Know your enemy - Taliban
Preface:
First of all, I'm not against Islam (or any other religion for that matter) and Muslims because we are all equal human beings and therefore have both, the right and the duty to share the earth and it's resources equally and in peace. Yes, but I'm proudly and unequivocally against radicalism; from any community, creed, religion, society, country or any other entity.
This is the first of my Know you enemy series. I think we, typical of responsible and patriotic citizens, are too obedient about what and how our respective governments represent facts to us. Now, we should not want to be irresponsible and unpatriotic but definitely want to know things as they are! It's my firm belief and understanding that a true democracy should always be backed up by truth!
This is an interactive blog and comments are therefore not only welcome but also requested for. Obviously, you cannot and should not agree with everything I think and write about, but thought sharing and participating in the resultant debates (in a civil and orderly manner) are what democracy is made of, isn't it? Let us make this place the temple of freedom of logical and justifiable speech and expression!
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The word Taliban is Pashto, طالبان ṭālibān, meaning "students", the plural of ṭālib. This is a loan word from Arabic طالب ṭālib, plus the Indo-Iranian plural ending -an ان (the Arabic plural being طلاب ṭullāb, whereas طالبان ṭālibān is a dual form with the incongruous meaning, to Arabic speakers, of "two students"). Since becoming a loanword in English, Taliban, besides a plural noun referring to the group, has also been used as a singular noun referring to an individual. For example, John Walker Lindh has been referred to as "an American Taliban" rather than "an American Talib". In the English language newspapers of Pakistan the word talibans is often used when referring to more than one taliban. The spelling 'Taliban' has come to predominate over 'Taleban' in English.
Anyone ever told you that this is a complicated subject? This is why: to understand the origin of the Taliban, we need to go into the roots of radicalism in Islam and to do that, we need to take a peek in the history of the religion. What we now know as the Kingdom Saudi Arabia was governed by numerous tribes and religious groups in and around 500 CE. It is believed (also a matter of calculation) that Mohammad founded Islam in about 610 CE. To cut a long story short (because this isn't an essay on Islam), a power struggle in Mecca resulted in the persecution of Muslims by the Meccans. Mohammad had to lead the Muslims to neighboring Madina and converted a large population there to Islam. The hostilities between these two groups continued. Mohammad's Muslims were involved in a number of retaliatory wars like the Battles of Badr, Uhud and Trench. The Hadith which, among MANY other things, is also a biographical representation of the prophet, recorded the causes, details and effects of these battles. This, in my opinion, was instrumental to develop the concept of Jihad in Islam. The word itself has a number of interpretations. According to one, it is an internal struggle to maintain faith, the struggle to improve the Muslim society, or the struggle in a holy war.[0]
The Taliban are fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, mostly from Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes. It derived it's origins in the Wahhabi Islamist political movement that initially sought to "purify" Islam and Muslims.[1] Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab, whose name is the source of the word “Wahhabi,” founded the religious movement in the Arabian peninsula during the eighteenth century (1703-1791) that sought to reverse what he perceived as the moral decline of his society. Since the foundation of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, there has been a close relationship between the Saudi ruling family and the Wahhabi religious establishment.[2]
In more recent times, Taliban has been prominently present mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is a reason behind this. The classical Great Game, played between the British and the Russian empires in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, ensured that the region of Afghanistan never developed. After the Second World War and the independence of India, Britain declined as an imperial power and the US replaced it. The Soviet Union was no less imperialist either. The Cold War saw both the US and the Soviets try to gain influence in Afghanistan.[3] When the communist nation invaded and occupied Afghanistan, towards the end of 1979 and early '80,[4] the American intelligence agency, CIA, sowed the wind of Islamic mujahideen opposition in the country. The Americans supplied the Taliban militia with arms and set up camps in Pakistan to help train them. Pakistan gladly obliged because it is always in the lookout for ways and means to find foreign aid. It also saw an opportunity to siphon some of these back door military and monitory aid towards it's own jihadi, mostly guerrilla, war against India in Kashmir.[5]
The USSR had to face a humiliating withdrawal, from Afghanistan, by the fall of 1989 but the country remained under soviet influence under President Mohammad Najibullah up until 1992.[6] This followed a number of regime changes and after the Afghan civil war ( 1992 - 1996 ) Mullah Omar led Taliban controlled 80% of the country.[7] The Islamic movement which started in the 18th century with a mission to cleanse the religion and implement hard line Sharia laws, exactly the way Mohammad pronounced them in 610 CE, all over the Islamic world finally had an entire country, scattered with superior American weapons, Saudi money and brotherly Pakistani support, all for themselves. It was a confident Taliban, a group which now believed they could change the way the rest of the world lives.
All the power, money and clout could now be used to teach the non-Islamic world a lesson on Jehadi Islam. Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, another Wahhabi Islamic group, made the unfortunate country it's favorite and safe home.[8] No country other than Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (KSA) recognized the legitimacy of the regime. The 9/11 attacks were believed to have been planned in the Talibani held Afghanistan and financed by various Wahhabi sympathizers, particularly from Pakistan and KSA.
Even the most optimistic evaluation will suggest that they are anything but gone. Have they become less lethal? Yes, in Afghanistan they appear to have, at least for now. They may have lost their weapons - the rocket launchers, grenades, tanks, etc., but the Wahhibi philosophy and practitioners are still at large and thriving in the thousands of Madrasahs dotted across the dimensions of the third world Islamic countries. Unless the modern, industrialized and the forward looking world succeeds in closing these Islamic schools of terror down and their students pulled out into the mainstream, Taliban will continue to exist, mushroom in newer places and haunt us for generations to come.
^ 0. Jihad http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/jihad_1.shtml
^ 1. CRS report for the Congress - The Islamic traditions of Wahhabism and Salafiyya. Author: Christopher M. Blanchard - Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division.
^ 2. Contemporary Saudi Wahhabism combines the teachings of its founder Abd al Wahhab and other religious and cultural traditions. Eleanor Abdella Doumato, “Manning the Barricades: Islam according to Saudi Arabia’s School Texts,” The Middle East Journal 57, no. 2 (2003):230-248.
^ 3. Afghanistan was a pawn in the Cold War between US and Russia by Simon Basketter
^ 4. Garthoff, Raymond L. (1994). Détente and Confrontation. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institute. pp. 1017–1018.
^ 5. Early American Support for the Taliban - Article by Olivier Roy.
^ 6. Afghanistan: History, Columbia Encyclopedia.
^ 7. Library of Congress Counry Studies. "The Struggle for Kabul." http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?cstdy:1:./temp/~frd_uQIU
^ 8. Atwan, Abdel Bari (2006). The Secret History of al Qaeda. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520249745.
