right|thumb|320px|A member of the Taliban's [[Mutaween|religious police]] beating a woman in [[Kabul]] on [[September 26]], [[2001]]. Photograph taken from footage [http://www.rawa.us/movies/beating.mpg here] filmed by the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA). [http://www.rawa.org] ]]