Islamic law, drug trafficking and the reconstruction of power: the keys to understanding the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan

After two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban are on the verge of regaining power for the first time since 2001. Fundamentalist force seeking to establish Islamic law has swept through the country, invading one city after another.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are on the run, triggering a humanitarian crisis that could spread across the world. Those who remained face the return of the extremist government under the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam. Activists have closed girls’ schools, banned smartphones in some places and forced young people to join their ranks, they say.

1-What are the Taliban?

The Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, made up of guerrillas who drove out Soviet forces in the previous decade with support from the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. Most of its members are Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group. The name means students in Pashto.

Its founder, Mohammad Omar, commander of the anti-Soviet resistance, launched the movement in 1994 to secure the city of Kandahar, in the south-east of the country, plagued by crime and violence. The Taliban’s vision of justice helped them accumulate power. “Back then, people really wanted law and order, and there wasn’t,” said Kamran Bokhari of the Newlines Institute, a group of foreign policy experts.

In the fall of 1996, the Taliban captured Kabul and declared the country an Islamic emirate. The Taliban government was brutal and repressive. Women had virtually no rights, education was prohibited, and they were forced to wear clothing that covered their entire body. Music and other means of communication were prohibited.

The Taliban’s ideology was similar to that of its al-Qaeda counterpart, although its interests were limited to ruling Afghanistan. In return for help in the fight against groups aligned with the country’s government, the Taliban leaders gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda implicated in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A coalition led by the United States that he overthrew the regime the same year.

At the end of July 2015, the Afghan government confirmed that Omar died in April 2013 in Karachi, Pakistan.

2-How did the Taliban regain their strength?

After their overthrow, the Taliban dispersed. Some leaders took refuge in Pakistan, where they began to fortify themselves with the help of the Pakistani security forces. In Afghanistan, the presence of US forces helped provide the Taliban with an anti-colonial rallying cry to recruit. Corruption within the Afghan government too.

“For two decades, the Taliban movement has progressed little by little, people by people,” said Robert Crews, an expert on Afghanistan at Stanford University. “It’s a very sophisticated type of popular mobilization running game.”

The activists are also reconstituting their ranks through a campaign of fear and violence. They murdered people who had joined the police force or the national army. Public intellectuals, journalists, media figures and other representatives of the young face of Afghan civil society were also targeted.

Afghan troops, whose ranks suffer from incompetence and corruption, withered under the incursion of the Taliban.

“People ask, ‘Do I want to die for an administration that didn’t send ammunition to my unit? They haven’t paid us for months, we don’t have food. Now the Americans are gone, ”Crews said. “It sounds a little maddening.”

3-How are the Taliban financed and armed?

The Taliban get their funding from a variety of sources. Some of the money comes from the opium trade and drug trafficking, or other crimes such as smuggling. The group taxes and extorts farms and other businesses. Activists sometimes participate in kidnappings for ransoms.

The group also receives donations from a wide range of benefactors who support its cause or view it as a useful asset, experts say.

“It’s not that they need a lot of money to operate,” Bokhari said. “They don’t live in big houses. They don’t wear fancy clothes. The biggest expense is the salary and the weapons and the training ”.

Weapons are easily obtained in an area that is inundated with them. Some are donated, others bought. Many are stolen.

“As the Afghan National Army withdrew,” Crews said, “one of the first steps the Taliban has taken to enter new territory is to go to a government headquarters, arrest or to kill these characters, to open the prisons then to surrender to the government bases and seize the weapons ”.

In some tribal areas, including Pakistan, a foundry “cottage industry” has sprung up where workers make assault rifles, Bokhari said.

4-What is the objective of the Taliban?

The Taliban’s goal is simple, experts say: to recover what the group lost in the early 2000s.

“They want their Islamic emirate to come back to power,” Crews said. “They want his take on Islamic law.”

And he continued: “They don’t want a parliament. They don’t want electoral politics. They have an emir and they have a council of mullahs, and this is the vision they see as the best for Islam. “

There does not appear to be a single leader of the Taliban, but rather the group appears to have several main leaders.

No está claro si la vida bajo el gobierno talibán will be igual as in the decade of 1990. Hay pocas dudas de que el grupo quiere confinar a las mujeres en sus casas, acabar con la educación mixta y devolver una sociedad con la ley islámica en el center.

But over the past two decades, a civil society that did not exist before has flourished. Women have assumed public office not only in Kabul, but also in small towns. Cell phones and social media are common. Experts wonder if the Taliban will be able to rule over a population that has changed.

“There are a lot of people who are better connected to the world through social media and they say, ‘Hey, why can’t we have a life like this? The crews said. “What will they do with a society that believes in pluralism and does not believe in the monopolization of power? How much will Taliban violence silence those voices? “

(c) 2021, The Washington PostBy Derek Hawkins

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