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4 ~ TALIBANwas tried and sentenced to death, first by the Islamic High Court of Kandaharand then on appeal by the Taliban Supreme Court. These were trialswithout lawyers where the accused is presumed guilty and expected todefend himself.The Taliban's interpretation of the Sharia or Islamic law demanded theexecution of the murderer by the victim's family, but not before a lastminuteappeal is made by the judge to the victim's relatives to spare themurderer. If they granted mercy the victim's family would receive bloodmoney or monetary compensation. But how much of this interpretationof Islamic law by the Taliban is owed to the Sharia and how much isowed to the Pashtun tribal code of behaviour or Pashtunwali, is whatis disputed by many Muslim theologians, both inside Afghanistan and;beyond.By now some 20 male relatives of the victim had appeared on the pitch jand the Qazi turned to them. Raising his arms to the sky, he appealed tothem to spare the life of Abdullah in exchange for blood money. 'You will 1go to Mecca ten times if you spare this man. Our leaders have promised topay a huge sum to you from the Baitul Mai [Islamic fund] if you forgive jhim,' he told the relatives. As the relatives all shook their heads in refusal,the Taliban guards pointed their guns at the crowd and warned that they|would shoot anyone who moved. There was silence in the stands.Abdullah, who had been seated throughout the proceedings in another 1pick-up guarded by armed Taliban, was now let out. Wearing a brightjyellow skullcap and new clothes, his feet shackled with heavy manacles,!his arms chained behind his back, he was told to walk to the goalposts at]one end of the stadium. His legs visibly shook with fear as he shuffledacross the pitch, his chains clanking and glinting in the sunlight. When!he reached the goalposts, he was made to kneel on the ground with his!face turned away from the crowd. A guard whispered to him that he could jsay his last prayer.A guard handed a kalashnikov to a relative of the murdered victim, iThe relative swiftly stepped up to Abdullah, cocked the automatic andjfrom a few feet away shot him three times in the back. As Abdullah felon to his back the executioner moved alongside his twitching body and]at point-blank range pumped three more bullets into his chest. Within]seconds his body was thrown into the back of a pick-up and driven away.)The crowd quickly and silently dispersed. As we drove back into tovthin slivers of smoke arose from the bazaar as tea stalls and kebab stlit up for their evening trade.A mixture of fear, acceptance, total exhaustion and devastation after jyears of war and more than 1.5 million dead have forced many Afghans]to accept the Taliban ways of justice. The next day in a village nearjKabul, a woman was stoned to death by a baying crowd after being sen-INTRODUCrnON: AFGHANISTAN'S HOLY WARRIORS ~ 5tenced for trying to flee Afghanistan with a man who was not her bloodrelative. Amputations of either one hand or one foot or both are commonTaliban punishments for anyone caught stealing. When they capturedKabul in September 1996, to be initially welcomed as liberators, manyKabulis and the world turned away in disgust after the Taliban torturedand then publicly hanged former President Najibullah, the ex-communiststrongman who for four years had been living in a UN compound underUN protection.Since the end of the Cold War no other political movement in theIslamic world has attracted as much attention as the Taliban in Afghanistan.For some Afghans the Taliban created hopes that a movement ledby simple Islamic students with an agenda of bringing peace to the countrymight succeed in finally disposing of the warlord factions which haddevastated people's lives since the communist regime in Kabul had beenoverthrown in April 1992. Others feared that the Taliban movementwould quickly degenerate into one more warlord faction, determined tothrust despotic rule upon the hapless Afghan people.The Pashtun Taliban have also brought the question of inter-ethnicrelations in a multi-ethnic state to the forefront, as well as other issuesincluding the role of Islam versus clan, tribal and feudal structures and thequestion of modernization and economic development in a conservativeIslamic society. Understanding the Taliban phenomenon is made evenmore difficult because of the excessive secrecy that surrounds their politicalstructures, their leadership and the decision-making process withinthe movement. The Taliban do not issue press releases, policy statementsor hold regular press conferences. With their ban on photography andtelevision, nobody knows what their leaders even look like. The one-eyedTaliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar remains an enigmatic mystery.After the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban are the most secretivepolitical movement in the world today.Yet the Taliban have inadvertently set a new agenda for Islamic radicalismin the entire region, sending shock waves through Afghanistan'sneighbours. Not surprisingly, Iran, Turkey, India, Russia and four of thefive Central Asian Republics - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan andTajikistan - have backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance with armsand money to try and halt the Taliban's advance. In contrast Pakistanand Saudi Arabia have backed the Taliban. In the post-Cold War era,this has created unprecedented polarization across the region. The Talibanvictories in northern Afghanistan in the summer of 1998 and theircontrol of over 90 per cent of the country, set in motion an even fiercerregional conflict as Iran threatened to invade Afghanistan and accusedPakistan of supporting the Taliban.At the heart of this regional stand-off is the battle for the vast oil and
"6 ~ TALIBANgas riches of landlocked Central Asia - the last untapped reserves ofenergy in the world today. Equally important has been the intense competitionbetween the regional states and Western oil companies as to whowould build the lucrative pipelines which are needed to transport theenergy to markets in Europe and Asia. This rivalry has in effect becomea new Great Game - a throwback to the nineteenth century Great Gamebetween Russia and Britain over control and domination in Central Asiaand Afghanistan.Since late 1995, Washington had strongly backed the US companyUnocal to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan across Taliban-controlledAfghanistan. But there was another, unexpected player inthis new Great Game. The day after the execution I arrived at the mansionof Mullah Mohammed Hassan, the Governor of Kandahar, to interviewhim. As I walked up the drive past the heavily armed Taliban guards,I froze. Coming out of the Governor's office was a handsome, silver-hairedbusiness executive dressed in an impeccable blue blazer with gold buttons, ja yellow silk tie and Italian loafers. With him were two other busi-jnessmen, both as impeccably dressed and carrying bulging briefcases. Theylooked as though they had just concluded a deal on Wall Street, ratherthan holding negotiations with a band of Islamic guerrillas in the dustylanes of Kandahar.The executive was Carlos Bulgheroni, Chairman of Bridas Corporation,an Argentinean oil company which since 1994 had been secretly negotiatingwith the Taliban and the Northern Alliance to build the same gaspipeline across Afghanistan. Bridas were in bitter competition withUnocal and in a court case filed in California, they had even accusedUnocal of stealing the idea from them.For a year I had been trying to discover what interests an Argentinean |company, unknown in this part of the world, had in investing in suchhigh-risk place as Afghanistan. But both Bridas and Unocal had keptdiscreet silence. The last thing Bulgheroni wanted was to be seen byjournalist coming out of a Taliban leader's office. He excused himself
Page 1 and 2: YALE NOTA BENE"The broader storyher
Page 3 and 4: TalibanMilitant Islam,Oil and Funda
Page 5 and 6: Vi ~ CONTENTSChapter 8A Vanished Ge
Page 7 and 8: AFGHANISTAN•^ UZBEKISTAN J TAJIKI
Page 9: 2 ~ TALIBANaccounts for some 40 per
Page 13 and 14: 10 ~ TALIBANgious mix that was to m
Page 15 and 16: Part 1History of theTaliban Movemen
Page 17 and 18: 18 ~ ISLAM OIL AND THE NEW GREAT GA
Page 25 and 26: 34 TALIBANKabul- Hikmetyar had alli
Page 27 and 28: 38 ~ TALIBANrHERAT 1995: GOD'S INVI
Page 29 and 30: 42 ~ TALIBANdo manage to take Kabul
Page 31 and 32: J46 ~ TALIBANgreater weight to UN e
Page 33 and 34: 50 ~ TALIBANas they hung from steel
Page 35 and 36: 54 ~ TALIBANthey would help rearm t
Page 37 and 38: 58 TALIBANGul Mohammed Pahlawan, Gh
Page 39 and 40: 62 TALIBAN2,500 Taliban, who had re
Page 41 and 42: 66 TALIBANshould throw all aid agen
Page 43 and 44: 70 ~ TALIBANyears of battle and hel
Page 45 and 46: 74 ~ TALIBANThousands of Hazaras we
Page 47 and 48: 78 TALIBANhas become a plague,' sai
Page 49 and 50: NEW STYLE FUNDAMENTALISM OF THE TAL
Page 51 and 52: 86 TALIBANsity students - Hikmetyar
Page 53 and 54: 90 TALIBANSharia was heavily influe
Page 55 and 56: 94 TALIBANinflamed the debate in th
Page 57 and 58: 98 TALIBANizing factor of Islam, it
Page 59 and 60: 102 TALIBANadministrations made the
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106 ~ TAUBANfrom working, but it no
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TALIBANUniversity, she held down a
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114 TALIBAN A VANISHED GENDER 115Ta
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118 TALIBANUS$1,300 - a small fortu
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122 TALIBANper cent of the total Pa
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126 TALIBANequipment, no electricit
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130 ~ TALIBANfight with the Mujahed
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134TALIBANAugust 1996 noted that Bi
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138 ~ TALIBANwho were using the Kho
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11DICTATORS AND OILBARONS: THE TALI
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146 TALIBAN DICTATORS AND OIL BARON
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150 — TALIBANgrowth of beards and
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154TALIBAN1998 when international o
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158 ~ TALIBANaround Afghanistan? Af
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162 TALIBAN ROMANCING THE TALIBAN 1
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166 TALIBAN ROMANCING THE TALIBAN 1
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ROMANCING THE TALIBAN 2: 1997-99 17
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174 — TALIBANnon-Russian pipeline
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178 — TALIBANROMANCING THE TALIBA
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182 ~ TALIBANApril 1999. 'The US ha
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186 ~ TALIBANters or the transport
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190 ~ TALIBANThis Wild West of free
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194 ~ TALIBANgovernance. Pakistani
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198 TALIBAN SHIA VERSUS SUNNI: IRAN
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202 TALIBAN SHIA VERSUS SUNNI: IRAN
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206 — TALIBANin Afghanistan - to
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210 — TALIBANand antagonism. The
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214 ~ TALIBANdrawn since 1996 - a P
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218 ~ TALIBANated and severely puni
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Origins of Members of the Taliban M
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APPENDIX 3 ~ 227Appendix 3A CHRONOL
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230 ~ TALIBANgraves near Shebarghan
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234 ~ TALIBAN8 June. US FBI places
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238 ~ TALIBAN1995 January16 MarchAp
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242 ~ TALIBANJune21 August10 Septem
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246 ~ TALIBANDupree, Nancy Hatch, A
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250 ~ NOTESChapter 31 Interview wit
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254 ~ NOTESmuddin, Religious Police
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258 NOTES13. The Japanese company M
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262 ~ NOTES28. Waxman, Sharon, 'A c
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Abbas, Mulla Mohammed 22,61,100Abda
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INDEX - 270Hazaras (continued)burea
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INDEX ~ 274nF»r\/FaliViar» milita
Page 147:
INDEX ~ 278Talibans (continued)Sunn
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