Taliban: Islam, oil and the new great game in central Asia

302 Pages·2011·2.93 MB·English

‘the book they are all reading’
—The Guardian
‘[An] excellent study which… has now sold more than 750,000 copies in [22] languages.’
—Financial Times
‘It took our political classes an unconscionable time to wake up to the importance of
Ahmed Rashid’s definitive study of the Taliban. The book has been a phenomenal
success.’
—The Independent
‘a chilling and masterly study of the Taliban.’
—Times Literary Supplement
‘It is the contention of Mr. Rashid’s very capable book on the Taliban that the outside
world ignores Afghanistan at its peril.’
—James Buchan, Evening Standard
‘[Taliban] is said to have had a deep influence on Tony Blair’s current thinking. It has also
become the focus of intensive diplomatic scrutiny as US policy makers scramble to
formulate plans for a stable regime to succeed the Taliban.’
—Timur Moon, Sunday Express
‘The most important book of the year’
—Bianca Jagger ‘A Good Read’, BBC Radio 4
‘It is a seminal work which took 21 years to research and write… now Tony Blair has a
well-thumbed copy, and it has been cited in public by Joschka Fisher, the German foreign
minister.’
—Cameron Simpson, The Herald
‘This is a fine book – erudite, concise, surefooted, packed with information and insightful,
easy to read.’
—Dilip Hiro, Middle East International
‘His new book on the Taliban will be required reading not only for specialists, but for
anyone who wishes to learn how the wider world contributed to the emergence of a parish
regime from the wreckage of Afghans’ courageous struggle against the armed forces of the
Soviet Union.’
—William Maley, The World Today
‘Ahmed Rashid is to be complimented for this factual, readable and thought provoking
work’
—Asian News

NEW FOREWORD
POST-TERRORIST ATTACKS,
SEPTEMBER 2001
Since 1989 the US and the West have ignored Afghanistan’s continuing
civil war. On 11 September 2001 the world changed forever, as Afghan-
istan visited the world in a brutal, tragic fashion. The nineteen suicide
bombers, who hijacked four planes and then rammed three of them into
the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington, belonged to the Al’Qaida organisation led by
Osama Bin Laden, which is based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Their
targets were the heart of the post-Cold War world, the nerve centre of
globalization and the supposed international efforts to make the world a
safer, better place.
Within hours of the fiery attacks President George W. Bush said
America was at war w ith international terrorists. “Those who make war
on the United States have chosen their own destruction,” he said on 15
September after declaring a national state of emergency. He warned that
the US response would be “a conflict without battlefields or beachheads”
and that “the conflict will not be short.” He pledged to build an inter-
national alliance through NATO and other allies to punish Al’Qaida
and the Taliban.
The pledge bore fruit. Within a month of the September attacks the
US, with some logistic military assistance from a few NATO allies (most
notably Britain) sent planes to bombard Afghanistan. A Northern Alli-
ance of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras secured the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif,
Herat and finally Kabul. The Taliban resistance collapsed in the face of
American air power and direct American support for the Northern Alli-
ance. The more expedient Pashtun warlords, who had been co-opted as
Taliban, now, in time-honoured fashion, were persuaded to switch sides.
Even the fall of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, proved uneventful
except for the dramatic flight of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar on a
motorbike.
And what of Al’Qaida and Osama Bin Ladan? Despite the heavy
bombardments in eastern Afghanistan, no sign was found of Bin Laden,
with speculation rife about his possible death or flight to Pakistan,
Kashmir and even Iraq. Most of his surviving Al’Qaida fighters were
rounded up and after a violent but hopeless prison uprising in Mazar-e-
Sharif, dozens of Al’Qaida and Taliban fighters were airlifted to Guan-
tanamo Bay, the American controlled military enclave in Cuba, with the
remaining captured fighters incarcerated in Afghanistan. On the polit-
ical front a hastily arranged conference of various Afghan factions, in
Bonn on 27 November, chose Hamid Karzai as Chairman of an interim
government prior to the convening of a loya jerga – an assembly of tribal
elders under the auspices of the former King Zahir Shah. Karzai basked
in the plaudits of Western politicians, with his January 2002 visit in
Washington to meet President Bush appearing to seal the triumph over
Taliban rule. But Karzai’s writ within his own country did not run wide
as tribal and warlord rivalries threatened to undermine the tenuous
balance of peace. And to cap the continuing fears about the country’s
stability, early March 2002 saw the embers of stubborn Taliban and
Al’Qaida resistance rekindled around Gardez, with American planes
once more in action using fearsome bombs designed to suck the air out
of mountain caves and suffocate hundreds of Taliban and Al’Qaida
fighters apparently concealed within them.
Whatever the future holds for Afghanistan, nothing can diminish the
enormity of the September 11 events which eventually led to the
Taliban’s downfall. The suicide bombers who had trained as pilots in the
US and Germany came from a new generation of Islamic militants. They
were educated, middle-class, with jobs and families and girlfriends. Yet
they were filled with an implacable rage and anger which they had

quietly nurtured for years that enabled them to think nothing of killing
some 4,000 people – many of them ordinary, pious American Muslims.
Understanding this rage and the organisation that trained and inspired
them is what this book is partly about.
Yet Al’Qaida could not have spent the years of planning and organi-
sation that went into the attacks without a safe sanctuary where every-
thing was available – training, funding, communications and inspiration.
The long years of US and Western neglect allowed the Taliban to turn
Afghanistan into just such a sanctuary for extremist groups from more
than two dozen countries. Al’Qaida with its 2,500–3,000 fighters in
Afghanistan drawn from at least thirteen Arab countries and its global
network spread in thirty four countries, is only the tip of a very large
iceberg. The Taliban also hosted Islamic extremist groups from Russia,
Pakistan, China, Burma, Iran, Central Asia and several countries of the