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36 TALIBANThe Taliban then turned their attention to the west in a bid to captureHerat. By late February 1995 after heavy fighting they captured Nimrozand Farah, two of the provinces controlled by Ismael Khan and advancedon the former Soviet airbase at Shindand, south of Herat. The Kabulregime was clearly worried by the Taliban advance and Ismael Khan'sfailure to hold the line against them. Masud's aircraft from Kabul begana bombardment of the Taliban front lines while he airlifted 2,000 of hisbattle-hardened Tajik fighters from Kabul to help defend Shindand andHerat. With no airpower, poor logistical support from their bases in Kandaharand a weak command structure, the Taliban began to take heavycasualties as they mounted assaults on government positions around Shindand.By the end of March 1995, the Taliban had been pushed out of Shindand.They retreated losing most of the territory they had captured earlier,suffering at least 3,000 casualties. Hundreds of wounded were left in thedesert to die because the Taliban had no medical facilities at the frontand their lack of logistics made it impossible for them to provide waterand food to their troops. 'We have never seen such an inhospitable environment.Every day we are bombed, 10 to 15 times. There is no food orwater and my friends have died of thirst. We lost communication withour commanders and we don't know where our other troops are. We ranout of ammunition. It was a great misery,' Saleh Mohammed, a woundedTaliban told me, as he was transported back to Kandahar. 2The Taliban had now been decisively pushed back on two fronts bythe government and their political and military leadership was in disarray.Their image as potential peacemakers was badly dented, for in the eyesof many Afghans they had become nothing more than just another warlordparty. President Rabbani had temporarily consolidated his politicaland military position around Kabul and Herat. By May 1995 governmentforces directly controlled six provinces around Kabul and the north, whileIsmael Khan controlled the three western provinces. The Taliban's initialcontrol over 12 provinces was reduced to eight after their defeats. ButHerat continued to remain a tantalizing prize, not just for the Taliban,but for the Pashtun transport and drugs mafias who were desperately keento open up the roads to Iran and Central Asia through Herat for theirbusiness.Few Mujaheddin commanders had the prestige of Ismael Khan and fewhad sacrificed more than the people of Herat during the war against theSoviets. Ismael Khan was an officer in the Afghan army when the Russiaxisinvaded Afghanistan and he had strong Islamic and nationalist leanings.When the Soviets occupied Herat, they viewed the Persian-speaking sHeratis as docile and unwarlike and the most cultured of all Afghans. Thelast time the Heratis were forced into a fight had been more than a cen-JHERAT 1995: GOD'S INVINCIBLE SOLDIERS ~ 37tury earlier when they had resisted a Persian invasion in 1837. Fearing noresistance, the Soviets developed the Shindand airbase as their largestairbase in Afghanistan and allowed the families of their army officers tosettle in Herat.But on 15 March 1979, the population of the city rose up against theSoviets in an unprecedented urban revolt. As the population killed Sovietofficers, advisers and their families, Ismael Khan staged a coup in the citygarrison, killing Soviet and communist Afghan officers and distributingarms to the people. Hundreds of Russians were killed. Moscow, fearingcopycat uprisings in other Afghan cities, sent 300 tanks from Soviet Turkmenistanto crush the revolt and began to bomb one of the oldest citiesin the world indiscriminately. Fifteen years later, large tracts of the citystill looked like a lunar landscape with rubble stretching to the horizon.More than 20,000 Heratis were killed during the next few days. IsmaelKhan escaped to the countryside with his new guerrilla army and tens ofthousands of civilians fled to Iran. For the next decade Ismael Khan wageda bitter guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation and set up an effectiveadministration in the countryside, winning the respect of the population.This was to prove invaluable to him when he was to re-establish himselfin Herat after the departure of Soviet troops.Herat was the cradle of Afghanistan's history and civilization. An oasistown, it was first settled 5,000 years ago. Its 200 square miles of irrigatedfarmland in a valley rimmed by mountains, was considered to have therichest soil in Central Asia. The ancient Greek historian Herodotusdescribed Herat as the breadbasket of Central Asia. 'The whole habitableworld had not such a town as Herat,' wrote the Emperor Babar in hismemoirs. The British likened its beauty to England's home counties. 'Thespace between the hills is one beautiful extent of little fortified villages,gardens, vineyards and cornfields, and this rich scene is brightened bymany small streams of shining water which cut the plain in all directions,'the British adventurer and spy Captain Connolly wrote in 1831- 3For centuries the city was the crossroads between the competing Turkicand Persian empires and its population was an early convert to Islam. Themain mosque in the city centre dates back to the seventh century andwas rebuilt by the Ghorid dynasty in 1200. In medieval times it was botha centre for Christianity, under the Nestorian Church and a major centrefor Sufism - the spiritual and mystical side of Islam. Followers of theNaqshbandi and Chishtyia Sufi brotherhoods became Prime Ministers andMinisters. Herat's patron saint is Khawaja Abdullah Ansari who died in1088, a celebrated Sufi poet and philosopher who still has a large followingin Afghanistan. When Genghis Khan conquered Herat in 1222, hespared only 40 of its 160,000 inhabitants. But less than two centuries laterthe city had recovered to reach its pinnacle when Taimur's son Shah