The Afghanistan’s Taleban movement
KABUL: The Taleban governed Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, imposing strict Islamic sharia law before being ousted and launching an insurgency. Here is some background on the movement:
Religious students
The Taleban originated among young Afghans who studied in Sunni Islamic schools called madrassas in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. They take their name from talib, the Arabic word for student. In the early 1990s, with Afghanistan in the chaos
and corruption of civil war, the Taleban was formed in the southern province of Kandahar under the leadership of one-eyed warriorcleric Mullah Omar. Omar, who led them until his death in 2013, was from a stronghold of the powerful Pashtun ethnic group from which come most Taleban fighters. Haibatullah Akhundzada is now the top leader, while Taleban co-founder Mullah Baradar heads the political wing.
Dramatic rise to power Promising to restore order and justice, the Taleban rose dramatically. They drew substantial support from Pakistan and initially had the tacit approval of the United States. In October 1994, they seized the city of Kandahar, almost without a fight.
Equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and the cash to buy the support of local commanders, they steadily moved north, before capturing the capital Kabul on September 27, 1996. President Burhanuddin Rabbani had already fled. Taleban fighters dragged former communist president Mohammed Najibullah from a United Nations office where he had been sheltering and hanged him in a public street after torturing him.
Reign of terror
The Taleban government imposed the strictest interpretations of sharia, or Islamic laws, establishing religious police for the suppression of “vice”. Music, television and pastimes such as kite-flying were banned. Girls’ schools were closed, while women
were prevented from working and forced to wear an all-covering burkha in public. Taleban courts handed out extreme punishments including chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning to death women accused of adultery.
By 1998, they had control of 80 percent of the country, but were only recognized as the legal government by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In March 2001 they blew up 1,500-year-old giant statues of the Buddha in the central Bamiyan valley. Mullah Omar was based mostly in Kandahar where he lived in a house reportedly built for him by Osama bin Laden. The Taleban allowed Afghanistan to become a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda, which set up training camps. —AFP