Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (41 page)

and, for the first time, the mostly Pashtun Taliban controlled an area where ethnic Pashtuns were not in the majority.40

The Taliban treated Herat as an occupied city, imposing Sharia in a manner similar to the way they had established it in other areas that they governed. The Taliban soldiers who defended Herat and patrolled its streets were Pashtuns who were not natives of Herat, did not speak the local language, and thus were incapable of communicating with or understanding the indigenous people of Herat. During the first several years of the Taliban’s rule, no indigenous Heratis became part of the Taliban’s local government. For Heratis, whose city and province had been a major center of education and culture, being ruled by the Pashtuns, whom the Heratis considered uncultured and vulgar, constituted a sad and insulting state of affairs. From a Herati point of view, if there was anything to be gained from the Taliban’s rule, it was the fact that it brought at least some temporary peace from the belligerent forms of chaos that had tormented Afghanistan during its civil war. For the Taliban, the city and province of Herat constituted one of the crucial regions that they believed they had to conquer in order to bring the “true Islam” and the peace that ensued from it to the region.41

Mullah Omar and the Kandahar Assembly

In March 1996, more than 1,000 mostly Pashtun Muslim leaders from various parts of Afghanistan arrived in Kandahar for a large meeting that was to have two goals. First, the participants intended to give Mullah Omar their full public acclamation as the true leader of Afghanistan – and as the related ritual suggested – the leader of Muslims worldwide. Second, the attendees wanted to discuss the next steps that the Taliban should take after having conquered substantial amounts of territory in Afghanistan, including Herat. The Taliban’s 10-month siege of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital which is where Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government was based, had been largely unsuccessful, while there were large numbers of casualties among the Taliban as a result of that military operation. There were vigorous debates among members of the Taliban about whether the Taliban’s attack on Kabul should continue. Moderate members of the Taliban stated that given the Taliban’s lack of progress during its siege of the city, it would not be able to conquer it and should negotiate a peace agreement with the Kabul government. More conservative members of the Taliban supported the organization’s continued siege of the city. After more than two weeks of discussion and debate, all of which took place in secrecy with almost no exposure to the media, the attendees of the conference decided to confer upon Mullah Omar the title of “Amir ul-Mu)minin” (which means “Commander of the Faithful”) and to continue the Taliban’s war effort to

capture Kabul, believing that much like God had blessed early and medieval Muslims with victories against their enemies, he would continue to do the same for the Taliban.42

The title of “Commander of the Faithful,” which Mullah Omar’s fellow-Taliban members bestowed upon him, is one with profound meaning and deep historical resonances within Islam. It was the title adopted by Umar ibn al-Khattab, Sunni Islam’s second caliph or successor to Muhammad, who ruled from 634 until 644, and was the title of caliphs who ruled after him.43 Much in the same way that Muslims view Muhammad as having been the ruler of every aspect of Muslims’ lives – including the religious, political, social, economic, and military domains – during the time that he led the Islamic community, so too Sunni Muslims look upon the caliphs as possess- ing similar roles in Islamic societies.44 Thus, when the members of the Kandahar conference named Omar the “Commander of the Faithful,” the Emir of Afghanistan (or the religious and political leader of the country), and the undisputed leader of the physical jihad against the Rabbani government, which the Taliban considered to be un-Islamic, they were bestowing the highest level of status and legitimacy on Mullah Omar.

In April 1996, when Mullah Omar appeared on a rooftop dressed in what his audience looked upon as the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad, they publicly recognized his high status by shouting “Commander of the Faithful” as he stood above them. This Taliban assembly also gave Mullah Omar its bay(a or allegiance, which, in the minds of the Taliban, was the same kind of allegiance that the early Muslims gave to the Prophet Muhammad and that Muslims gave to the caliphs who followed him. Among other meanings, the offering of this allegiance has historically constituted an act by which a person is proclaimed and recognized as the head of a Muslim state, for example.45

Adding to the religious and political symbolism, Mullah Omar has the same first name as the caliph Umar, Sunni Islam’s second caliph, whom Sunnis consider to be among the first four Rightly Guided caliphs, all of whom, in Muslims’ view, walked in the footsteps of Muhammad by properly governing the Islamic community from the time of his death in 632, until 661.46 Among Umar’s many accomplishments during his caliphate were Muslim armies’ conquests of much of Persia (or Iran), Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and most significantly Jerusalem, which is Islam’s third holiest city and which some scholars believe Umar may have visited. Among many Sunni Muslims, Umar also has the reputation of a just, pragmatic, and able administrator.47

Mullah Omar drew upon this mythic history in his speeches and interactions with Afghans, presenting himself as a modern-day Umar who, with God’s blessing, would conquer territory and administer it in an equitable and capable manner. In this spirit, around the time of the Kandahar assembly in March 1996, Mullah Wakil, an aide to Mullah Omar, stated,

“We want to live a life like the prophet lived fourteen hundred years ago and jihad is our right. We want to re-create the time of the Prophet and we are only carrying out what the Afghan people have wanted for the past fourteen years,” referring to the approximately 10 years of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s and the four years of civil war in Afghanistan that followed.48

Hence, the members of the Taliban who participated in the Kandahar assembly in March 1996 left the meeting having officially chosen Mullah Omar as their leader and having publicly announced their common declaration of physical jihad against Rabbani’s government. At the same time, the bestowal of the title “Commander of the Faithful” upon Mullah Omar and the allegiance that the Taliban offered him were recognized almost exclusively by the Taliban. The vast majority of other Muslims did not view Mullah Omar as their leader or consider him their commander.

The Taliban and Kabul

After trying to take Kabul for almost 18 months, the Taliban conquered the city in late September 1996, hanged former Afghan President Muhammad Najibullah, who ruled from 1986 until 1992, and imposed the same Islamic law codes on Kabul as they had on the other territories that they had conquered.49 During these war efforts, the Taliban was supported with arms and supplies from the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, while the Taliban’s opponents were supported by Iran, Russia, and several Central Asian republics. The Pakistani support had, by the fall of 1996, resulted in Pakistan partially achieving its goal of securing safe land passage from Pakistan to the Central Asian republics, while providing it with a modicum of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Saudis had partially achieved their goal of using the Taliban as a vessel to spread their Islamist message, while expanding their influence in Afghanistan.50

The Iranians, who opposed the Taliban, were deeply concerned about the expansion of Pakistani and Saudi influence in Afghanistan, a vital country that shared a long border with Iran. In addition, Iran’s population is approximately 90 percent Shiite Muslim and the Taliban adhered to a very strict form of Sunni Islam which was virulently anti-Shiite. The Taliban strongly denounced all Shiites including Iran’s Shiite government and populace, hoping that they would eventually attack Iran with the goal of converting Iran’s population to Sunni Islam.51 Indeed, in the late 1990s Iran and the Taliban almost went to war after the Taliban killed nine Iranian diplomats in the Afghan city of Mazar-i Sharif.52

During the Taliban’s rise to power, Russia’s government and those of several of the Central Asian republics, most of which were largely

anti-Islamist, were threatened by the potential spread of the Taliban’s version of Islamism into Afghanistan. The Russian government opposed the expansion of Pakistan’s political and economic influence into Afghanistan, while it did not want the majority-Muslim populations within or near its borders to become catalyzed by the Taliban’s Islamism in such a way that those Muslim populations would revolt against the Russians. The govern- ments of several of the Central Asian republics had similar concerns.53

The Taliban and Mazar-i Sharif

By the time of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban in late September 1996, the Taliban had control of 22 of Afghanistan’s 31 provinces.54 The Taliban used the climatically cold and wintry period from September 1996 until May 1997 to consolidate its power and resources in Kabul and the other parts of Afghanistan that it controlled. In May of 1997, the Taliban began its major offensive on Afghanistan’s northern cities and provinces, including the city of Mazar-i Sharif in the province of Balkh.55 In the time leading to the Taliban’s attack on Mazar-i Sharif, that city had been virtually untouched by Afghanistan’s wars. Mazar-i Sharif’s protected status was largely due to the effective leadership of the ethnic Uzbek Afghan warlord General Rashid Dostum, who was a skilled, courageous, and charismatic politician, military tactician, and soldier. In addition to maintaining peace, stability, and relatively good governance in the ethnically diverse Mazar-i Sharif, Dostum led a province with fairly effective health and educational systems, including Balkh University in Mazar-i Sharif, which had several thousand students and was the only university that was operating in Afghanistan at the time. Women and men in that area had significant freedom to dress as they desired and before the Taliban’s entry into the region, Islamic law did not play a large role there. Mazar-i Sharif and northern Afghanistan are also important because of their resources and the city’s symbolic value. While most of Afghanistan’s population lives in the southern portions of the country, 60 percent of Afghanistan’s agricultural resources and 80 percent of its former industry and mineral and gas deposits are in the northern areas, including Mazar-i Sharif itself. During much of the twentieth century, various Afghan governments’ successes or failures in state-building and economic development depended on their control of the country’s northern regions.56 While the site of the tomb of Islam’s fourth caliph, Ali, a figure who is greatly admired by Sunnis and Shiites, is disputed (at least five different places are thought to be the site of his tomb), Mazar-i Sharif is considered by some Muslims to be one of those possible sites.57 One possible tomb of Ali, who was the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, is located at the city’s blue mosque, which is one of the most beautiful in Afghanistan

and is a major pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims.58 Balkh, which was an ancient city near Mazar-i Sharif, is the city where Zoroaster (ca. 628 BCE– ca. 551 BCE), the founder of Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions, is believed to have lived, and is thought to be the birth city of one of Sufi Islam’s most renowned poets, Jalal al-Din Rumi (ca. 1207–73). With a knowledge of their history and the relatively beneficent rule of Rashid Dostum, the ethnically and linguistically diverse residents of Mazar-i Sharif and the province of Balkh had lived harmoniously.59

In May 1997, the Taliban overpowered the various forces that had the task of defending Mazar-i Sharif, and the ethnically-Pashtun Taliban moved quickly and with great confidence as they disarmed a large number of ethnically-Uzbek and Hazara soldiers in the area. The Taliban captured mosques, imposed the full force of strict Sharia law, and closed the univer- sity and other schools, with the hope of eventually opening their own schools that provided education to men from an exclusively Islamist perspective.60 In late May 1997, there was a heated argument in Mazar-i Sharif between some members of the Taliban and some Hazaras who refused to be dis- armed. The argument escalated to a physical altercation and as word spread of the Hazaras’ resistance, large numbers of residents of Mazar-i Sharif ran into the streets to fight against the Taliban. This massive revolt resulted in the deaths of 600 members of the Taliban, and 10 members of the Taliban’s leadership were captured or killed. The members of the Taliban, virtually all of whom were from the southern part of Afghanistan and were wholly unfa- miliar with Mazar-i Sharif’s streets and the geography of the Balkh region, were severely hampered by their lack of knowledge of the area. This began a string of Taliban defeats in several parts of Afghanistan as the various warlords who opposed the Taliban fought hard against Taliban rule.

Beginning in late May 1997, the Taliban were either defeated or severely threatened in seven northern provinces of Afghanistan, in areas near and around Kabul, and at some strategic roadways, passes, and bridges in south- ern Afghanistan. These were some of the Taliban’s worst defeats since they had emerged more than two years earlier. In over two months of fighting, between May and July 1997, more than 3,000 members of the Taliban had been killed or wounded and another 3,000 had been taken prisoner. Approximately 800 Pakistanis who were aiding the Taliban had been killed or captured, while numerous members of the groups opposing the Taliban had been killed or wounded.61 Throughout the rest of 1997, horrific warfare racked Afghanistan, with the Taliban retaining control of much of the coun- try, while their opponents made often powerful forays against them. In addi- tion, the various countries which had interests in Afghanistan, such as Russia and various Central Asian countries, continued to support their proxies in the country.62