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Apart from its new post-September 11
foreword, introduction and conclusion, Rashid has divided his
book into three nearly equal parts. The first deals with the
history of the Taliban movement while the second relates to
the brand of Islam it stands for. And the third maps out the
contours of the "New Great Game" for the control of
the energy resources of Central Asia in the new millennium. In
which Afghanistan at the crossroads between Iran, the Arabian
Sea and India occupies the centre stage. While a host of
players - Russia, Turkey, Israel, the USA and Pakistan - are
deeply involved. And New Delhi is not exactly disinterested.
The story of the Taliban is briefly told
with its starting point in Kandahar in the spring of 1994
where a nondescript one-eyed Mullah Omar of the Ghilzai branch
of the Pashtuns started by organising a small group of the
Taliban, young religious zealots coming out of madrasas in
neighbouring Pakistan in a war against the province’s
rapacious warlords. He soon attracted more and more followers
because with the mujahideen (1992-94) in Kabul on the brink of
disintegration and worse, he offered succour and asked for no
reward. Except that those who followed him should help set up
a just Islamic system. Presently, the mullah’s missions were
going around gauging the mood of other commanders in Herat, at
the Mazar-e-Sharief and in Kabul. And slowly but surely he
gained ground not so much by superior armed prowess as
sabotage and monetary inducements.
The Taliban launched their surprise
offensive on Jalalabad in August, 1996 and by September-end
they had captured Kabul. The mujahideen and their Northern
Alliance now appeared ready for the taking. And were soon on
the run. Sadly, the Taliban conquest of Herat and
Mazar-i-Sharif punctuated by gory if gruesome massacres of the
non-Pashtuns, brought Afghanistan almost to the brink of
ethnic fragmentation. With the Uzbeks and the Tajiks in the
north and the west and the miniscule Hazaras in the middle up
against a relentless Pashtun onslaught. Nor was that all. For
the Taliban capture of a number of towns on the Tajikistan
border created a near panic in the Central Asian republics.
Oddly, even as the Taliban appeared to be winning control of
the entire country (1998), the regime was internationally
isolated and condemned as a pariah state by all its neighbours.
Barring, of course, Pakistan. In fact, a major ramification of
General Musharraf’s coup (October, 1999) was enhanced
military aid to the Taliban for its summer (2000) offensive.
Which earned the new Pakistan regime no end of international
opprobrium.
A word on the Taliban interpretation of
Islam, jihad and social transformation. To start with, it is
necessary to underline that the Taliban was neither radical
Islamicists, nor mystical Sufis, nor yet traditionalists. They
fitted nowhere in the Islamic spectrum of ideas and movements
that had emerged between 1979 and 1994. It has been suggested
that the distortion and collapse of legitimacy of all three
trends into a naked, rapacious struggle for power created an
ideological vacuum, which the Taliban came to fill. The fact
is that the Taliban represented nobody but themselves and
recognised no Islam except their own. Their Islamic
fundamentalism was aggressive, expansionist and
uncompromising. Representing a back-to-basics idealism in a
faithful reproduction of Islamic society that existed shortly
after the Prophet’s death (632 AD).One of the most
regressive of regimes, the Taliban was not only harsh on women
but also men, especially the non-Pakhtuns.
Thus all Kabul males were given just six
weeks to grow a full beard, even though some of the ethnic
groups - the Hazaras, for instance - have limited beard
growth. More, beards could not be trimmed shorter than a man’s
fist. The religious police stood at street corners with
scissors cutting off long hair and often beating culprits. Men
had to wear their salwars above the ankle and everyone had to
say his/her prayers five times a day. All conceivable forms of
entertainment were strictly taboo: movies, TV, video, music,
dance. Even, kiteflying! "Nawroz", the traditional
Afghan New Year celebrations, were declared un-Islamic. Nobody
was allowed to hang paintings, portraits or photographs in
their homes. The tragic truth is that the very idea of culture
was alien to the Taliban.
Thanks to their myopic vision and
unimaginative policies, hardly any educated or professional
class was left in the country. In the several waves of
refugees who left after 1992, most of the educated, trained
professionals - even telephone operators, electricians and
mechanics said goodbye. In the event, the Taliban manning the
departments of finance, economy and the social sectors were
mullah traders-businessmen, truck transporters and smugglers.
Their sole interest was expanding the market for smuggling and
the trucking business across the region. The Taliban’s war
was run from Mullah Omar’s tin trunks stuffed with money
which he kept under his bed. There was no national budget for
which there was no expertise in any case. The warlords were
not even remotely concerned with planning for the
reconstruction of the country. In the event, Afghanistan’s
"black hole" was getting larger and wider, sucking
in more and more of its population and the people of the
region into it.
A word on Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. The
Taliban’s contact with the Arab-Afghans and their
pan-Islamic, Wahabi ideology came only after the capture of
Kabul in 1996. Pakistan was closely involved in introducing
Laden to the Taliban leadership in Kandahar because it wanted
to retain the Khost training camps for Kashmiri militants,
which were now in Taliban hands. Bin Laden endeared himself to
the Taliban leadership by sending several hundred Arab-Afghans
to participate in the 1997 and 1998 offensives in the north
where his Wahabi fighters had a clear hand in large-scale
massacres of the Shia Hazaras. Inter alia Bin Laden was also
responsible for hardening the Taliban’s anti-West, anti-US
stance. Earlier Mullah Omar’s men were prepared to cut a
deal with Washington: making Bin Laden leave the country in
return for US recognition.In the bargain, the Arab-Afghans had
come full circle. From being mere appendages to the Afghan
jihad and the cold war in the 1980s they had taken centre
stage for the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in
the 1990s. The US had to pay a heavy price for ignoring
Afghanistan between 1992-96 while the Taliban was providing
sanctuary to the most hostile and militant Islamic
fundamentalist movement the world had witnessed in the
post-cold war decades.
A word on the New Great Game. In the
mid-1990s, even as Turkmenistan economy tumbled, plans were
initiated for a 5,000-mile long oil and gas pipeline eastwards
to China that would cost over $ 20 billion. The same year saw
the Argentine oil company, Bridas, proposing a pipeline that
would cross Afghanistan and carry gas to India and Pakistan.
The US company Unocal, with Washington’s tacit support, had
prepared a similar pipeline plan in 1995.Turkey too became an
active partner. Its need for energy and desire to expand its
influence prompted successive Turkish governments for becoming
the principal route for Central Asian energy exports. The old
Great Game was about perceived threats in which force was
never directly used; Russia and Great Britain marked out
borders and concluded treaties creating Afghanistan - and
Tibet - as a buffer between them. The new great game for the
oil and gas riches of the landlocked Central Asia has invited
intense competition between the regional states and western
oil companies.
In a brief but acute survey Rashid
concludes that the military-bureaucratic-intelligence elite
that has guided Pakistan’s destiny since the 1950s has never
allowed civil society to function. Only this elite has the
right to determine the nature of the threat to Pakistan’s
national security and its solution, and not elected
governments, parliament, civic organisations or even common
sense. More, Zia-ul-Haq had dreamt of creating a Sunni Muslim
space between "infidel" Hindustan,
"heretic" (because Shia) Iran and a
"Christian" Russia. And hoped that the message of
the Afghan mujahideen could spread into Central Asia, revive
Islam and create a Pakistan-led Islamic bloc of nations.
Sadly, Zia’s shortsighted successors failed to realise the
full ramifications of this legacy. In the event, Rashid avers,
Pakistan is now ripe for a Taliban-type Islamic revolution
which would almost certainly jeopardise stability in West,
South and Central Asia.
There is lot more to this little book than
the preceding paragraphs. It unveils an appalling story, of a
ruined land and its ravished people; of a Hobbesian state of
war, of the secretive and bizarre Taliban leadership; of an
overspill of chaos, narcotics, and sectarian violence; of the
bewildering complexity of Afghan politics. A fascinating, if a
grim and grisly, tale. Ahmed Rashid’s "Taliban"
has long been in the making: 21 years! Rashid, a veteran
Pakistani journalist who has known Afghanistan like the back
of his palm, has been reporting on the country for almost as
many years and is well-known to the readers of Daily Telegraph
of London and Hong Kong’s prestigious weekly, the Far
Eastern Economic Review. And nearer home, in his own country’s
the Nation. He has been bewitched by Afghanistan, both the
country and its people, "the most extraordinary on
earth".
First published last year as "Taliban: Islam, Oil and
the New Great Game in Central Asia", the book was a
runaway success and has reappeared in its new incarnation.
Again, and deservedly, a best seller. Interested readers may
find another recent study, Peter Bergen, "Holy War Inc:
Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden" a useful and
rewarding supplement.
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WITH Mullah Omar and his close
comrade-in-arms, the Al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden,
literally on the run and an uneasy interim government in the
saddle in Kabul, is the trauma of the Taliban finally over?
Hard to say and difficult to believe. For a close reading of
the slender volume under review would seem to suggest a
different story. And return an emphatic no for an answer. The
last word it would appear remains still to be said and Ahmed
Rashid tells us why it will be a long time before it is.
