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38 ~ TALIBANrHERAT 1995: GOD'S INVINCIBLE SOLDIERS 39Rukh and his Queen Gowhar Shad moved the capital of the Timuridempire from Samarkand to Herat in 1405.The Timurids were the first to merge the Turkic nomadic steppe culturewith the refinements of the settled Persian lands, importing artisans from IPersia, India and Central Asia to build hundreds of magnificent monuments.Shah Rukh and Gowhar Shad turned Herat into a vast constructionsite building mosques, madrassas, public baths, libraries and palaces.Herat's bazaars produced the finest carpets, jewellery, weapons, armourand tiles. Bihzad, considered the finest Persian miniaturist painter of alltime worked at the court. 'In Herat if you stretch out your feet you aresure to kick a poet,' said Ali Sher Nawai, Shah Rukh's Prime Minister, jjwho was also an artist, poet and writer. 4 Nawai, who is buried in Herat jand is the national poet of modern day Uzbekistan, is considered the]father of literary Turkic for he was the first to write poetry in Turkic)rather than Persian. The Persian poet Jami was also at court and is buriedin Herat while Shah Rukh's son Ulugh Beg, was an astronomer whose]observatory in Samarkand monitored the movement of stars. His calendar |and tables of the stars were published at Oxford University in 1665 andare still astonishingly accurate.In 1417, Gowhar Shad, herself a builder of dozens of mosques, com-ipleted the construction of a magnificent complex on the outskirts of the]city consisting of a mosque, madrassa and her own tomb. The tomb, with iits panelled walls of Persian blue tiles bejewelled with floral decorations!and topped by a ribbed blue dome with dazzling white Koranic inscriptions,is still considered one of the finest examples of Islamic architecture \anywhere in the world. When Byron saw it in 1937, he described it as'the most beautiful example in colour in architecture ever devised by man ito the glory of God and himself.' 5 When Gowhar Shad died at the age of j80 after constructing some 300 buildings in Afghanistan, Persia and Cent-]ral Asia, the inscription on her tomb read simply 'The Bilkis of the Time.' jBilkis means the Queen of Sheba. 6 Much of the complex was demolishedby the British in 1885 and the Soviets later mined the area to keep outthe Mujaheddin.When the Soviets bombed Herat in 1979, they inflicted more damageon the city than even the Mongols had done. 'Herat is the most destroyed!and the most heavily mined city in the world today, yet we get no help]from anywhere,' Ismael Khan told me in 1993. 7 Despite the devastationaround him, Ismael Khan had disarmed the population and established!an effective administration with functioning health care and schools in ]the three provinces.Short, shrewd and with an elfin smile that made him look much]younger than his 47 years, Ismael Khan had 45,000 children studying inlHerat's schools, by 1993 half of them were girls - 75,000 students in all Jacross the three provinces. In 1993 he took me to see the Atun Heirvischool where 1,500 girls studied in two shifts, sitting under the open skyas there were no classrooms, desks, books, paper or ink - their desire tolearn only re-emphasising Herat's history of learning. In contrast whenthe Taliban took over Kandahar, the 45 working schools were closeddown and only three remained. When the Taliban were later to captureHerat they were to close down every school in the city and disallow girlsfrom even studying at home.But by 1995 Ismael Khan faced immense problems. He had disarmedthe population and created an unpopular conscript army. To face theTaliban, he needed to rearm the population while his conscript army wasriddled with corruption, low morale and lack of resources. Official corruptionand high-handedness towards civilians had become rampant in thecity and customs officials charged trucks passing through Herat the exorbitantsum of 10,000 Pakistan rupees (US$300) - a sure way to make anenemy of the transport mafia. The Taliban were well informed of theproblems he faced. 'Ismael is weak, his soldiers will not fight because theyhave not been paid and he is widely discredited amongst his peoplebecause of the corruption in his administration. He stands alone and hasto be propped up by Masud,' Mullah Wakil Ahmad told me. 8Ismael Khan also made a serious military miscalculation. Believing theTaliban were on the verge of disintegration due to their defeat, helaunched an ill-prepared and badly timed offensive against them. With alarge mobile force, he captured Dilaram on 23 August 1995 and parts ofHelmand a week later thereby threatening Kandahar. But his forces wereoverstretched in a hostile environment while the Taliban had spent thesummer rebuilding their forces with arms, ammunition and vehicles providedby Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and a new command structure createdwith the help of ISI advisers. The ISI also helped broker an agreement,never made public, between the Taliban and General Rashid Dostum.Dostum sent his Uzbek technicians to Kandahar to repair Mig fightersand helicopters the Taliban had captured a year earlier in Kandahar,thereby creating the Taliban's first airpower. Meanwhile Dostum's ownplanes began a bombing campaign of Herat.To meet Ismael Khan's threat, the Taliban quickly mobilized some25,000 men, many of them fresh volunteers from Pakistan. Their moreexperienced fighters were deployed in mobile columns in Datsun pick-ups,which harassed Ismael's supply lines. At the end of August at Girishk theTaliban decisively ambushed the intruders and Ismael Khan sounded ageneral retreat. Within a few days the Taliban pushed back his forces toShindand, which he inexplicably abandoned on 3 September 1995 withoutputting up a fight. Then two days later, with his troops in a blindPanic as the Taliban mobile columns swept through and around them,