Talibanization of Afghanistan
25 Jan, 2001 · 457
Brig. Chandra B Khanduri traces the birth and the growth of Taliban and the talibanization of Afghanistan
In October 1994, a large mobile and armed to-the-teeth force of young Muslim guerrillas, numbering approximately 3000, appeared on the outskirts of Kandhar. Soon it launched what it called a Rescue Operation and cleared and secured the town. It was now reinforced by the mobile columns of Pakistani Frontier Force and equipped with armored personnel carriers, missiles, mortars and light tanks, this new force burst upon
Kabul
. The world got to know of the presence of this star on the horizon of
Afghanistan
, since then and is living with it. Even the
US
missile attack on the
harbor
of
Bin Laden
has not changed things.
Algeria
,
Chechnya
,
Indonesia
,
Kashmir
,
Palestine
, the
Philippines
and Xinjiang.
Middle East
, besides
Libya
and, indeed, the perennial sources of drug trafficking.
Afghanistan
would provide; and the overall security to the proposed ‘Trans-Afghan Oil and Gas Pipe Line,’ from the
Caspian Sea
to
Pakistan
through
Afghanistan
. This is why it becomes doubly significant for
Pakistan
to see that the Taliban controls the whole of
Afghanistan
from the
Amu Darya
to the Durand Line. If that doesn't’ happen then alternative plans to run it through
Iran
are threatening
Pakistan
’s interest.
Afghanistan
which ipso facto amounts to punishing the already suffering common man. For, when I spoke with the UN Secretary General in 1999 and brought to his notice the repression in
Tibet
and Talibanization of Afghanistan right under the UN nose, his answer was, “To get the Taliban off, the UN will have to fight them-an improbability; and to improve situation in
Tibet
.
China
will have to be coaxed to improve things but any thing more than that would invite a ‘Chinese Veto’ in the UN”!
Kabul
.
Jihad or the holy war became its slogan and it launched a two pronged attack: the military wing of Taliban pushed the Northern Alliance (NA) of Ahmad Shah Masood north of Panjshir Valley capturing almost 4/5 of area, and concurrently the Islamic clerics began a cleansing operation’, wiping out all traces of modernization and liberalization in Afghanistan. While the 1/5 area continues to offer resistance to the northerly advance of Taliban, the Mullah force had a free run. They systematically reduced the country to a medieval Islam period by enforcing Burqa for the women, debarring them from basic education and imposing the Koranic blasphemy law. While women, indeed became their largest casualty, even the men and boys could not play football in shorts! Talibanization, as it came to be known, has its unchallenged sway for almost four years since its control has transformed the entire social fibre of this unfortunate country. However, its clarion call remains that there is a constant threat to the Islamic Culture of Afghanistan.
Inevitably, Taliban’s clarion call is for Jihad. Elsewhere in the world, harbouring Jihadis like Bin Laden, it has spread the theory of a clash of civilizations to all the hot spots of the world:
Who are these Talibans? Recent studies have pin-pointed their origin to the infamous ISI, who carefully selected the young Afghani refugees living in Pakistan and their being educated in Islamic Madarasas placed under the overall control of one Mullah Ahmed who not only taught them the tenets of Jihad but combined it with their military training under the military wing ISI. The money poured in from Bin Laden and the Arabs of the
Strategically the birth of Taliban is attributed to two Pakistani requirements: its never ending clamour for strategic space that its control of
It is good that the United Nations has imposed stricter economic sanctions on
Let us, therefore, hope that the agenda of the UN Summit 2000 and the United Nation Sanctions of January 2001 improve things in
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