Who are the Taliban?
[The following text is a translation of an excerpt from a pamphlet Historical Background of Afghanistan that appeared as an appendix in the C(M)PA Program Published in 2004. The above title [Who are the Taliban?] is chosen for the current translation. This gives an account of the Taliban’s emergence in 1994 to the fall of their regime in 2001]
On 12 October 1994, the border town of Spin Boldak, in Kandahar, was attacked by groups of Taliban [Students of religious schools], who were mainly composed of Afghans studying in religious schools inside Pakistan. The name Tahreek-e-Taliban came to be known for the first time when they captured Spin Boldak and defeated Hezb-e-Islami forces stationed there.
This previously unknown force, which declared its objective to establish security and disarm armed gangs with apparently no claim to form a government, was able to quickly advance and easily occupy several southern provinces within a few months and reach the outskirts of Kabul. In a short time, the Taliban were able to clear the mujahideen forces (Hezb-e-Islami, Junbish Milli, and Hezb-e-Wahdat) from around and inside Kabul, and less than six months after its emergence was confronting the forces of the Rabbani-Massoud led Islamic State in Kabul. It was then that the enmity between the Taliban and the Rabbani-Massoud Islamic State began. Until then, Rabbani-Massoud's had welcomed and facilitated the Taliban advance as a means of weakening its rival Hezb-e-Islami.
The rapid advance of the Taliban from a small force to a large force claiming political power was in fact the product of three imperialist and reactionary factors.
1. The US and British imperialists and their Pakistani and Arab reactionary allies realized the ineffectiveness of Hezb-e-Islami and its allies in securing their imperialist and reactionary interests, namely stability in Afghanistan to secure access to the rich resources of Central Asia. Thus, they stopped supporting Hezb-e-Islami and created and supported the Taliban Movement.
2. The clergy and students of religious schools are the backbone and the main army of preachers and propagandists of Islam. They had the leading role in the Taliban Movement from the outset. The Islamist militants, not only in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan but also to a large extent in other parts of the country, except the Shiite areas, joined the Taliban to “cleanse” the “immorality” of the Islamist Mujahideen forces, dominating the country after the collapse of the Soviet-supported state. Thus, the Taliban represents a more feudal position than those of the Rabbani-Massoud-led Islamic State of Afghanistan.
3. With the collapse of the Soviet-supported state the Pashtun domination of the state had ended. The deposed chauvinism of the Pashtun ruling classes could no longer rely on the disintegrating forces of Hezb-e-Islami as well as other scattered and hated forces of the Islamic Mujahideen gangs in the Pashtun areas to restore its power, thus becoming reliant on the Taliban Movement to secure unity of the Pashtun reactionaries to re-establish their domination.
The politico-military composition of the Taliban forces reflected the concentration of the above-mentioned external and internal imperialist and reactionary factors, with the mullahs and students at religious schools in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan playing a central role. Some ex-PDPA members, the Afghan Mellatis, and some former pro-King bureaucrats either took part in establishing the Taliban Movement from the very beginning or supported it after it entered the country's military-political arena. Some mullahs and religious students belonging to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in Pakistan were directly involved in the Taliban Movement. From the very beginning of the Taliban's emergence, Pakistani military officers took part in leading their combat forces. It was mainly through the Pakistani governmental and non-governmental political and military channels that Arab and non-Arab Islamists from various countries gradually flocked to Afghanistan to support the Taliban. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami of Pakistan, the Pakistani government, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, took a direct part in establishing and providing political, military, and financial support for the Taliban.
The American and British imperialists, directly and indirectly, also supported the founding of this reactionary movement.
The Taliban experienced a real war only after confronting the military forces of the Rabbani-Massoud government. In facing these forces, the Taliban and their foreign imperialists and reactionary supporters met severe hurdles. The Rabbani-Massoud government fought from the position of defending the emerging Tajik chauvinism against the revival of the deposed Pashtun chauvinism and was dependent on Russian imperialism and its reactionary Iranian and Indian regional allies. However, with the direct and active cooperation of Pakistani agents, the Taliban were able to capture Kabul in 1996, two years after their emergence in Spin Boldak.
The calculation of the Taliban and their foreign reactionary and imperialist supporters was that after the capture of Kabul, they would not face a major obstacle and would be able to easily dominate the whole country. For this reason, the Taliban forces, after capturing the city of Kabul, moved quickly to the north and reached Salang and the entrance of Panjshir Valley. But the opposing forces reacted strongly. For the first time, the Taliban suffered casualties of several thousand fighters in their incursions to the North. Only a sparse remnant of these forces was able to retreat to Kabul.
The war lasted a long time with unparalleled brutality and barbarity. This further exposed the reactionary, anti-people nature of the Taliban and as well as the opposing forces.
As the war intensified and expanded, the presence of foreign reactionary Islamist forces among the Taliban became increasingly apparent, from the rank and file to their highest levels of political and military leadership. The Taliban fought fiercely on three fronts against the forces of the Jamiat, the Junbish Milli, and the Hizb Wahdat [Militias belonging to non-Pashtun ethnicities.] The “Big Game” was underway in Afghanistan, and the foreign supporters of the Taliban were in a hurry to access the oil and gas resources in Central Asia, with American oil companies playing a pivotal role.
Pakistani forces, including government officers and soldiers, as well as volunteers from Islamist parties and religious schools, made up a significant portion of these foreign reactionary elements. Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, turned Afghanistan into a central base for its forces. Members of the Islamist movements in Central Asia and Chechnya flocked to Taliban-controlled territory. Even elements from Western countries joined the ranks of the Taliban. The direct political, military, and financial support of the reactionary governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, certain non-governmental Islamist circles in the Arab world, and the indirect support of the US and British imperialists for the Taliban increased. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates even officially recognized the Taliban government.
The Taliban’s coarse chauvinism became on full display. Implementing criminal plans of ethnic cleansing in the areas of non-Pashtun ethnicities that were unparalleled in the history of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered, looted, and displaced from their homes.
The Taliban’s religious extremism reached a pathological level. They morbidly unleashed their religious police of “promoting virtue and preventing vice” the masses to harshly implement religious rules, rituals, and traditions. Above all, the Taliban, by assembling a Jirga of sympathetic mullahs, dubbed their leader "Amir al-Mu'minin" [the commander of faithful] and named their government Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They enforced Sharia Law with all its brutality and sought to enforce harsh sentences such as public executions, stoning, flogging, and amputation.
An important aspect of the Taliban's religious reaction and zealotry was manifested in their insane misogyny. They did not give women any social or individual rights and considered them mere domestic slaves and prisoners within the four walls of their homes, and deprived all rights such as education, work outside the home, freedom of dress, even shopping and buying groceries. Stoning of women had become a common practice in the Islamic Emirate. The ignorant zealot police of “preventing vice and promoting virtue” persecuted and insulted women daily, and seeing the slightest sign of “transgression”, they flogged women on the streets. They even captured girls and young women as booty of war.
The Taliban continued the looting of public property, like their Mujahideen predecessors, but also started looting the masses in the name of tithes and zakat. They turned the program of general disarmament of the people, which they had placed at the top of their agenda, into a means of torturing and milking the masses. The Taliban administration and judiciary, despite their primitiveness and thinness, excelled in bribery and embezzlement and became centers for loot and plunder of the masses.
Afghanistan became a major drug producer in the world during the Taliban regime. Mullah Omar called opium Taliban’s atomic bomb. Obtaining tithes or Islamic taxes from opium was one of the primary sources of financing for the Taliban. They were in cahoots with drug traffickers, thereby gaining enormous financial resources. The ban on opium poppy cultivation in the last year of Taliban rule was a commercial and temporary measure to prevent a sharp drop in opium prices.
In confronting the Taliban and their foreign imperialist and reactionary supporters, the Russian imperialists and their Iranian and Indian allies, and to a lesser extent the French imperialists, were openly supporting the reactionary forces opposed to the Taliban. But despite all these supports, the Junbish-e-Milli and Hezb-e-Wahdat were not consistent in their opposition to the Taliban and were constantly engaging in secret or public attempts at compromises with the Taliban and their foreign imperialist and reactionary supporters. This inconsistency and disunity among them became one of the important factors in the Taliban's advance into Northern and central Afghanistan. Despite suffering heavy casualties, the Taliban defeated Junbish-e-Milli and Hezb-e-wahdat and took over Northern and central Afghanistan in 1998. From then on, Rabbani and Massoud led Jamiat forces continued the fight against them, which, though slowly but steadily, lost its territories and was confined to smaller and smaller territories. When Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated on 9 September 2001, the Jamiat forces, which controlled only Badakhshan and parts of Kapisa, Parwan, and Takhar, were on the verge of total defeat. The events of 11 September 2001, followed by the 7 October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the US and their allies, saved the reactionary anti-Taliban forces from definite death.
During the war of resistance against Soviet social-imperialist, American imperialists and their Pakistani and Arab allies organized and equipped Islamists from various countries and sent them to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, was formed from the ranks of these Islamists.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden, opposing the presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia was embroiled in disputes with the Saudi royal family, and was expelled from Saudi Arabia and went to Sudan. The Sudanese government, under pressure from the Saudi royal family, refused to grant Osama asylum, and he returned to Afghanistan in 1996. However, Osama’s re-establishment in Afghanistan and the union of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is inconceivable without the support of the Pakistan government and American imperialists.
But al-Qaeda, which had established itself in Taliban-controlled areas by 1998 and became one of the Taliban's most important financiers, remained committed to their anti-Americanism. When Osama bin Laden declared jihad against the United States from his base in Afghanistan, and shortly afterward the US embassies in East Africa were attacked, relations between the servant and the former master reached a new level of tension. The US government blamed al-Qaeda and its leader for the attacks and fired missiles at their bases in Afghanistan on 20 August 1998. Yet these attacks did not mean Americans stopped supporting the Taliban.
With the growing concentration of Islamists from Central Asian countries in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate posed a threat for governments of Central Asia, Russia, and China. This pushed the governments of Central Asia, in whom the American imperialists were also investing, more towards Russia and China, and the "Shanghai Group of Five" was formed, which later became the regional pact of six countries, including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Thus, instead of paving the way for US imperialists to gain access to Central Asia and its resources, the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban became a factor in enhancing Russian and Chinese influence in the region. It was clear that the Islamic Emirate was no longer beneficial, but harmful to the American imperialist’s interests.
The events of 11 September 2001 took place as the Taliban were on the verge of a complete victory after the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud. White House officials accused al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden of the attack and invaded Afghanistan.
Using the 9/11 attacks as a cover, the US imperialists were able to form a broad international imperialist and reactionary coalition to invade Afghanistan. The American and British forces, using the latest and most destructive weapons and military equipment, launched their heavy attacks on Afghanistan on the evening of 7 October 2001. Other imperialist powers joined the aggression and provided logistical and intelligence support. Several countries in Central Asia, Pakistan, the Oman Sea, and the Gulf became bases for the forces invading Afghanistan.
Anti-Taliban reactionaries, including reactionary forces affiliated with Russian imperialism, the reactionary warlords, openly declared their readiness to use their military forces in the service of the American invasion both before and during the war.
Heavy airstrikes and missile attacks by the invaders lasted for almost two months, during which tens of thousands of Afghan civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands more were displaced, leaving the country more devastated.
The Taliban and their foreign Islamist allies which were hated by the masses, despite their extensive equipment and battle-hardened armed forces could not muster a prolonged resistance. The highly reactionary and anti-national nature of the Taliban and their foreign allies led them to continue the reactionary civil war even as the country was facing an imperialist invasion. But even after facing the invasion, they kept most of their forces in a regular battle line against the reactionary opposition forces. Such a military strategy made them extremely easy and accessible targets for the invaders to destroy their forces, equipment, and weapons.
The offensive became more precise and deadly after military cooperation between the invaders and the reactionary warlords opposed to the Taliban was established. The collapse of the Taliban battles lines, after almost two months of resistance, was intense, sudden, and widespread. The forces in the front lines were massacred and many survived by escaping the battlefield. As a result, the warlords whose forces had been revived in serving the imperialist invaders as their main ground forces, effortlessly captured large parts of the country, including Kabul. After which the ground forces of the imperialist occupiers landed in different parts of the country and established their bases.
The Bonn meeting was convened by the imperialists under the auspices of the United Nations and national traitors were gathered there. This meeting put together the puppet regime and set its future treacherous course. Before the puppet regime took power in Kabul, the remaining Taliban forces in Kunduz and Kandahar were wiped out. Some of these forces were dispersed and others surrendered to the opposition.
The disintegrated remnants of the Taliban almost all over the country either joined the puppet regime or fled outside Afghanistan. And only small groups along with their foreign allies remained in some remote eastern and southern border areas, where they were pursued and hunted by the imperialist invaders and their satraps.
The puppet regime, under the protection and support of the imperialist occupiers, was installed in Kabul on 7 December 2001 to provide a facade for them and serve the imperialist occupation in the country. The occupying imperialist forces under the banner of the United Nations, following the decisions of the Bonn Meeting of National Traitors were stationed in Afghanistan to protect the puppet regime and prevent its internal disintegration.
Thus, under the tremendous pressure of the global imperialist and reactionary coalition, the betrayals of the jihadi and Taliban reactionaries, the staggering turmoil of enduring various consequences of a decade of social-imperialist invasion and occupation, reactionary civil war, and the weakness of the revolutionary and national democratic camp in the country, the land of people always seeking independence has temporarily been subjugated.
[ Back to top ]