Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero
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Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero

Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero

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84 ~ TALIBANtdema to become Qazis, Islamic judges. In 1946 a Sharia Faculty was setup in Kabul University which became the main centre for integrating thenew civil code with the Sharia. This merging of the traditional with themodem was epitomized by Mohammed Musa Shafiq, the last PrimeMinister under the monarchy, which was overthrown in 1973. Shafiqstudied at a madrassa and at the Sharia Faculty in Kabul and then wenton to take another degree from Columbia University in New York. Whenhe was executed by the communists in 1979 his death was widelymourned. 3Thus it was not surprising that in 1979 the mullahs did not join theradical Islamic Mujaheddin parties, but the more traditional tribal-basedparties such as Harakat Inquilabi-Islami headed by Maulana MohammedNabi Mohammedi and Hizb-e-Islami led by Maulvi Younis Khalis. Bothmen were maulvis who had studied for a time at the Haqqania madrassain Pakistan and then established their own madrassas inside Afghanistan.After the Soviet invasion they set up loose organisations which weredecentralized, unideological and non-hierarchical, but they rapidly lostout as the CIA-ISI arms pipeline supported the more radical Islamic parties.Another moderating factor for Islam in Afghanistan was the enormouspopularity of Sufism, the trend of mystical Islam, which originated inCentral Asia and Persia. Sufi means 'wool' in Arabic and the name comesfrom the rough woollen coats worn by the early Sufi brethren. The Sufi*orders or Tariqah, which means 'the way', was a medieval reaction againstauthority, intellectualism, the law and the mullah and thus immenselyappealing for poor, powerless people. The Sufis build their faith on prayer,contemplation, dances, music and sessions of physical shaking or whirlingin a permanent quest for truth. These rituals create an inner spiritualspace within man that the outsider cannot penetrate. Seven centuries agothe famous Arab traveller Ibn Battuta described Sufism: 'The fundamentalaim of the Sufi life was to pierce the veils of human sense which shutman off from the Divine and so to obtain communion and absorptioninto God.' 4The two main Sufi orders in Afghanistan of Naqshbandiyah and Qaderiyahplayed a major role in uniting the anti-Soviet resistance as theyprovided a network of associations and alliances outside the Mujaheddinparties and ethnic groups. Leaders of these orders were equally prominent.The Mujaddedi family were leaders of the Naqshbandiyah order and hadbeen king makers in Kabul for centuries. In a brutal act, the communistskilled 79 members of the Mujaddedi family in Kabul in January 1979 toeliminate potential rivals. Nevertheless one survivor, SibghatuUah Mujaddedi,set up his own resistance party in Peshawar, the Jabha-i Najat Mill"Afghanistan, National Liberation Front of Afghanistan, and became a'NEW STYLE FUNDAMENTALISM OF THE TALIBAN ~ 85fierce critic of the radical Islamic parties. He was appointed Presidentof the Afghan interim government in 1989 and then became the firstMujaheddin President of Afghanistan in 1992.Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, the head of the Qaderiyah order and relatedto ex-King Zahir Shah through marriage, set up the Mahaz-e-Milli,National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, in Peshawar. Both leaders weresupporters of Zahir Shah and remained the most moderate of all theMujaheddin leaders. They were also sidelined by the CIA-ISI nexus andby Hikmetyar and Masud and later by the Taliban. They returned topolitics in 1999 by setting up a new Peace and National Unity party thatattempted to mediate between the Taliban and their opponents.Before the Taliban, Islamic extremism had never flourished inAfghanistan. Within the Sunni tradition were the Wahabbis, followersof the strict and austere Wahabbi creed of Saudi Arabia. Begun by AbdulWahab (1703-1792) as a movement to cleanse the Arab bedouin from theinfluence of Sufism, the spread of Wahabbism became a major plank inSaudi foreign policy after the oil boom in the 1970s. The Wahabbis firstcame to Central Asia in 1912, when a native of Medina, Sayed ShariMohammed set up Wahabbi cells in Tashkent and the Ferghana valley.From here and from British India the creed travelled to Afghanistan whereit had miniscule support before the war.However, as Saudi arms and money flowed to Saudi-trained Wahabbileaders amongst the Pashtuns, a small following emerged. In the earlystages of the war, the Saudis sent an Afghan long settled in Saudi Arabia,Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, to set up a Wahabbi party, the Ittehad-e-Islami,Islamic Unity, in Peshawar. The Wahabbi Afghans who are also calledSalafis, became active opponents of both the Sufi and the traditionaltribal-based parties but they were unable to spread their message becausethey were immensely disliked by ordinary Afghans, who considered it aforeign creed. Arab Mujaheddin including Osama Bin Laden, who joinedthe jihad, won a small Pashtun following, largely due to the lavish fundsand weapons at their disposal.Thanks to the CIA-ISI arms pipeline, the engine of the jihad was theradical Islamic parties. Hikmetyar and Masud had both participated in anunsuccessful uprising against President Mohammed Daud in 1975. TheseIslamic radicals had then fled to Pakistan where they were patronized byIslamabad as a means to pressurize future Afghan governments. Thuswhen the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan already hadeffective Islamic radicals under its control which could lead the jihad.President Zia ul Haq insisted that the bulk of CIA military aid was transferredto these parties, until Masud became independent and fiercely criticalof Pakistani control.These Islamic leaders were drawn from a new class of educated univer-

86 TALIBANsity students - Hikmetyar studied engineering at Kabul University, Masudstudied at Kabul's French Lycee - who took their inspiration from themost radical and politicized Islamic party in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami.The Pakistani Jamaat in turn was inspired by the Ikhwan ul Muslimeenor the Muslim Brotherhood which was set up in Egypt in 1928 with theaim of bringing about an Islamic revolution and creating an Islamic state.The founder of the Ikhwan, Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949) was a maj

86 TALIBANsity students - Hikmetyar studied engineering at Kabul <strong>University</strong>, Masudstudied at Kabul's French Lycee - who took their inspiration from themost radical and politicized Islamic party in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami.The Pakistani Jamaat in turn was inspired by the Ikhwan ul Muslimeenor the Muslim Brotherhood which was set up in Egypt in 1928 with theaim of bringing about an Islamic revolution and creating an Islamic state.The founder of the Ikhwan, Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949) was a maj

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