History Of The Taliban

This is a timeline of the background of the history of the Taliban. It details the Taliban movement's origin in Pashtun nationalism, and briefly relates its ideological underpinnings with that of broader Afghan society. It also describes 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 Taliban's time in power, its fall following the US invasion and its fight against the subsequent occupation, as well as its eventual return to power.

Background

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

In 1978, the Saur Revolution brought the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan into power. Backed by the Soviet Union, the new regime subsequently unleashed a Marxist campaign against religious leaders. Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution was spreading militant Islamism from the neighbouring country through underground networks. Supporters of it started spreading their ideas across the desert, especially to the accessible Herat, which also had many Shia Muslims like Iran. Nevertheless, the communist government continued to campaign against traditional and Islamic practices. In March 1979, the Herat uprising began in response to the announcement of a compulsory literacy program for girls. This gave rise to a spreading rebellion in the western countryside. Eventually, a larger insurgency by the mujahideen began. 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 (CIA) soon began to support the insurgency through Pakistan. 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 Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) 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. The Pakistani leader Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq pursued a religious and political agenda in Afghanistan. Zia believed that political Islam should be embraced, saying that religion and ideology were the main sources of the country's strength. He also saw ''jihad'' as a political weapon. Zia insisted that all CIA support to the mujahideen go through Pakistani hands. Pakistani support for them was overseen by the Inter-Services Intelligence.

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. Many of these had been financed by patrons from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Saudi religious ideology was introduced in these institutions. Many senior leaders of the Afghanistan Taliban had attended the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Akora Khattak in Pakistan, and it supported the Taliban., Imtiaz Ali, Spotlight on Terror, The Jamestown Foundation, Volume 4, Issue 2, 23 May 2007 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". It blended Islamist politics with the teachings of the conservative Deobandi movement.

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". The Pakistani intelligence initially supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's forces, with former Afghan military officers directly under its command. However, he failed when Ahmad Shah Massoud captured Kabul in 1992. 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.

As the new Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto wanted to develop Pakistan's economy through overland trading in Central Asia. Her interior minister Naseerullah Babar was a Pashtun notable who had organised guerrilla training for Afghans in the 1970s. He supported using Pashtunistan to reach the Central Asian markets. In October 1994, Babar organised a trial convoy of Pakistani exports being delivered to Turkmenistan. As the convoy arrived at the Pakistani border, the Taliban had just begun operating in the area. The ISI grasped the chance to wield power in the region by fostering a previously unknown Kandahari student movement.
They continued to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Emergence in Afghanistan, 1994–1996

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 by 1994, it had fallen into disarray. Hekmatyar's forces, trucking mafias and local warlords, such as Mullah Naqib, dominated the city and freely traveled around it, with hundreds of roadblocks on its main roads and at the same time, widespread acts of violence and sexual crimes were also occurring inside the city. The rise of the Taliban was subsequently portrayed as creating Islamic order against crime and chaos. This connected popular Islamic values with the restoration of the glory of the Durrani Pashtuns. This happened as wealthy Pashtun leaders in Kandahar were looking for a common cause.

Military campaign

Beginnings

After the fall of the Najibullah regime, local mullahs who knew each other around Kandahar, including Mohammed Omar, Mohammad Ghous, Hasan Akhund, and Mohammad Rabbani, who knew each other since they had fought together and were all from Uruzgan Province, began discussing the bad situation in the area. An agenda was agreed to, which included restoring peace, disarming the population, enforcing Sharia, and advancing Islamist politics in Afghanistan. Since they were mostly students of madrassas, the name ''talib'' was considered appropriate. This also had the advantage of distancing them from the political maneuvering of the mujahideen.

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 US$250,000 being supplied to it by local businessmen. They soon began to receive backing from local Durrani Pashtun leaders. These included Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, Hamid Karzai, and the Popalzai. Their backing gave legitimacy to the militia in its early moment. Their aim was to bring back the exiled former King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Mohammed Omar began to meet Pashtun delegations and was made the head of the movement's supreme council.

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and they were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns. Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. 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. 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.

Around 20,000 Afghan students came from ''madrassas'' in Pakistani refugee camps to join the Taliban, with thousands more joining the march on the way. The students were mainly between 14 and 24, with little education other than Islamic studies taught by "barely literate" teachers hired by mullahs or Pakistani fundamentalist parties. They also lacked knowledge of the history of their country, including of the war against the Soviets. Furthermore, they were ignorant of the tribal and cultural context of their country and community, its traditions and ethnic groups, having been orphaned and made rootless by the continuous war with little economic prospects, warfare and puritanical Islam being the only sources of purpose available. Growing up in Islamic schools or segregated refugee camps or with few female relatives, they had little contact with women when mullahs told them women were a temptation. The Taliban offered the young men a way of life that gave it meaning.

Military operations

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. Either private Pakistani trucking interests or the Pakistani government aided its first military breakthroughs. 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. A Pakistani government convoy was soon aided across checkpoints by the Taliban. By mid-November, the Taliban ruled Kandahar with six Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 fighters and four Mil Mi-17 helicopters captured from the airport.

After Herat fell in September 1995, all of southern Afghanistan was held by the Taliban. 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. In the spring of 1996, Mullah Omar held a meeting of over a thousand Pashtun leaders for two weeks in Kandahar. It was the largest gathering of religious leaders in modern Afghan history. Pakistani officials also took part. The assembly ratified him as the Amir al-Mu'minin and declared the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with a jihad against Ahmad Massoud. This was the first time since Dost Mohammad Khan for an Afghan leader to be given the title. Omar wore the Cloak of Muhammad, a first for anyone in 60 years. However, no decisions were made on the economic and social future of the country.

The Taliban launched a surprise attack against Jalalabad in August 1996. Osama bin Laden may have supported with up to three million USD to buy off the remaining commanders on the way to Kabul. Other sources of funding may have included Saudi and Gulf individuals, local trucking mafia, heroin traders, and the ISI. Armed with technicals, the Taliban advanced from Surobi District and the plains south of Kabul. On 26 September, Massoud withdrew from the capital to Panjshir Valley and the Taliban entered it the next day. Within a day, every government building and military base had been occupied. President Mohammad Najibullah and his brother were killed violently and hung above a traffic circle. The capture of the capital from Tajik rule gave the Taliban a new height of prestige. Weeks after the fall of Kabul, Massoud had founded the Northern Alliance together with defeated northern militias. Hekmatyar, on the other hand, had escaped to Iran, with many of his supporters switching to the Taliban. The country was becoming evermore divided by sectarianism.

International response

Support

The ISI got interested in the early Taliban and Javed Ashraf Qazi met with them, agreeing to provide support. The support subsequently grew from fuel to materiel to cash. Eventually Bhutto described it as carte blanche. By spring 1995, ISI was sending military officers and guerrilla leaders to help Taliban. Inside the country, Shahnawaz Tanai's troops were repairing and operating their tanks and aircraft. The ISI also helped broker a deal whereby Abdul Rashid Dostum's forced helped the Taliban establish an air force. In eastern Afghanistan, local leaders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani swore loyalty to the Taliban. Money and materiel helped create these alliances. Meanwhile, volunteer fighters were arriving from the border madrassas. The aim for Pakistan was to succeed in Zia's aim of an Islamist, Pashtun-led government loyal to Islamabad.

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

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