Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
173. Afghanistan, Land of Valor, Land of Sorrow - 4
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The Soviets tried trading their satraps. In 1986 Karmal was replaced by Najibullah. The arrival of stinger missiles neutralized any advantage that the Soviets enjoyed in the air. After losing tens of thousands of men and spending billions, the invaders realized they could not hold Afghanistan and they withdrew in 1989 leaving the communists to their fate.
Fighting continued between the Mujahedeen and the forces of Najibullah culminating in the victory of the Mujahedeen in 1993. However, victory did not bring peace to the hapless Afghans. The warlords who had temporarily buried their differences under the umbrella of the Mujahedeen were soon at each other’s throat, fighting for turf and terrain. Rabbani took over the northwest. Dostum controlled Mazar e Sharif. Hikmatyar was the chieftain in Herat. Yunus Khalis held sway over Jalalabad and Pashtun areas. Much of the country was destroyed. Thousands perished. Children died and women were abused. Agriculture suffered. Schools were closed. The infrastructure was in ruins. The flood of refugees into Pakistan and Iran which had started during the occupation by the Soviets increased. Afghanistan became a macabre theater of war in which a suffering, hapless population was held hostage.
The instability was a matter of concern to the ruling circles in neighboring Pakistan who were host to over three million Afghan refugees. As successive waves of refugees poured in across the Durand Line to escape the violence in their native land, they were cared for by a host of Islamic organizations in the NW Frontier Province of Pakistan. Since there were no schools for children, the Jamaat e Islami and other Islamic organizations set up madrasas to provide a modicum of education to the refugee children. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries provided much of the funding for this education. These madrasas became the focus of official Pakistan attention. Without the benefit of a modern syllabus, the madrasas produced graduates imbued with rigid doctrines that viewed all non-Islamic influences as alien that had to be fought and expelled.
Pakistan saw an opportunity to use the graduates of the madrasas for a jihad in Afghanistan. Besides the obvious benefits of a stable backyard, Islamic Afghanistan would also provide strategic depth to Pakistan in its military confrontations with India. The students and some of the faculty of the refugee madrasas provided the backbone of the Taliban (literally, student) movement that considered it a religious duty to wage a jihad to liberate Afghanistan from all alien influences and bring in stability in accordance with a rigid and unbending interpretation of Islam. In this endeavor they received covert and overt assistance from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and a tolerant nod from Washington.
The Taliban, joined by many erstwhile mujahideen and idealist youth, made rapid gains against the warlords. In 1996 they captured Kabul. The warlords were pushed into a small enclave in Northern Afghanistan around Mazar e Sharif.
The Taliban brought stability to the country and controlled the opium trade. However, the price for this stability was the imposition of a rigid, extremist regime in Kabul. The participation of women in public life was banned. Women were compelled to wear head to toe chadurs and shrouds, and men to grow their beards long. Television was banned and cinema houses closed. Magazines were censored for their pictures and their content. Vice squads were organized to patrol the streets. Violators of the rigid behavioral code were severely and publicly flogged. In 2001, the Taliban, at the orders of Mulla Omar, dynamited the famous Buddha status of Bamyan. These statues were carved out of sandstone in the 6 th century CE and were the finest examples of Gandhara Buddhist sculpture. They were declared UNESCO world heritage sites. The demolition of the statues drew worldwide condemnation and vehement protests from the Buddhist world.
The extremist ideology of the Taliban was matched only by their political naïveté. The increasing competition for the dwindling energy resources of the world put Afghanistan squarely in the midst of oil politics. The discovery of oil and gas in the Caspian Sea region increased the strategic importance of Afghanistan. There were only two routes available to transport the oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the oil thirsty nations of Western Europe, United States, India and China. One was through Iran but the participation of Iran in any oil venture was opposed by the United States which was at loggerheads with the Iranian regime since the Islamic revolution of 1978. The other route lay through Afghanistan and Pakistan. A proposal for such a pipeline originating in Turkmenistan and passing through western Afghanistan and Baluchistan to Karachi was presented to the Taliban government by UNOCAL, a US-Saudi consortium. It was rejected in favor of an alternate proposal from the Argentine corporation Bridas. The hardliners in Washington bridled at this rejection. It provided an added excuse to get rid of the Taliban and have them replaced by a more pliant government.
On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center were attacked. The horrendous attack took the lives of almost 3,000 people and caused billions in economic loss. In its sheer mendacity, the attack was comparable to that on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The United States accused Al Qaeda of carrying out the attacks and demanded that the Taliban in Afghanistan turn over Ben Laden and his cohorts to the US. The Taliban, inexperienced in global affairs, demanded proof for Al Qaeda complicity. A diplomatic standoff ensued. Despite the advice of their friends in Pakistan, the Taliban did not budge. Within a month, the United States commenced its bombing of Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the Northern Alliance was provided arms and encouragement to break out of its enclave and take over the country.
The sustained, intense bombing obliterated the military infrastructure of Afghanistan. Destroyed were the mountain hideouts and caves so carefully prepared during the Soviet occupation for a long guerilla war. The Taliban reeled under pressure of aerial bombardment from the United States and ground attacks from the Northern Alliance. Thousands died. Civilian casualties were enormous. The Northern Alliance overran Kabul and, on the way, committed atrocities to avenge of the humiliation of earlier defeats.
The United States installed a new government in Kabul. Hamid Karzai became the President of Afghanistan in 2004 in an American backed government. The presence of foreign troops fueled an insurgency backed by the former Taliban. As resistance increased, so did the military presence of the United State and its NATO allies. And the war continues with increasing intensity fueled by the obscurantism of the Taliban and the fears of an obdurate, overcommitted superpower run by neocons.
Meanwhile, the suffering of the Afghan people continues with no end in sight. Refugees rot in camps in Pakistan and Iran. Children die from land mines. Famine threatens millions. Education and culture have come to a grinding halt. Women continue to bear the brunt of the tragedies and are exploited and abused both inside and outside their land. The war threatens to spill over into Pakistan and place it squarely in the bull’s eye. An unstable Afghanistan poses a grave risk to all of its neighbors. A neutral Afghanistan, allied neither with the United States nor with Russia or China, with open frontiers for the passage of oil and gas, and respect for the traditions of its ancient people and its Islamic heritage would be in the best interests of all. Whether this comes to pass will depend as much on the actions of the Afghans as the regional intentions of the United States.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
