01.11.2001
Roots of the Taliban
William Malley (ed) - Fundamentalism reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban - London 1998, pp253, ?14.95
Following the events of September 11, books on Afghanistan have suddenly become best-sellers. Fundamentalism reborn? - a collection of articles by leading academic thinkers - is one of these ?chart toppers?. The book has pride of place in many mainstream book displays - and the same goes for SWP bookstalls.
The precise nature of the social-religious milieu from which the Taliban emerged is not entirely clear. But we can, with the help of such books, establish its essential history and features.
The actual word ?Taliban? is just a Persianised plural form of the Arabic word ?Talib?, meaning ?religious student?. Obviously, such figures are nothing new. In 1898, whilst travelling in the Northwest Frontier - then in India, now in Pakistan - Winston Churchill made scathing remarks about ?a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the theological students in Turkey and live free at the expense of the people?. The Afghan religious student attended the madrassas (islamic colleges), in which he proceeded at his own - usually leisurely - individual speed, one subject at a time.
However, the crucial point to understand is that the specific origins of the Taliban regime now sitting in Kabul lie - to a large degree - outside Afghanistan. In the madrassas and refugee camps of Pakistan, where thousands of Afghans found themselves following the Soviet intervention of December 1979. Here they came under the influence - primarily - of the Jamiat-e Ulema-i Islam organisation, whose religious schools offered an ultra-conservative religious education to boys from the Afghan refugee camps, especially orphans or sons of very poor families.
Throughout the Afghan war in the 1980s, the Jamiat-e Ulema-i Islam had been quietly building up a support base amongst the Durrani Pushtuns living in Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province. The Pushtuns that belong to the Jamiat-e Ulema-i Islam have much in common with those that came to compose the Taliban. Both come from the Durrani tribes that straddle the porous border between Afghanistan and Baluchistan. The Jamiat activists are Deobandis, followers of a strict and ultra-conservative sect. The Deobandi school, which originated in the Dar ul-Ulam Deoband, an institution established in the Indian town of Deoband in 1867. It was this school which provided the bulk of the Afghan ulema (religious scholars) - including many current Taliban leaders
The Deobandi also has a tradition of opposition to the tribal and patriarchal structures of Pakistani society. Moreover, there is a deep-seated Deobandi antipathy to Shi?ite muslims, who are viewed as unbelievers. Naturally, this anti-Shi?ism manifests itself in extreme hostility to Iran - especially after the revolution/counterrevolution of 1979-81.
It was almost inevitable that our would-be Talibanites, given their incredibly limited knowledge of the world, and brought up with the imparted knowledge of the narrow-minded village mullah from back home, would very quickly turn into ardent Deobandis upon exposure to the Jamiat colleges? teachings.
So, we can see that most of the Taliban are the children - often quite literally - of the counterrevolutionary jihad against the Soviet Union and the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Their families continued to live in Pakistan as refugees even after the fall of Kabul to the mujahadeen in 1992. While all Taliban speak their mother tongue Pushto, for many their second language is not Persian, the lingua franca of Afghanistan, but Urdu, the language of Pakistan. Many Taliban carry Pakistani identity cards, and thousands of them actually voted in the 1997 elections in Baluchistan for the Jamiat-e Ulema-i Islam. Moreover, they recruited hundreds of Pakistani islamic fundamentalist students to fight for their anti-communist cause.
The Taliban is nowadays made up of a number of strands. Besides the religious students there are former mujahadeen - often those affiliated to Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi?s Harakakat-e Enqelab-e Islami, an overwhelmingly Pashtun party. The Taliban movement also has those adherents with a secular past (even some former supporters of the PDPA). Then there are elements of the Kandahari Pai luch brotherhood, a secret society with a distinctive uniform, whose members could be seen in the company of the Taliban in Kabul in mid-1997 (the Pai luch were involved in anti-modernist disturbances in Kandahar in 1959). Especially in the north, the Taliban opened its doors to armed Pashtuns who reflagged themselves as ?Talibans? for simple expediency sake. However, above them all is Mohammed Omar a prophetic or charismatic personality. He is called Amir al-Momineen (?commander of the faithful?) by his followers and claims to possess the cloak of Mohammad.
The Taliban have drawn on massive financial and logistical inputs from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - which transformed it into an organised political force with nation-wide objectives. Thanks to the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it could build a firm support base through clientelism and patronage.
The Taliban also learnt other things from the Deobandi - namely, that evil and apostasy were essentially defined in terms of departure from ritual. Therefore, the central and indeed overriding task is to enforce extraordinarily circumscribed modes of behaviour.
Hence the pervasive presence on the streets of Afghanistan of the Amr bil-Maroof wa Nahi An il-Munkir (department for the promotion of virtue and suppression of vice) - itself modelled closely on the Saudi Arabian mutawwain (religious police).
The role of this department was made explicit by the Taliban?s deputy foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, who admitted in September 1997 that it ?is a fact our rules are obeyed by fear? - but this was necessary, he claimed, because the ?people are addicted to sin?. These ?sins? take the form of music, theatre, photography, painting, sculpture, kite flying, keeping pigeons, etc. Men, under pain of death, were told that they had to grow (long) beards.
More infamously still, within days of taking Kabul in September 1996, the Taliban?s war against ?sin? viciously targeted women - in line with Deobandi teachings and Saudi practice. Organised gynophobia. As well as being banned from receiving health care or education, women were forced to wear the dreaded burqa - a stifling garment that totally encompasses the body, leaving only a mesh square over the eyes to permit minimal vision. At a stroke, the once cosmopolitan and Persian speaking Kabul had reverted to its pre-1959 days, when the government of prime minister Daoud Khan had announced the voluntary end of seclusion for women and the wearing of the veil.
Interestingly enough, when all this was happening the United States acting state department spokesman, Glyn Davies, said the US could see ?nothing objectionable? about the version of islamic law the Taliban had imposed.
This brings us to the exact contours of the Taliban?s theocratic ideology. Are we seeing a ?rebirth? of an essentially primitist fundamentalism? Is the Taliban regime no more than some sort of strange, historical throw back - a living fossil which by some fluke has gained ?state? power?
William Malley provides useful material here, arguing that ?the fundamentalist accepts no separation of politics and religion? and that ?the fundamentalist is a modernist, responsible not merely for obeying the dictates of the faith, but for ensuring that others do as well?. He adds: ?Fundamentalism differs radically from the non-modernist ultra-orthodox disposition in religion, since the latter retreats from the world, leaves god to rectify its evils? (my emphasis - p18).
In other words, the Taliban are a very modern phenomenon - shaped by the history and politics of the late 20th century.
Yes, of course, you can label them as ?traditionalists? who are exacting the revenge of the countryside over the cities. Yes, the Taliban want to impose ?rural? values. But these so-called ?traditional? values are not what they seem to be. When dealing with the Taliban we are talking more about the ongoing invention of tradition through the creation of an imaginary past.
In this vein, William Malley writes: ?It is not the values of the village, but the values of the villages as interpreted by the refugee camp dwellers or madrrassas students most of whom have never known ordinary village life that the Taliban seek to impose on places like Kabul (original emphasis - p20).
Anthony Davis, in ?How the Taliban became a military force?, dispels a common myth about the Taliban - that it ?rescued? Afghanistan from anarchy. The take-over of most of the provinces involved violent hostilities and substantial loss of life. That the fighting was not more protracted was indeed due to the Taliban tactics, ample supplies of cash and an aura of invincibility. But the tendency to portray the Taliban as having swept the south on a wave of popular adulation with scarcely a shot fired is nonsense.
Another pervasive myth - argues Davis - is that the areas conquered were racked by utter lawlessness. Apart from Kandahar and its environs, the Taliban simply laid down ultimata and then fought their way into regions that were at what passes for peace in Afghnaistan. The Taliban?s energies have always focused on war, battle and conquest - not ?reconstruction?, even of the most oppressive, top-down sort.
And - as M. Nazif Shahrani reminds us in his ?The future of the state and the structure of community?, Pashtun chauvinism has been the story of Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries. A quick look at the official histories taught in its school confirms this. Written from the perspective of the ?real?Afghans (Pushtuns) as the representatives of the true ?Aryan? race, they depicted Afghanistan essentially as a Pushtun creation that was to serve their interests as the ?master martial race? (the Nazis were very ?pro-Afghan?). Members of the non-Pushtuns groups (including the Tajiks, who in fact are also ?Aryans?) were either denied any positive role in the national historical narratives or their role was rendered in a negative light. For example, Amir Habibullah II (the only Tajik ruler in the 20th century) is described as a thief and insultingly dubbed, Bacha-i Saqao (the Water Carrier?s Son).
Taliban rule has continued and intensified Pashtun domination and chauvinism. Shahrani talks about ?the Taliban?s insistence on forcing misguided, punitive and Pushtun-tribal misunderstandings of islam (imported from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan) upon the great majority? (p221).
Indeed, some aspects of Taliban rule have a semi-racist element, especially the repression directed against the oriental-looking Hazaras, who - to their great misfortune - are also Shi?ites. A double burden.
For all that, some would like to act as attorneys for the Taliban - including, regrettably, the Socialist Workers Party, but hardly surprising given its support in the 1980s for the mujahadeen.
In a recent issue of Socialist Worker, we read the following: ?The Taliban?s treatment of women reflects both the underdevelopment of the villages the Taliban had come from and the trauma of the war years. Like every other guerrilla group, they were composed of men who had spent years in fighting units. Taliban leaders feared that their soldiers would behave as some previous mujahadeen groups had on taking a city. The war years had seen repeated abuse and rape of women. They said that forcing women into seclusion was a means of protecting them? (my emphasis -October 6).
In this passage, the SWP makes the Taliban almost sound benign - its attitudes towards women being merely an unfortunate by-product of ?underdevelopment? and ?the trauma of the war years?.
This comment from the SWP also shows an appalling ignorance. What about revolutionary guerrillas organisations where women have played a prominent - if not leading - role. The Farc in Colombia? The Sandinistas? The IRA? Tito?s Partisans? Or what about the NLF in Vietnam? Politics and programme decides - not whether a country is ?advanced? or ?backward?.
Eddie Ford