by Ahmed Rashid
Praise for the First Edition
“The standard work in English on the Taliban.”
—Christopher de Bellaigue, New York Review of Books
“Rashid spent 21 years compiling the data and interpretive materials in this absorbing and disquieting book…. As the world enters an ominous stage of history, Ahmed Rashid's book can serve as an excellent primer, guide book and briefng of what the future may hold.”
—Arnold Ages, Chicago Jewish Star
“A brilliant and absorbing explanation of the radical Islamic movement and Afghanistan's wretched situation, Taliban became required reading not just for journalists, but for the world's senior politicians.”
—Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph
“An extensively researched analysis by a noted journalist….
A fascinating survey.”
—Joshua Sinai, Journal of Homeland Security
“Taliban… provides an important perspective untainted by excessive emotion or jingoism. Rashid's is an exceptional book that sorts out a multitude of questions for the non–Central Asian specialist trying to make sense of current headlines…. Rashid's acute foresight produced a book that—if taken seriously by U.S. policymakers at the time it was first published— might have helped prevent a history-altering catastrophe.”
—Middle East Insight
“[Rashid is] Pakistan's best and bravest reporter.” —Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair
“This is a fine book—erudite, concise, sure-footed, packed with information and insight, easy to read. On each of the three major interrelated themes covered here—the history of the Taliban and the internal politics of Afghanistan; Islam and the Taliban; the ‘new Great Game’ of oil and gas in Central Asia— the author is illuminating and thorough.”
—Dilip Hiro, Middle East International
“[A] supremely insightful book about Afghanistan's Taliban regime…. Rashid bases his account on detailed reporting and travel throughout Afghanistan and interviews with most of the Taliban's elusive top leadership. As a narrative, it is gripping…. Rashid's book is superbly reported, a window into a world that remains largely closed to American eyes.”
—Shankar Vedantam, Philadelphia Inquirer
“[A] thorough, authoritative exegesis.”
—Peter Bergen, Washington Post Book World
“Rashid marshals the vast amount of information he has accumulated over decades of covering the area into a long, sad story and tells it with finesse. His book is a gripping account of one of the horror stories of post–Cold War politics.”
—Jonathan Groner, Salon.com
“A brilliant work, engrossing and wholly convincing.”
—Neville Maxwell, World Affairs
“Read this remarkable book and the bewildering complexity of Afghan politics and the deadly overspill of chaos, narcotics, and sectarian violence into the surrounding region will become clear.”
—Patrick Seale, Sunday Times
Taliban
Taliban
Militant Islam,
Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia
SECOND EDITION
Ahmed Rashid
Yale
UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Haven and London
Published in the United Kingdom by I. B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., and in the United States by Yale University Press.
First edition published as a Yale Nota Bene book in 2001.
Copyright © 2000 by Ahmed Rashid.
Second edition copyright © 2010 by Ahmed Rashid.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN 978-0-300-16368-1 (pbk.)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938249
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother,
what I have seen she taught me to see.
I hope I have honoured it.
And for Angeles.
CONTENTS
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface and Acknowledgements to the First Edition
Maps
Introduction: Afghanistan's Holy Warriors
Part 1: History of the Taliban Movement
Chapter 1
Kandahar 1994: The Origins of the Taliban
Chapter 2
Herat 1995: God's Invincible Soldiers
Chapter 3
Kabul 1996: Commander of the Faithful
Chapter 4
Mazar-e-Sharif 1997: Massacre in the North
Chapter 5
Bamiyan 1998-99: The Never-Ending War
Part 2: Islam and the Taliban
Chapter 6
Challenging Islam: The New-Style Fundamentalism of the Taliban
Chapter 7
Secret Society: The Taliban's Political and Military Organization
Chapter 8
A Vanished Gender: Women, Children and Taliban Culture
Chapter 9
High on Heroin: Drugs and the Taliban Economy
Chapter 10
Global Jihad: The Arab-Afghans and Osama Bin Laden
Part 3: The New Great Game
Chapter 11
Dictators and Oil Barons: The Taliban and Central Asia, Russia, Turkey and Israel
Chapter 12
Romancing the Taliban 1: The Battle for Pipelines 1994-96
Chapter 13
Romancing the Taliban 2: The Battle for Pipelines 1997-99 – The USA and the Taliban
Chapter 14
Master or Victim: Pakistan's Afghan War
Chapter 15
Shia Versus Sunni: Iran and Saudi Arabia
Chapter 16
Conclusion: The Future of Afghanistan
Chapter 17
The Taliban Resurgent 2000-2009
Appendices
Notes
Index
PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND EDITION
I find it extremely humbling that in this era of consumerism and short memories my book on the Taliban has been in print since it was first published in 2000, a real rarity in today's publishing world. The book has been translated into 26 languages that I know about – and new pirated translations are constantly emerging. I recently saw an Arabic edition that was published in Syria, and there are at least three Persian translations in circulation.
In the English language about 1.5 million copies have been sold, and I don't know how many have sold in other languages, but it has been a best seller in countries as far removed from Islamic extremism as Brazil, Poland and Japan. I am still being asked to sign dog-eared copies of the book that have been through many hands.
With the revived interest and concern about the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I expect that this new edition will first land in the hands of the new generation of journalists covering the region. It will be read by officials and diplomats who were still at college on 11 September 2001 and, I hope, by new generations of the public. Demand for the book has been kept alive by students, soldiers, academics, government officials and the man and woman on the street – by every kind of reader, young and old, from every stratum of society. It is a tribute to my readers that my publishers
have found it necessary and worthwhile to issue this updated version of Taliban.
This book is the last item that is packed into the rucksacks of soldiers from many US, British and NATO army units before they are transferred to Afghanistan, and every soldier – not just the officers – is expected to read it. Every incoming freshman at a prominent university in a northern US state is obliged to read it and write an essay on it before the start of regular classes. And it is a course book at hundreds of universities worldwide. Many students say that this was the first book they read that was not a thriller.
As a result of the book I have been asked to lecture around the world. With the Taliban upsurge in Pakistan, a new generation of Pakistani students who have just read the book ask me to come and run seminars at their universities, even though their teachers do not all approve. The various pirated editions published in Afghan languages seem to have been read by every Afghan who is remotely literate. Muslim women, in particular, have been drawn to this book, perhaps because of what it tells them about the suffering of women in an extremist society.
The book has been banned in Central Asia because of my criticism of the various regimes there – much of which is still valid. Yet the Russian translation was an underground best seller in Central Asia. It is also banned in Saudi Arabia for a variety of religious and political reasons, but there was a pirated Arabic version printed in Lebanon that did the rounds for some years so clandestinely that I never had a chance to see it.
That it was so difficult to get this book published in the late 1990s is now the stuff of legend. I still remember agents and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic asking, ‘Taliban who?’ and the story of George W. Bush, before he became president, identifying the Taliban as an all-girl pop group. The Taliban is still the butt of endless jokes, rhyming couplets, and cartoons, and, of course, it is the subject of hundreds of books and articles published since 11 September that have made many academics instant Taliban experts. When this book came out none of this material existed.
The legacy of 11 September is still with us in our dreams and nightmares, and the horror that was unleashed that day still visits Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia every day. Despite the billions of dollars spent, the hundreds of lives lost, the myriad opportunities that have arisen, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are thriving and pose a radical threat to the entire region. The Afghan Taliban have spread throughout the region; there are now a Pakistani Taliban and a Central Asian Taliban. The Taliban itself-perhaps even more than Al Qaeda – has become a role model, a way of life for extremists that is emulated throughout the South and Central Asia. Eight years after 11 September neither Muslims nor Westerners have been able to expunge the Taliban threat or its power as a role model for angry Islamicists. So the Taliban way of life continues to seduce youngsters and potential suicide bombers in the region.
When it was decided to bring out a new edition of Taliban, I was asked whether I wanted to rewrite the entire book and bring each chapter up to date or simply to add a new chapter that would cover the period from 2000 to 2009. I chose the latter because I felt that this was a book that should endure as it is. It was essentially written as a piece of reportage capturing a historical moment; much of it was written while I was literally in the midst of the Taliban in the late 1990s. The book encapsulates my decades covering the wars in Afghanistan, the people I met there and the background knowledge and experience I acquired.
In addition, the book offers something of an anthropological and historical study of the evolution of the Afghan tribes and ethnic groups even as the country itself was dissolving into a failed state. It covers the geo-politics of the neighbouring countries during the 1990s and the way their interference helped keep Afghanistan divided while the USA and western Europe fatally ignored the situation. If the West walks away from Afghanistan once again then those regional rivalries will return, plunging the country into further chaos.
And finally, when it was published Taliban offered the first detailed description of what Osama Bin Laden was doing in Afghanistan and of how he was taking over the running of the country in partnership with Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban; now, of course, analysing Bin Laden has become an industry. For all these reasons I have kept the book as it was, even though to some readers the story may appear to be dated or the facts not fully filled in because we know so much more now about that pre-11 September period.
In the new chapter I continue the story of the Afghan Taliban and examine the Pakistani Taliban and the way the two have affected Central Asia. How the Taliban escaped to Pakistan after the defeat they suffered in 2001 is closely linked to how they survived in Afghanistan despite the US attack. Today all the major extremist leaders – Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar – along with a number of Pakistani Taliban leaders are living in the Pakistani borderlands. The way they got there is an important and disturbing story. Some facts in the new chapter are drawn from my latest book, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, which describes events in the region since 2001 and explains why the Americans and NATO have failed so badly in Afghanistan.
I remain indebted to my publishers, I.BTauris and Yale University Press, for keeping the book in print for so long and for bringing out this new edition. I could not survive without Flip Brophy, my wonderful New York agent, and I thank Susan Laity for doing another wonderful job in editing the new chapter. I cannot thank my family enough, especially my wife, Angeles, for putting up with all time I have spent away or at my desk.
Ahmed Rashid
Madrid
PREFACE
AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TO THE FIRST EDITION
This book has been 21 years in the writing – about as long as I have covered Afghanistan as a reporter. The war in Afghanistan has taken out a good chunk of my life even though as a Pakistani journalist there was enough going on at home to report on and later there was Central Asia and the collapse of the Soviet Union to cover.
Why Afghanistan? Anyone who has been touched by an Afghan or visited the country in peace or in war, will understand when I say the country and the people are amongst the most extraordinary on earth. The Afghans have also been affected by one of the greatest tragedies of this century – the longest running civil war in this era which has brought untold misery.
Their story and their character involve immense contradictions. Brave, magnificent, honourable, generous, hospitable, gracious, handsome, Afghan men and women can also be devious, mean and bloody-minded.
Over the centuries, trying to understand the Afghans and their country was turned into a fine art and a game of power politics by the Persians, the Mongols, the British, the Soviets and most recently the Pakistanis. But no outsider has ever conquered them or claimed their soul. Only the Afghans could have been capable of keeping two empires – Britain and the Soviet Union – at bay in this century. But in the last 21 years of conflict they have paid an enormous price – over 1.5 million dead and the total destruction of their country.
For me, luck has also played a role in my relationship with Afghanistan. Many times I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I watched as army tanks blasted their way into the Kabul palace of Presid ent Mohammed Daud in 1978, a coup that was to set off Afghanistan's disintegration. A year later I was sipping tea in Kandahar's bazaar when the first Soviet tanks rolled in. As I covered the Soviet Union's war with the Mujaheddin my family urged me to write a book, as so many journal ists were doing at the time. I abstained. I had too much to say and did not know where to start.
I was determined to write a book after spending several months in Geneva covering the excruciating UN sponsored negotiations in 1988, which ended with the Geneva Accords and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Packed in with 200 journalists I was fortunate enough to be privy to many of the internal stand-offs between diplomats from the UNA, the US
A, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. That book never got written as my first love, the Afghans, drove straight from Geneva into a bloody, senseless civil war that still continues today.
Instead I went to Central Asia to see the ancestors of the Afghans and became a witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I wrote a book about from the perspective of the newly independent Central Asian states. But Afghanistan always drew me back.
I should have written another book in 1992 when I spent a month dodging bullets in Kabul as the regime of President Najibullah collapsed and the city fell to the Mujaheddin. By then the Afghan saga had taken me to Moscow, Washington, Rome, Jeddah, Paris, London, Ashkhabad, Tashkent and Dushanbe. Ultimately it was the unique nature of the Taliban and the lack of literature about their meteoric rise, which convinced me I had to tell their story as a continuation of the last 21 years of Afghanistan's history and my history.
For years I was the only Pakistani journalist covering Afghanistan seriously, even though the war was next door and Afghanistan sustained Pakistan's foreign policy and kept the military regime of General Zia ul Haq in power. If there was another abiding interest, it was my conviction as early as 1982 that Islamabad's Afghan policy would play a critical role in Pakistan's future national security, domestic politics and create an Islamic fundamentalist backlash at home. Today, as Pakistan teeters on the edge of a political, economic and social abyss while a culture of drugs, weapons, corruption and violence permeates the country, what happens in Afghanistan has become even more important to Pakistan.