Taliban

Coming to Power

The Taliban emerged in the southern Afghan district of Kandahar in 1994. Two years before, the mujahideen—a loose alliance of Afghan ethnic and religious groups, plus foreigners who had come to defend Islam—had ousted the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) after more than a decade of war. But peace did not follow victory. Mujahideen warlords began fighting over the control of Afghanistan. While some areas, such as the western city of Herat, were relatively stable, the Afghan capital of Kabul was attacked ceaselessly for two years as various factions fought for control of the city.

The district of Kandahar was also in chaos. There, the mujahideen warlords acted more like bandits than would-be governors, attacking civilians as well as each other. In the summer of 1994, a former mujahideen fighter named Mohammed Omar decided to rid Afghanistan of the mujahi-deen warlords and restore unity under Islam. At the time, Omar was living at a madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in the village of Singesar. A reclusive man who would not allow himself to be photographed, Omar would eventually become the ultimate leader of the Taliban, given the title Commander of the Faithful. His background, and the religious philosophy of the madrassas, would strongly shape the Taliban's agenda.

Omar was a member of the Pashtun ethnic group. Roughly half the Pashtuns lived in southern Afghanistan, and the other half lived in neighboring Pakistan. National lines had been muddled following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to shore up the PDPA government. Many Afghan Pashtuns fled to Pakistan, where they lived in refugee camps and among Pakistani Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns follow the Sunni sect of Islam, which is the dominant sect in Afghanistan.

The madrassas could also be found on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. Students at the madrassas received an education that was primarily religious. The madrassas had been greatly influenced by the Deobandi movement, a Sunni [Page 572]religious movement that emphasizes strict observance of religious ritual.

The madrassas of Afghanistan and Pakistan not only supplied the Taliban with a leader, but also with soldiers—most of them Afghan, but many Pakistani. Even the Taliban's name reflected its roots in the madrassas: The word Taliban is a Persian pluralization of the Arab word talib, which means religious student. The Taliban was largely dominated by the Pashtuns, and it was exclusively Sunni, to the detriment of Afghanistan's Shiite Muslim minority. The Deobandi influence was expressed by the Taliban's strident emphasis on the observance of religious customs, whether or not that observance was sincere or even voluntary.

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