by Ahmed Rashid
All these countries stepped up military aid to the regime forces. Russia sent technical help to upgrade Bagram airport facilities for the regime while Russian transport planes from Russia, Tajikistan and Ukraine delivered Russian arms, ammunition and fuel to Kabul. Iran developed an air bridge from Meshad in eastern Iran to Bagram, where it flew in arms supplies. Pakistani intelligence reported that on a single day, 13 Iranian flights landed at Bagram with supplies. The CIA suspected that Afghan Shia allies of the Rabbani regime had sold Iran five Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for US$1 million each. (The US provided the Mujaheddin with some 900 Stingers in 1986-87 and after 1992 the CIA had launched a clandestine but unsuccessful buy-back operation to try and retrieve those Stingers not utilised.)6 Iran had also set up five training camps near Meshad for some 5,000 fighters led by the former Herat Governor Ismael Khan. Iran's aid to the regime was significant because Tehran had to swallow its anger with Masud over the slaughter of the Shia Hazaras in Kabul the previous year. India meanwhile helped refurbish Ariana – the Afghan national airline now based in New Delhi – to provide the regime with a reliable arms carrier. India also provided aircraft parts, new ground radars and money.
In turn, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia stepped up arms supplies to the Taliban. Pakistan provided a new telephone and wireless network for the Taliban, refurbished Kandahar airport and helped out with spare parts and armaments for the Taliban's airforce, while continuing to provide food, fuel and ammunition, including rockets. The Saudis provided fuel, money and hundreds of new pick-ups to the Taliban. Much of this aid was flown into Kandahar airport from the Gulf port city of Dubai.
The extent of outside interference worried the Americans: after a lapse of four years they were once again beginning to take an interest in trying to resolve the Afghan conflict. In early March, Congressman Hank Brown, a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations for South Asia, became the first American elected representative in six years to visit Kabul and other power centres. He hoped to call a meeting of all the Afghan factions in Washington.7
The US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphel arrived in Islamabad to review US policy towards Afghanistan. Starting on 19 April 1996, Raphel visited the three power centres of Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif and later three Central Asian capitals. ‘We do not see ourselves inserting in the middle of Afghan affairs, but we consider ourselves as a friend of Afghanistan which is why I am here to urge the Afghans themselves to get together and talk. We are also concerned that economic opportunities here will be missed, if political stability cannot be restored,’ said Raphel in Kabul.8 Raphel was referring to a proposed gas pipeline to be built by the American oil giant Unocal to carry gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The US waited to make the pipeline acceptable to all Afghan factions and urged Pakistan to make up with the Rabbani regime and bring the Taliban and the Rabbani regime to the peace table.
The US moved on other fronts. During a UN Security Council debate on Afghanistan on 10 April 1996, the first to be held in six years, it proposed an international arms embargo on Afghanistan. Raphel wanted to use this as a lever to persuade all the involved regional countries to agree to non-interference in Afghanistan, while at the same time lending greater weight to UN efforts to convene a conference of all the Afghan factions.9
The Clinton administration was clearly sympathetic to the Taliban, as they were in line with Washington's anti-Iran policy and were important for the success of any southern pipeline from Central Asia that would avoid Iran. The US Congress had authorised a covert US$20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, and Tehran had accused Washington of funnelling some of these funds to the Taliban – a charge that was always denied by Washington. Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban, but despite a common antipathy to Iran, Washington resisted, refusing to take sides in the civil war. Raphel vehemently denied that the US was aiding the Taliban. ‘We do not favour one faction over another nor do we give any group or individual support,’ she told me.
Moreover the US remained sceptical that the Taliban would conquer Kabul in the near future. Raphel described the Taliban as highly fractionalized, inexperienced, lacking strong leadership and inept at administration while their obstinacy had alienated other factions. ‘These weaknesses combined with Masud's growing strength, appear to be shifting the balance against the Taliban somewhat, and will prevent them from achieving their stated goal of taking Kabul. While the Taliban appears to have reached the limit of its expansion, its position in the Pashtun south is solid,’ she said.10
Washington also courted the other warlords. Several visited Washington, starting with General Dostum who met US officials in Washington on 11 April 1996. Afghan leaders or their representatives from all factions participated in an unprecedented Congressional hearing in Washington held by Senator Hank Brown between 25 and 27 June. However in an American election year and with little enthusiasm for renewed involvement in the quagmire of Afghanistan, Washington's aims could only be limited, even though the arms and drugs trade proliferating inside Afghanistan worried Washington.
US reluctance to support the Taliban was also influenced by Pakistan's failure in creating an anti-Rabbani alliance. This proved even more embarrassing for Islamabad when, in May, 1,000 of Hikmetyar's troops arrived in Kabul to support the government and defend the front line against the Taliban. On 26 June 1996 Hikmetyar himself entered Kabul for the first time in 15 years, to take up the post of Prime Minister offered by the regime, while his party accepted nine other cabinet posts in the government. In retaliation, on the same day, the Taliban launched a massive rocket attack on Kabul in which 61 people were killed and over 100 injured.
Rabbani followed up his political breakthrough with Hikmetyar with a visit to Jalalabad where he attempted to persuade the Jalalabad Shura to join his government. He said he was willing to step down in favour of any Afghan leader and proposed an all-party conference in Jalalabad to elect a new head of state. By August Dostum had also agreed to a truce and he reopened the Salang Highway which connected Kabul with the north of the country for the first time in over a year. Rabbani's agreements had finally got his ‘intra-Afghan dialogue’ off the ground. ‘This alliance can be consolidated by bringing in more opposition figures to create a peace axis and I call on others to join the process so that a formula for an interim government can be found,’ Rabbani told me in Kabul.11 It was a significant achievement, which infuriated the Taliban who realized that they would have to move quickly against Rabbani before he consolidated these alliances.
Camped outside the capital, the Taliban had been rocketing Kabul mercilessly throughout the year. In April 1996 alone, the Taliban fired 866 rockets, killing 180 civilians, injuring 550 and destroying large tracts of the city – a repetition of Hikmetyar's attacks in 1993–95. In July 1996 Taliban rockets fell close to the newly appointed UN mediator for Afghanistan, the German diplomat Norbert Holl who was visiting Kabul. Holl was furious. ‘This is no way to treat a peace emissary, by shooting at him. If you receive a guest in your house you don't start spitting at him. It demonstrates a sort of contempt for my mission,’ he told the Taliban.12
The Taliban's rocket attacks were punctuated by frequent ground assaults against Masud's front lines south and west of the city. At the end of May, I stood on a rain-swept hill with Masud's troops outside Kabul and watched through binoculars as dozens of Taliban in pick-ups tried to punch through Masud's lines along a road in the valley below under the cover of a Taliban artillery barrage. In return Masud's Russian-made D-30 howitzers pounded the hidden Taliban artillery. The thud of shells shook the mountains, deafening the ears and making me sway at the knees. The gunners were stone-deaf due to the constant shelling and the lack of ear protectors.
Behind Masud's lines, lorry-loads of fresh troops and ammunition ground their way up the hill through the mud to replenish supplies. ‘The Taliban ha
ve enormous supplies of ammunition and they shoot off thousands of shells but their gunners are very inaccurate. However they are making better use of their tanks and pick-ups than a year ago,’ said a general from Masud's army. ‘Their tactics are still poor, relying more on frontal assaults and there seems to be no effective chain of command,’ he added. The Taliban were unable to concentrate enough firepower and manpower on one front to achieve a breakthrough into the city and Masud was constantly breaking up their formations. Although he could hold the line around Kabul, his forces, estimated at just 25,000 men, could not extend it and carry out offensives to push the Taliban further south.
The Taliban's stubbornness in refusing to cut deals with other warlords frustrated the Pakistanis, but finally it appeared to pay off when the Taliban persuaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to back another major bid to capture Kabul before the winter. The Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal visited Islamabad and Kandahar in July 1996 to discuss with the ISI a new plan to take Kabul, and both countries stepped up supplies to the Taliban. Within two months of Turki's visit, the Taliban were on the move – not against Kabul but the eastern city of Jalalabad. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped engineer the surrender and eventual flight of the head of the Jalalabad Shura, Haji Abdul Qadeer. He was given a large bribe, reported by some Afghans to be US$10 million in cash, as well as guarantees that his assets and bank accounts in Pakistan would not be frozen.13
The Taliban launched their surprise offensive on Jalalabad on 25 August 1996. As the main Taliban force moved up on the city from the south, Pakistan allowed hundreds of armed Taliban supporters from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan to cross the border and move on Jalalabad from the east. There was panic in Jalalabad and the Shura fell apart. Haji Qadeer fled to Pakistan on 10 September and his replacement Acting Governor Mehmoud was killed along with six bodyguards a day later, while also trying to escape to Pakistan. That same evening a Taliban mobile column of pick-ups led by Mullah Borjan drove into Jalalabad after a brief firefight in which some 70 people were killed.
Within the next few days mobile Taliban columns captured the three eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar and on the night of 24 September 1996 they moved on Sarobi, 45 miles from Kabul and the gateway to the capital. Their lightning attack, which came from several directions, took the government's troops by total surprise and they fled back to Kabul. The capital was now wide open from the east for the first time. The Taliban did not pause to regroup, but instead pursued Sarobi's defenders back to Kabul. Other Taliban columns moved on Kabul from the south, while another column drove north from Sarobi to capture Bagram airport cutting off Masud's only air link.
The speed of their offensive stunned the government. Taliban columns swept into Kabul on the evening of 26 September 1996, just a few hours after Masud had ordered a general withdrawal to evacuate the city. Small units stayed behind to delay the Taliban advance and blow up ammunition dumps, while Masud escaped northwards with the bulk of his armour and artillery. Masud took the decision to abandon the city without a fight knowing he could not defend it from attacks coming from all four points of the compass. Nor did he want to lose the support of Kabul's population by fighting for the city and causing more bloodshed. The Taliban victory was complete. ‘No Afghan force, either government or opposition, had ever carried out such a swift and complex series of operations over such a wide operation area. This was mobile warfare at its most effective.’14
The Taliban's first and bloodiest act was to hang former President Najibullah, then aged 50, who had ruled Afghanistan from 1986 to 1992. Najibullah had been staying in a UN diplomatic compound in central Kabul since 1992, when a UN peace plan to set up an interim government fell apart. Just before the Mujaheddin were to capture Kabul, Najibullah was due to be taken out of Kabul by the UN mediator Benon Sevan, but they were stopped at the last moment. All the warring Afghan factions had respected the diplomatic immunity of the UN compound. Najibullah's wife Fatana and three daughters had lived in exile in New Delhi since 1992.
Blunders by the UN were partly responsible for his death. On the day Sarobi fell, Najibullah had sent a message to the UN headquarters in Islamabad asking Norbet Holl to arrange the evacuation of himself and his three companions – his brother, Shahpur Ahmadzai, his personal secretary and bodyguard. But there were no UN officials in Kabul to take responsibility for Najibullah. Only Masud offered him a lift out of the city. On the afternoon of 26 September 1996, Masud sent one of his senior Generals to ask Najibullah to leave with the retreating government troops, promising him safe passage to the north, but Najibullah refused. A proud and stubborn man, he probably feared that if he fled with the Tajiks, he would be for ever damned in the eyes of his fellow Pashtuns.15
There were only three frightened Afghan guards employed by the UN on duty inside the compound and they fled as they heard the guns of the Taliban on the outskirts of the city. Najibullah sent a last wireless message to the UN in Islamabad in the early evening, again asking for help. But by then it was too late. A special Taliban unit of five men designated for the task and believed to be led by Mullah Abdul Razaq, the Governor of Herat and now commander of the forces designated to capture Kabul, came for Najibullah at about 1.00 a.m., even before the Taliban had entered central Kabul. Razaq later admitted that he had ordered Najibullah's murder.16
The Taliban walked up to Najibullah's room, beat him and his brother senseless and then bundled them into a pick-up and drove them to the darkened Presidential Palace. There they castrated Najibullah, dragged his body behind a jeep for several rounds of the Palace and then shot him dead. His brother was similarly tortured and then throttled to death. The Taliban hanged the two dead men from a concrete traffic control post just outside the Palace, only a few blocks from the UN compound.
At dawn curious Kabulis came to view the two bloated, beaten bodies as they hung from steel wire nooses around their necks. Unlit cigarettes were stuck between their fingers and Afghani notes stuffed into their pockets – to convey the Taliban message of debauchery and corruption. Najibullah's two other companions had escaped from the compound, but they were later caught trying to flee the city and were also tortured and hanged.
Najibullah's execution was the first symbolic, brutal act by the Taliban in Kabul. It was a premeditated, targeted killing designed to terrorize the population. Mullah Rabbani, the newly appointed head of the Kabul Shura proclaimed that Najibullah was a communist and a murderer and that he had been sentenced to death by the Taliban. That was true, but the mutilation of Najibullah's body was beyond the pale of any Islamic injunction, while the lack of a fair trial and the public display of the bodies revolted many Kabulis. People were further repulsed when the Taliban banned an Islamic funeral for Najibullah, even though funeral prayers were said for him the next day in Quetta and Peshawar where he was remembered by Pakistan's Pashtun nationalists. Eventually the bodies were taken down and handed over to the ICRC, who drove them to Gardez, Najibullah's birthplace in Paktia province where he was buried by his Ahmadzai tribesmen.
There was widespread international condemnation of the murder, particularly from the Muslim world. The Taliban had humiliated the UN and the international community and embarrassed their allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The UN finally issued a statement. ‘The killing of the former President without any legitimate judicial procedure not only constitutes a grave violation of the immunity UN premises enjoy, but also further jeopardizes all the efforts which are being made to secure a peaceful settlement of the Afghan conflict.’ The Taliban were not deterred and they issued death sentences on Dostum, Rabbani and Masud.
Within 24 hours of taking Kabul, the Taliban imposed the strictest Islamic system in place anywhere in the world. All women were banned from work, even though one quarter of Kabul's civil service, the entire elementary educational system and much of the health system were run by women. Girls‘ schools and colleges were closed down affecting more than 70,000 female students and a strict dress c
ode of head-to-toe veils for women was imposed. There were fears that 25,000 families which were headed by war widows and depended on working and UN handouts would starve. Every day brought fresh pronouncements. ‘Thieves will have their hands and feet amputated, adulterers will be stoned to death and those taking liquor will be lashed,’ said an announcement on Radio Kabul on 28 September 1996.
TV, videos, satellite dishes, music and all games including chess, football and kite-flying were banned. Radio Kabul was renamed Radio Shariat and all music was taken off the air. Taliban soldiers stood on main streets arresting men without beards. Unlike the capture of Herat and other cities, a large international press and TV corps were in Kabul and for the first time they reported extensively on the Taliban's restrictions. The Taliban set up a six-man Shura to rule Kabul, which was dominated by Durrani Pashtuns and did not include a single Kabuli. Headed by Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, the Shura included Mullah Mohammed Ghaus as Foreign Minister, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi as Information Minister, Mullah Syed Ghayasuddin Agha, Mullah Fazil Mohammed and Mullah Abdul Razaq.
None of the Shura members had ever lived in a large city, most had never even visited Kabul, but they were now running a vibrant, semi-modern, multi-ethnic city of 1.2 million people in which Pashtuns were only a small minority. As the newly formed Taliban religious police went about their business of enforcing ‘Sharia’, Kabul was treated as an occupied city. There was little understanding that governing a large city was not the same as ruling a village. It appeared that all that lay in the way of a total victory for the Taliban was Ahmad Shah Masud.
Masud was one of the most brilliant military commanders and charismatic personalities to emerge out of the jihad. Dubbed the ‘Lion of Panjshir’ after his birthplace in his Tajik homeland of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, he eluded and then fought to a standstill seven huge Soviet offensives against the Panjshir in the 1980s. Soviet generals termed him unbeatable and a master of guerrilla warfare. His army of some 20,000 men adored him and his reputation was at its peak when he took over Kabul in 1992, foiling Hikmetyar's attempt to do the same, as the communist regime crumbled. But four years in power in Kabul had turned Masud's army into arrogant masters who harassed civilians, stole from shops and confiscated people's homes which is why Kabulis first welcomed the Taliban when they entered Kabul.