Posted on 10/28/2001 12:38:59 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
The Taliban for Beginners Jac Wilder Versteeg, Cox News Service What does Taliban mean? How long has the Taliban been in power? Is the Taliban a religion? An army? A political party? It's not a religion? How many fighters are in this militia? President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other leaders say Muslims are not America's enemy. If only Muslims are members of the Taliban, why is the Taliban our enemy?
Sunday, September 30, 2001
In Afghanistan's primary language, Pashto, it means "Seekers" or "Religious Students."
Taliban forces entered Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, almost exactly five years ago -- on Sept. 27, 1996.
It's a militia that rules 90 percent of Afghanistan.
It's religious, but not a religion. The Taliban is a Muslim militia whose goal is to impose sharia, or Islamic law, in Afghanistan.
The usual estimate is about 45,000. The high side is 80,000, though the Taliban claims that it can mobilize 300,000 fighters.
The Taliban's interpretation of Islam is so extreme that even other strict regimes, such as Iran's, say the Taliban corrupts Islam and that many of its edicts have no basis in the Koran, Islam's holy book
How extreme is that interpretation?
Women can't go out of the house unless accompanied by a male relative. Even then, they must be covered head to foot in a burka. Women who break the rules are flogged or even stoned to death. Women cannot get education and health care. Men are not immune. If they shave or even trim their beards, they are arrested. Thieves have their right hands cut off. Bulldozers pushed a brick wall on top of a group convicted of homosexuality. Many punishments take place in stadiums before cheering crowds. The Taliban has banned all Western influences -- TV, movies, stuffed animals, pictures of living things, the Internet, kite-flying, to name a few.
But what does any of that have to do with us?
The Taliban's extremism has led its leaders to protect Osama bin Laden.
The one who destroyed the World Trade Center?
That's what the United States contends. Bin Laden also has been indicted for the 1998 attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 and injured thousands, and is suspected in last year's attack in Yemen on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors.
Is Osama bin Laden head of the Taliban?
No. The Taliban chief is Mullah Mohammed Omar.
What do we know about Mullah Omar?
He's in his 40s, fought the Soviets, was wounded several times -- losing an eye -- and then founded a religious school, or madrassah. He has several wives, moves constantly from place to place and permits no photographs.
What is the group Osama bin Laden heads?
It's called Al-Qaeda, which means military base, and is believed to be a loose collection of terrorist groups.
How did Mullah Omar and the Taliban come to power? Are they the ones who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan?
Some Taliban fighters first fought against the Soviets, who invaded in 1979 to prop up a communist government and were driven out in 1989. That group of Islamic fighters generally is known as the mujahedeen, or holy warriors.
So some Taliban members fought with the mujahedeen, but the Taliban is different from the mujahedeen?
Right. After the mujahedeen drove out the Soviets, civil war continued among Afghan factions. The nation degenerated into chaos, with warlords ruling different regions.
So the Taliban was just one of those private warlord armies?
Yes and no. Taliban used to refer just to groups of religious students, rather than a militia. The story goes that in 1994, locals in the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan asked Mullah Mohammed Omar, a religious leader, to rescue a woman who had been kidnapped and raped by a local warlord. With help from religious students -- the Taliban -- Omar rescued the woman and reportedly hung the perpetrator from a tank turret. After that, he was called on several more times, and his activities drew recruits and support.
Are there other anecdotes about Mullah Omar's battle decisions?
The other famous story takes place after the Taliban took Kabul in 1996. The Taliban captured former communist President Mohammad Najibullah and his brother. Taliban soldiers beat the brothers, castrated them, dragged them on ropes tied to trucks, shot them and hanged the bodies from utility poles outside the official government palace.
Sounds barbaric. But how did someone who's basically a vigilante get to be head of the country?
Nobody could have foreseen such amazing success. To explain it, consider what Afghanistan was like in the mid-1990s. The country had seen more than two decades of civil war and a brutal 11-year foreign occupation. Left-over land mines were everywhere. Millions were dead or displaced; several million refugees had fled into neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Afghanistan had little food, little clean water, no reliable electrical grid, communications systems or health-care capabilities
Sounds bleak. But isn't the Taliban?
Maybe now. But then, the Taliban was seen as a stabilizing force. Where other combatants were driven by greed and cruelty, Mullah Omar's Taliban had pure Islamic motives.
The Afghanis believed that?
Not just the Afghanis. Pakistan, which desperately wanted a friendly, stable regime in Afghanistan, played a huge role in backing Mullah Omar and the Taliban.
Pakistan helped bring the Taliban to power? That's confusing. Didn't Pakistan's government tell the Taliban to give up Osama bin Laden? On the other hand, isn't Pakistan the only country that still recognizes the Taliban?
Pakistan's position is difficult. It's a military dictatorship with many citizens who want a more fundamentalist government. Pakistanis have gone to Afghanistan to volunteer for the Taliban, as they did for the mujahedeen. Recruits from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and dozens of other Islamic states go, too. Many Afghani members of the Taliban studied at Islamic schools in Pakistan, and some fighters trained in camps there.
Then why is Pakistan helping the United States?
Several reasons. A majority of Pakistanis recoil from the Taliban's brand of Islam. Pakistan needs U.S. economic aid and will get more now that President Bush lifted sanctions imposed after Pakistan exploded a nuclear device in 1998. Pakistan also will need international help to deal with a new influx of refugees from Afghanistan.
Why should the U.S. be friendly to Pakistan since Pakistan taught, trained and supported so many members of the Taliban?
Reason No. 1 is that Pakistan is a good place from which to monitor neighboring Afghanistan and to use as a base of operations. Reason No. 2 is that if Pakistan falls to Taliban-like extremists, those extremists would inherit Pakistan's nuclear capabilities. Reason No. 3 is that the United States hardly can blame Pakistan for training radicals when, in the 1980s, the United States helped Pakistan train Muslim radicals.
And the United States did this because . . . ?
Because the Islamic radicals, or mujahedeen, were fighting against the Soviets, and those were the Cold War days.
OK. Enough history. What about the Taliban now? Has it done anything good at all?
The Taliban banned cultivation of opium poppies, which dramatically reduced Afghan-based heroin production. A terrible drought also has cut poppy production. Unfortunately, the Taliban has not replaced the farmers' lost income.
What is the structure of Taliban's government?
"Structure" is a pretty generous term to apply. The State Department says Afghanistan has no functioning government. What there is, according to some observers, resembles the insular, brutal and secretive style Cambodia's Khmer Rouge made infamous during the 1970s. Rather than provide services, the Taliban provides moral enforcement, through its Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which identifies and punishes those who violate Taliban rules. Primarily, though, the Taliban is a military organization, still carrying on a civil war, headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. He is the supreme ruler, though he seeks advice from a council of clerics, also called a ulema. Mullah Omar, it is believed, appoints all governors and commanders, whom he can move at will. The clerics, for example, ruled that the Taliban should ask Osama bin Laden to leave the country. But Mullah Omar might not enforce their decision.
Why won't he or the clerics give up bin Laden?
They say the United States hasn't produced evidence that he's a terrorist.
Have we?
They've seen evidence tying bin Laden to the embassy bombings, including a confession that implicates bin Laden. As for the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has gone back and forth on how much evidence to show to whom.
Why?
The Bush administration says it doesn't want to compromise sources. There's also the likelihood, at least in Afghanistan's case, that the Taliban won't admit that any evidence, no matter how conclusive, ties bin Laden to the attacks.
How can 45,000 members of the Taliban control more than 20 million Afghanis?
First, because so many men have died in combat, women make up most of the population and are -- literally -- out of the picture. The official Taliban fighters also recruit local vigilantes, often teenage boys, who enjoy the petty power of enforcement. The Taliban doesn't do much in the way of supplying services -- it reportedly has tried to get electrical power operating again -- but the Taliban is the only game in town. And "in town" is another key. A terrible drought has driven many from the countryside into urban slums, where they are easier to control. Also, the Taliban has weapons, and most Afghanis don't.
What kind of weapons does the Taliban have?
Mostly assault rifles and light weapons, such as mortars. It also has a few armored vehicles, helicopters and planes left over from the Soviet occupation.
Did the Taliban invite Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan? Is he an Afghani?
No. He arrived from Sudan, which expelled him, just before the Taliban took control. But he allegedly has provided economic aid to the impoverished Taliban. Bin Laden was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia to a Yemeni father and a Saudi mother. He was the 17th of a reported 54 children -- Islam allows multiple wives -- and shared in the billions his father made as a favorite builder of the Saudi royals. Bin Laden helped the mujahedeen. Some say he saw combat, though that is uncertain.
If Osama bin Laden planned the hijackings, could he have succeeded without Afghanistan giving him refuge after Sudan expelled him?
In Afghanistan, bin Laden benefited from Taliban-sanctioned freedom of operation, availability of recruits and ample remote hiding places. He didn't have to hide from local authorities. Without Afghanistan, he might have found refuge in Libya or Iraq. It's hard to think of a place that would welcome him now.
Has the United States tried to get Osama bin Laden before?
Yes. There are reports that the U.S. planned to snatch him in 1997, but the mission was called off. After the 1998 embassy bombings, the United States fired 70 cruise missiles at terrorist bases in Afghanistan. The story is that intelligence pinpointed bin Laden when he used a satellite phone, but he moved to another spot in the two hours between making the call and the beginning of the strike.
Is anybody opposing the Taliban?
Yes. The Northern Alliance still is fighting a civil war against the Taliban.
Who's in this Northern Alliance?
Perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, most of them ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and a smattering of even smaller minorities.
You mean there are ethnic divisions, too?
Yes, and they play a role. The Taliban, for example, primarily is ethnic Pashtun, which makes up about 38 percent of Afghanistan's population. Religious differences are also a factor. Most Taliban members are Sunni Muslim, the majority in Pakistan and Syria, for example, while Iran is primarily Shiite.
Is the Northern Alliance likely to win?
No. On Sept. 8, just three days before the terrorist attacks in America, assassins posing as journalists killed the alliance's leader, Ahmed Shah Massood.
So there's no hope?
Maybe a little. The alliance isn't likely to win, but it isn't likely to lose, either. Russia has pledged military support for the alliance, which also could get U.S. help. Also, the Taliban's extremism -- which now includes throwing out United Nations workers who had provided desperately needed food assistance to nearly a quarter of Afghanistan's population -- has given more and more Afghanis a reason to wish the Taliban gone.
Russia is helping? America is helping? Why is that good? Muslim fighters drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, and America trained the terrorists who came back to bite us.
Those are good reasons to avoid getting cocky and to think things through as well as possible. The biggest point to remember is that the United States, unlike Russia from 1979-89, isn't trying to occupy and rule Afghanistan.
So the United States isn't trying to overthrow the Taliban?
Not explicitly. If the Taliban gave up bin Laden and halted support for other terrorists, presumably we'd leave it alone.
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