#28 BACKGROUND

 

Afghanistan:   

The Land, its Diverse Ethnic Peoples

& the Pashtun Taliban

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

The Land of Afghanistan

Borders & Resources

Few countries have a history so permeated with conquest and conflict than that of Afghanistan.  A forbiddingly inhospitable country, this 647,500 km² landlocked area is located in both Central Asia and on the western periphery of South Asia. It is bordered clockwise by Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan and China to the northeast, and Pakistan to the east and south, and Iran to the west. 

Afghanistan: Topographical view of Afghanistan showing Kabul City to the east of the Hindu Kush mountains and the Khyber Pass along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.[1]

Of all of Afghanistan’s borders, its border with Pakistan is the most important, and the most hotly-contested. As delineated by the British-drawn ‘Durand Line’ of 1893, the border stretches 2,430 km along mountainous terrain, sometimes reaching 2,500 metres above sea level, at which point the border becomes hypothetical.[2]  It was drawn along lines that would not only limit Afghanistan’s political resources by dividing its largest and most dominant Pashtun tribe, but would also afford every possible advantage of defence to the border regions of neighbouring British India – an area that eventually became the modern State of Pakistan from 1947 onwards, following the partition of British India into two States and their independence as two self-governing nations.[3]  Today the border between the two sovereign States of Afghanistan and Pakistan remains extremely porous and incredibly difficult to control. 

With only 12% of the total land of Afghanistan arable for crop planting, the nation’s natural resources are predominantly contained in its earth – the repository of precious metals, stones and minerals (e.g. copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore and salt), in addition to quantities of natural gas and petroleum – and in its mountain rivers that supply ample and powerful supplies of fresh water.[4]    

Landscape

The landscape of Afghanistan is in fact one of the country’s most distinguishing characteristics.  Like Switzerland, Norway or Nepal, Afghanistan is essentially a mountainous territory.  It is dominated at its centre by the forbiddingly rugged 600km-long ‘Hindu Kush’ mountain range, which runs from the north of the country to its southwest, where its southern foothills end in expansive desert plains.  Indeed, almost half of the entire land area of Afghanistan is situated higher than 2,000 metres above sea level.[5]  At its highest the Hindu Kush mountain range rises to 7,485 metres above sea level, while the Amu Darya River to its north flows to the country’s lowest altitude of only 258 metres.[6] 

Afghanistan’s beautiful but rugged, mountainous landscape, ranging from towering blue mountains capped with snow in the central Hindu Kush mountain range and to the east, green rolling hills to the north in Faryab Province, ‘red deserts’ of barren red rock near Musa Qala in Helmand Province, and sandy desert dunes and plains across the south of the country.[7]

The combination of alpine mountains and desert plain gives rise to sweltering summers and freezing winters, making Afghanistan the home of not only topographical but also climatic extremes.  At the outskirts of the Hindu Kush lies a ‘strategic quadrangle’ comprising Afghanistan’s most important cities – to the south Kandahar, to the west Herat, to the north Mazar-i-Sharif, and to the east the capital city, Kabul.[8]  Lying at the centre of its own strategic quadrangle – Ghazni to the south, Bamiyan to the west, Bagram to the north, and Jalalabad to the east at the entrance of the Khyber Pass – Kabul and its outlying area is the most strategically crucial city for establishing rule in Afghanistan.[9]  As Tanner explains, while ‘possession of Kabul does not translate into control of the entire country,’ nevertheless ‘no one can hope to rule Afghanistan without holding Kabul.’[10]

Afghanistan’s terrain is important because its landscape forms a natural barrier against invaders, as many foreign peoples in history have found to their peril.  In conquest, though invading armies may gain initial access with facility, they must soon contend not only with the normal hunger, thirst and general exhaustion common to all military campaigns, but also simultaneously with frostbite in the snowy mountains, then heatstroke in the scorching desert as they progress throughout this land of extremes.  Moreover, once a centre of rule is established, terrain again presents severe problems as the conquerors seek to expand administrative control over the entire territory, especially over Afghanistan’s nomadic hill tribes which dwell high up in often inaccessible regions of the Hindu Kush mountains.  As Tanner states: ‘It is a land that can be easily invaded but is much more difficult to hold – and to hold together.’[11] 

Strategic & Historical Significance

In ancient times this land – formerly called ‘Khorasan’ – was highly prized by foreign powers, not for the valuable natural resources in its earth, but rather for its important strategic significance and location as the central land conduit connecting the Middle East to Central, Southern and Eastern Asia. 

Indeed as the central gateway on the primary Asian invasion route, Afghanistan has been repeatedly invaded throughout its history, and by some of the world’s most powerful civilizations.  Since the 6^th century B.C. the Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, White Huns, Arabs, Mongols, Indian Moghuls, British, and the Soviets have all, at the height of their power, marched centre stage into this ‘crossroad of empires’.  To varying degrees, each invading power turned the land into a site of terror and often unimaginable slaughter, while also leaving behind them in their wake a permanent mark on the area’s native peoples, culture, beliefs and landscape. 

However through these successive bloody upheavals, Afghanistan has proved to be not simply a passive stage for clashes between great armies and civilizations, but also the land that wrought their ultimate demise – a much feared ‘graveyard of empires’.[12]  For it is here, in Afghanistan, that many powerful empires have encountered their first defeat and even the beginning of their own downfall, underscoring, as Tanner states, the country’s ‘crucial role in the fate of nations’ in world history.[13] 

To illustrate, it was in Afghanistan that the Persian conqueror, Cyrus the Great, was killed on his last difficult campaign to subdue the Scythian tribes to the north in the 6^th century B.C.  His son and grandson would never venture so far east again.[14]  Two centuries later the never-defeated Alexander the Great similarly invaded Khorasan with his Macedonian and Greek troops, only to be exhausted by continuous rebellions, treachery and the misery of climatic extremes that would eventually kill three-quarters of Alexander’s army during their retreat.[15]  As Tanner states: ‘The vitality that had propelled him and his army to the overwhelming conquest of Persia had been sapped by their struggles against man and nature in the shadows of the Hindu Kush.’[16] 

In the 13^th century the Mongols – the so-called ‘atom bomb of its day’ – likewise conquered Afghanistan under the leadership of Genghis Khan, where they wrought great destruction and slaughter.[17]  Yet even they, as terrifying and battle-hardened as they were, encountered their first and only defeat outside East Asia in 80 years at the hands of an army of Afghan hill tribes.[18]  After several other forays in the region, the Mongols too would conduct a near full retreat from Afghanistan, having come to see the area as ‘a difficult nest of bandits’.[19]  Similarly, the Indian Moghul dynasty, founded by Barbur’s conquests in the 16^th century, would fight their most difficult battles against the undefeated Afghan tribes.[20] 

Invasions: Alexander the Great (329-326 B.C.), Genghis Khan (1200s A.D.), the Indian Mughals (1500s A.D.), the British (1838-1919) and the Soviets (1979-89). [21]

Three hundred years later, during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), which took place within the overall context of the ‘Great Game’ of the 19^th to the 20^th centuries between the British and Russian Empires for control of this strategically important territory in Central and South Asia, the British experienced their worst and most humiliating military disaster in Victorian history when an army of nearly 17,000 men was methodically tricked, then annihilated by Afghan tribes during their final retreat – leaving only one soldier alive for the apparent purpose of telling the tale to his British superiors.[22]  Two punitive Anglo-Afghan Wars would ensue (1878-1880 and 1919), though neither would succeed in achieving the subjugation of the Afghan peoples to British might and supremacy, nor establish a viable political system of governance for the land.  Indeed, by the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan War, the experiences of the British in Afghanistan had led them to the inescapable conclusion that, in the words of one British veteran, General Roberts, ‘the best thing to do is to leave [Afghanistan] as much as possible to itself’.[23]  This they did within the month, granting the country full independence as a sovereign, self-governing nation in 1919. 

Sixty years later in the 20^th century, the world’s second superpower, the Communist Soviet Union, invaded Afghanistan in 1979 in order to safeguard the Communist revolution it had nurtured and supported there during the Cold War era.  However like those that went before them, the Soviet Russians too soon found themselves pitched in open battle against a militarily-inferior but nevertheless indomitable insurgent foe, hiding in the hills and mountains of rural Afghanistan.  Afghan resistance took the form of the national Afghan Army, combined with a range of Mujahideen guerrilla groups receiving Pakistani aid and sanctuary along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and latently supported with weapons and funding by the world’s other superpower and the Soviet Union’s chief rival – the Democratic United States of America.[24]  

Ten long years of war followed, during which time the frustrated Soviet Union used brutal methods of warfare against Afghan combatants and non-combatants alike, that breached the Laws of War contained in the 1949 Geneva Conventions it was a signatory party to. For example, the Soviets’ destruction of whole villages as well as their surrounding crops and livestock that supported the locals’ livelihood, its use of ‘migratory genocide’ to destroy the rural infrastructure, and the dropping of mines shaped and painted like children’s toys for the specific and intended purpose of killing, maiming or mutilating Afghan children.[25]  Finally in 1989, the exhausted and demoralised Russians too withdrew from Afghanistan – their departure hastened on after 1986 by the Mujahideen’s use of American-made and supplied FIM-92A Stinger missiles, which had a devastating effect against Soviet aircraft and morale.  Following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country that had since 1917 been the bastion of world Communism began to unravel that same year. Without a doubt, the decade of expensive, unsuccessful and demoralising warfare in Afghanistan was a contributing factor towards the Soviet Union’s downfall and ultimate demise in 1991. 

It is of some worth to note here, however, that it is not only foreign empires and powers, but also home-grown empires, that have suffered an unhappy fate in the ancient land of Khorasan, the ‘crossroad of empires’.  Afghanistan’s own Afghan empires – the Ghaznavid Empire, the Ghorid Empire and, most importantly, the Durrani Empire – have all three seen their births and met their deaths in Afghanistan. 

One can only conclude that Afghanistan is a land whose peoples have historically remained hostile and defiant towards those who would seek to control them against their will – even towards rulers from their own land, and their own kin, who share the same language, culture and customs.

 

Afghanistan’s Peoples

Indeed, Afghanistan’s native peoples present severe difficulties for foreign antagonists and peoples. Since the beginning of recorded history the Afghans have always maintained a reputation for ferociousness. In fact the very word ‘Afghan’, of ancient Persian origin, is said to mean ‘noisy’, ‘unruly’ or ‘unable to subdue’.[26]  

For this reason Afghans were greatly feared by their Middle Eastern and Asian neighbours, though also occasionally employed as mercenaries in foreign armies.  To illustrate, over 2000 Bactrian and Scythian horse warriors, from northern and southern Afghanistan respectively, were employed as mercenary cavalrymen by Darius III of Persia in his battles with the Greeks in 334-331 B.C.  These men were considered so valuable for their fighting prowess that they were also regularly employed as the bodyguard for ancient monarchs, such as the Persian ruler Nadir Shah, who in the 18^th century employed thousands of Pashtuns of the Abdali tribe to form an elite bodyguard. [27]

Over the centuries and passage of time, the harsh, varying landscape of Afghanistan has fostered the growth of a myriad of separate people groups which, isolated and protected among the ruggedness of the terrain, have all developed into hardy and fiercely independent tribes.  Some of these tribes live in such secluded areas that they are virtually out of reach of government rule, while others in the remotest mountain regions have never been conquered at all.[28]

So independent and freedom-loving are they – where ‘freedom’ denotes freedom from any government at all – that Afghan tribes rarely cooperate except in times of great threat, such as during invasions by foreign powers.[29]  At these times the mountain and hill tribes, comprising the might of the Afghan nation, may descend from the Hindu Kush mountains to take part in collective action.[30]  Certainly the historical record indicates that, so far in their history, Afghans are capable of unity only at such times of crisis. [31]

Afghanistan’s Diverse Ethnic Groups

As alluded to above, Afghan history is littered with numerous bloody invasions, each wave of which has left an indelible mark on the demography of the Afghan population.  As a consequence, Afghanistan’s population of 33.6 million people in 2009  (34.9 million people in 2019) can be divided into six main ethnic groups or subsets of tribes, each of which can trace their origins in Afghanistan back to one of the country’s foreign incursions.[32]

[Due to the social and ethnic upheavals that have occurred during the Afghan War from 2001 to the present day, which has rendered the formation of precise population statistics extremely difficult, unless otherwise stated, all of the following statistics were taken from data compiled and published by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2009.]

The colourful kaleidoscope of diverse and unique ethnic peoples living in Afghanistan, including among them persons of Kirghiz, Uzbek, Pashtun, and Turkmen ethnicity.[33]

1 The Pashtuns

The largest ethnic group, making up 14 million or 42% of Afghanistan’s total population, are the Pashtuns (otherwise known as the ‘Pathans’ or ‘Pakhtuns’).[34] A further 27 million Pashtuns live across Afghanistan’s eastern border in neighbouring Pakistan, where they comprise 15% of the total Pakistani population.[35]  

The Pashtuns are thought to trace their ancestry back to 100-130 B.C. when successive waves of Indo-Aryan Scythians were pushed off the expansive, treeless plains of Central Asia (known as the ‘steppe’).[36]  They invaded the area that had formerly been inhabited for three millennia by Indo-Aryan communities of sedentary agriculturists and nomadic herdsmen, to finally settle south of the Hindu Kush in an arc extending from modern Iran to the Peshawar valley of Pakistan.[37]  According to the Greek historian Herodotus (the ‘Father of History’), the Scythians were renowned for their warrior culture in the ancient world, having repelled and exhausted the Persian and Macedonian armies of both Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great, and were at that time considered ‘the primary threat to civilized territory from the north’.[38]

The migration of this ethnic group was later cemented when hordes of their relations, nomadic Parthians who had formerly established temporary rule over the entire Persian Empire and successfully checked the expansion of the Romans, likewise invaded from the north and the east to finally settle in the North West Frontier border regions of Pakistan.[39]  From the resulting Scythian-Parthian alliance came a new ethnic group – the Pashtuns – who not surprisingly incorporated many of the same traits as their warrior forebears, in addition to an intense love of individual freedom.[40]

The Pashtuns continue to predominate in the southeastern crescent of Afghanistan as well as in pockets scattered around the country.[41]  Today they comprise around 60 major tribes among which are the Wardak, Jaji, Tani, Jadran, Mangal, Khugiani, Safi, Mohmand, Shinwari, Durrani and Ghilzai tribes, the latter two being the largest and equating to the southwest and east of Afghanistan respectively. [42]  The Pashtuns are Sunni Muslim and speak an Indo-European language called Pashto, which is spoken by roughly a third, or 35%, of the total population of Afghanistan.[43]

2 The Tajiks

The next largest Afghan ethnic group, the Tajiks, comprise nearly 10 million or 27% of the population.[44]  The Tajik people speak Dari – a Persian language spoken by 50% of all Afghans – rather than Pashtu, and are said to be descended from the original East-Iranian inhabitants of northern Afghanistan (the Bactrians and Sogdians), who later mixed with ethnic Persians fleeing to the area as a result of the upheaval caused by the Arab Islamic conquest of 632-732 A.D.[45]  The Tajiks reside in the high north-eastern mountains and plateaus of the country, most notably the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, as well as in some areas of western Afghanistan such as the cities of Herat and Farah.[46] 

Though once organised into tribes, the Tajiks have abandoned their tribal structure over the centuries and instead predominantly refer to themselves today by the name of the region or valley in which they live.[47]  The Tajiks are chiefly a sedentary people of mountain farmers and herders, renowned for their produce of grains, fruits and nuts as well as their crafts which are widely considered the finest in the country.[48]  However they are also dominant in the Capital Kabul, where Tajiks form a substantial part of the upper class, participating in local business and government and also working in the employ of foreign nationals.[49]  Like the Pashtuns, the Tajiks are descended from Aryan Caucasians and can often be recognised by their fair skin, blue or green eyes, and blonde or even red hair.[50] They are predominantly Sunni Muslim, though some Tajiks in isolated mountainous regions embrace Shi’ia Islam.[51]

Some of the many different lifestyles enjoyed by the freedom-loving Afghan population in the various regions and provinces throughout Afghanistan.[52]

3&4 The Hazaras & Aimak

The Hazaras (9%), Aimak (4%), Uzbeks (9%) and Turkmen (3%) are all descended from Turkic peoples who took part in invasions against the area of Afghanistan from the 13^th century onwards.

The Hazaras and the Aimaks are the descendents of the infamous Mongols who in successive waves swept into Afghanistan from the Steppe between 1221-1240 A.D. and laid waste to the land and its sedentary peoples in a wave of terror, destruction and barbarism unprecedented in Afghan history at that time.[53] When the final wave of Mongol invaders finally withdrew to Mongolia, they left behind a garrison force of a thousand Mongolian men who the locals named ‘Hazaras’ after the Persian word for thousand – ‘hazar’.[54]  The Hazaras eventually fell back to the safety of the central highlands of the Hindu Kush mountains, where they continue to dominate to this day, the area referred to as the ‘Hazarajat’ or ‘Land of the Hazara’.[55]  

A few centuries later the Hazaras formed one of four major Turkic-Mongol tribes that occupied the northwest of Afghanistan and unified around 1600 A.D. to become the ‘Chahar Aimaks’ meaning ‘Four Tribes’.[56] All spoke Turkic-Mongolian dialects of the Dari language and shared the same heritage of ethnicity, culture and food – their sole difference being that the majority of Hazaras adhered to the Shi’ia variant of Islam, while the remaining three Taimani,  Ferozkhoi and Jamshidi tribes of the union primarily embraced Sunni Islam. [57] 

It is for this central reason, along with their pronounced Mongolian features, that the Hazaras have undergone severe persecution at the hand of the Pashtuns since the 1700s.  Indeed, over the decades the Pashtuns have subjected the Hazaras to many marginalising measures including the seizure of their lands, imposition of heavy taxes, underdevelopment of basic services and physical infrastructure, and other forms of political, economic and social discrimination which has relegated this particular ethnic group to the lowest standing in Afghan society.[58] In fact it was the Pashtuns who also rewrote history and genetics from the 1800s on by artificially removing or ‘cleansing’ the Hazaras from their legitimate ranking within the Aimak ethnic group. 

Mousavi argues that this ‘relentless isolation, de-identification and oppression of the Hazaras by successive [Pashtun] Afghan regimes, more and above all other peoples’ over the centuries can also be attributed to the fact that the Hazaras are the only other ethnic group in the country that by reason of location and numbers could challenge the rule and dominance of the Pashtuns.[59] 

The Hazaras continue to be a persecuted people to this day. There are currently around 3 million Hazaras and 1.3 million Aimak living in Afghanistan today.[60] They are chiefly occupied as semi-nomadic herders and farmers and continue to organise themselves by tribes.[61]

5 The Uzbeks

The Uzbeks (or Ozbegs) arrived in Afghanistan in the 16^th century in another invading wave from the Central Asian steppe that defeated the Turkic-Mongol Timurid Dynasty, formerly founded by Tamerlane and his mostly Uzbek army in the 14^th century.[62]  In the early 1500s, the war-like Uzbeks conquered all of Transoxiana in northern Afghanistan and thereafter repeatedly fought for more territory – with limited success – against the Persian Safavids of western Afghanistan and the Indian Moghuls of eastern Afghanistan throughout the remainder of the century.[63]  

An Eastern Turkic and Mongol people, the Uzbeks continue to dominate in the plains and mountains of Northern Afghanistan (sometimes referred to as ‘Turkistan’) where they can be found engaged in farming, herding, and animal breeding, though many also make a living as silversmiths, goldsmiths, leather-workers and rug-makers.[64]  They have light skin, speak a Turkic language called Uzbeki, identify themselves by their old tribal names, and have a strongly patriarchal society which revolves around strong authority figures or leaders named ‘khans’.[65] 

While inter-ethnic marriages are permitted with Uzbeks, Tajiks or Turkmen, there is ill-feeling towards marriages with Pashtuns, possibly due to the Pashtuns’ deliberate migration into and subsequent domination of formerly Uzbek areas in the 1920s and 1930s.[66]  New Uzbek immigrants from Central Asia have also migrated to Afghanistan since the 1920s, as a result of Soviet persecution of Muslim populations there.[67] There are currently approximately 3 million Uzbeks living in Afghanistan today.

6 The Turkmen

Finally, the Turkmen (from ‘turkman’ meaning ‘made from light’) – cousins of the Seljuk Turks who founded the Ottoman Empire in modern Turkey – were yet another group of Turkic steppe warriors who invaded Afghanistan in the 12^th and 13^th century and helped launch the Turkic Khwarezm Empire, which at one point in time was the most powerful Islamic polity in the world.[68] The Khwarezm Empire would be quashed by the invading Mongols, however the Turkmen remained in the north and northwest of Afghanistan. 

Due to Russian imperial expansion, further waves of Turkmen would arrive in the 19^th century during the era of the ‘Great Game’, as well as in the 1920s following failed Basmachi revolts against the Bolsheviks.[69] Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the nation of ‘Turkmenistan’ was created for the majority of Turkmen still living in Central Asia, however 200,000 Turkmen continued to reside in Afghanistan, particularly in Balkh, Herat, and Kunduz Province.[70]  Today there are one million Turkmen in Afghanistan.[71] 

Like the Uzbeks, they form a highly patriarchal society, are divided into twelve major groups of tribes, are Sunni Muslim, and speak a range of Turkic language dialects.  Once feared raiders of caravans, Turkmen are today farmer-herdsmen well known for their peace-loving and industrious nature, the latter seen in their important produce of Karakul sheep pelts, carpets and jewellery, which together make a significant contribution to the Afghan economy.[72]

More of the many different ways of life lived by Afghanistan’s multi-ethnic population in the towns and countryside of Afghanistan.[73]

Other Minor Ethnic Groups

Other minor ethnic groups in Afghanistan include:

• the camel-herding Baluch (2%) in the barren deserts to the southwest;
• the yak-herding Kyrgyz in the mountains and steppes north of the Hindu Kush as well as in the Vakhan Corridor to the extreme Northeast;
• the clannish and agricultural Nuristani people of Aryan descent also in the mountains and forests of Northeast Afghanistan;
• the tribal Pamiri similarly in the extremely mountainous northeastern region bordering Pakistan and Tajikistan, once referred to by the Persians as ‘the roof of the world’;
• the Persian Qizilbash scattered throughout the towns and cities of western Afghanistan, who tend to be one of the more literate ethnic groups, and therefore are often employed in business and government;
• and finally the much smaller groups of Waziris, Mahsuds, Shinwaris, Yusufzais, Afridis and Mohmands living in scattered pockets around the country.[74]

 

A Tribal Society

With so many disparate ethnic groups arriving at varying times throughout Afghan history, it is perhaps no surprise that Afghanistan has persistently remained a tribal society – even in the 21^st century. 

This fact can be attributed both to the diversity between ethnic groups in the country, involving disparate cultural customs and traditions in addition to differences in heritage, appearance, way of life and language dialect, as well as to the very ruggedness and isolation of the terrain, which, as natural barriers, have in Tanner’s words ‘facilitated the ability of tribes to exist independently among inaccessible mountains, in veritable isolation from the writ of a central government’.[75]  Indeed, according to Tanner, this Afghan landscape has ‘not only allowed but abetted a fractious populace’.[76]

While tribalism is not a characteristic of all ethnicities in Afghanistan, it is the most common form of organisation among the Afghan ethnic groups which provides a social system based on group solidarity.[77]  Tribes (‘tabar’) are subdivisions of the main ethnic group, which are then further divided into subtribes, kinship clans (‘khel’), subclans, large extended families (‘pllarina’), then finally three-generational cellular families (‘kahol’).[78] 

These divisions correspond to successive genealogical generations of a common male ancestor, whose name is often used to identify the tribe (internal divisions taking the name of intermediate descendents).[79] For instance the Pashtuns can be divided into four major tribes – the Sarbans, Batani, Ghourghushti and Karlanri – said to be the four sons of a mythical common ancestor called Qais Abdur Rashid.[80]  Each of these tribes can then be further divided into various corresponding subtribes such as the Mohmand (Sarban), Ghilzai (Batani), Safi (Ghourghushti) and Afridi (Karlanri) tribes to name a few. 

The Afghan ‘Equilibrium’ of Inter-Tribal Feuding Within Ethnic Groups

The multiple social divisions caused by this largely tribal structure of society in Afghanistan has encouraged inter-tribal warfare, which is a prevailing norm in Afghan history.  Indeed William Macnaghton, a British envoy to the new British-backed government of Shah Shuja in 1839 considered violent tribal spurts to be usual practice in Afghanistan.[81] Winston Churchill, while campaigning against rebels with the British Army in India’s North West Frontier border regions in the late 1890s (today’s Swat Valley of Pakistan), likewise described this ongoing, internecine conflict with regard to the Pashtuns (Pathans). As he then wrote:

‘Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonise with their environment. Except at harvest-time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war.  Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc., complete.  Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another.  Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of social life, in addition to the convention about harvest-time, a most elaborate code of honour has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another.  The slightest technical slip would, however, be fatal.’[82]

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, however, this constant, mutually-destructive, internecine conflict has created a general equilibrium and sense of stability between the tribes throughout Afghan history.  As one of the first British officials in Afghanistan at the turn of the 19^th century, Mountstuart Elphinstone, recorded while comparing the Afghan tribes to the ‘divisive clans of the old Scottish Highlands’:

‘The internal government of the tribes answers its end so well…[for] although it encourages little disorders, it affords an effectual security against the general revolutions and calamities to which despotic countries in Asia are so frequently subject.’[83]

He determined, furthermore, that:

‘There is reason to fear that the societies into which the nation is divided, possess within themselves a principle of repulsion and disunion, too strong to be overcome, except by such a force as, while it united the whole into one solid body, would crush and obliterate the features of every one of the parts.’[84

One could conclude then that this continual inter-tribal competition and conflict – as strange and atypical as it may seem to other nations and populations in the 21^st century – has in fact been historically proven to be Afghanistan’s own unique recipe for general stability and security between the tribes – the ‘normal’ method by which Afghanistan has conducted its affairs.

Feuding can take place either within (intra-tribal feuds) or between (inter-tribal feuds) tribal groups of any ethnicity, and can range in form from short-lived, petty quarrels to hostility that last for generations.  Conflicts within tribes usually involve the preservation of personal or group ‘honour’ and can arise from a variety of sources such as: squabbles over property; access to resources (land, water, money, business or government opportunities); arranged marriages and bridal dowries; inheritance rights; personal enmities; family dissensions; competition for material possessions; or, somewhat correspondingly, the extension of tribal power.[85] 

As may be seen from this list, most internal, intra-tribal feuds involve competition or conflict over material wealth, since all Afghans typically embrace a material culture – tribal gain being a source of pride as well as a signal of tribal superiority.[86]  Indeed in Afghanistan tribal superiority is conveyed in deliberate displays of dress (turban, cap, coat, shawl, colours, embroidery, width of skirt etc.), home-design (pressed mud, sun-dried brick, domed, flat-roofed, walled, towers, tents) and food (black tea, green tea, round or oval bread, or pasta), as well as through the telling of oral folktales designed to reinforce the uniqueness or superiority of one tribe over another.[87] 

In addition to material contests, however, internal tribal conflicts may also arise over the succession to tribal leadership, since leaders tend to be selected principally on the basis of personal charisma, patronage and leadership abilities, rather than by hereditary entitlement.[88]  The violence arising from the resultant subtribe competition is perhaps worsened by the fact that there is no overarching chief over each Afghan ethnic group to mediate such conflicts.[89]

The people of Afghanistan enjoy playing and competing in native games such as Pahlwani (wrestling), Naiza bazi (tent-pegging), Buzkashi (a horse-riding game using an animal’s carcass), in addition to modern games such as volleyball, played by this group of girls in Kabul.[90]

 

Inter-Ethnic Conflict: Pashtun ‘Racial Superiority’, Dominance & Discrimination

Though internal tribal feuding has historically predominated as the most common form of conflict in Afghanistan, it is in fact inter-ethnic feuds which have characterised modern Afghan history.[91]  This is especially true in relation to the Pashtuns who have discriminated against Afghanistan’s other ethnic peoples since the 1700s. 

In fact, according to Mousavi, Pashtuns embrace an array of attitudes and beliefs which assert that they alone – the true ‘Afghans’ (the original Farsi name for the Eastern Pashtun tribes, borrowed and mistakenly applied by the British in the late 1700s to encompass all of the inhabitants of Afghanistan) – have ‘racial supremacy over and above all the other ethnic groups’ and ‘the right to rule over the area known today as Afghanistan’ (literally meaning ‘the land of the Afghans’).[92] 

Indeed, the Pashtuns literally see themselves as a ‘gift from God’ to the peoples of the land and believe they have a divine duty to guide the social, economic, political, cultural and administrative development of the State of Afghanistan.[93]  This duty seems self-evident to them since, after all, it was a Pashtun, Ahmad Shah Durrani, who brought Afghanistan into being as a political entity by founding the first truly native, Afghan, Durrani Empire in the 18^th century (from 1747-1826, encompassing all of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and parts of India, Turkmenistan and Iran), and likewise Pashtuns who have resurrected and governed this Pashtun State entity, in some form or another, from the 19^th century onwards until today, encompassing a period of 272 years.[94] 

Consequently, considering themselves ‘more Afghan than others’, and therefore at the very top of the socio-tribal pyramid in the country, the Pashtuns have asserted their own ethnic dominance in modern Afghan history.[95] In fact, they have deliberately pursued what can only be described as Fascist policies, that have discriminated against other ethnicities in Afghanistan to the benefit of the Pashtun population, including the forceful disseminating of Pashtun culture and values – a process referred to as either ‘Afghanization’ or ‘Pashtunization’.[96]

These deliberate Pashtun measures have included, but are not limited to:

• the persecution of the Hazaras in the central Hindu Kush mountains, as well as the Qizilbash, over hundreds of years;
• the weakening of these and other strong ethnic groups through forced resettlement (or ‘ethnic cleansing’) of such ‘unwanted’ ethnic groups into primarily Pashtun areas, such as Helmand Province;
• the simultaneous settling of hundreds of thousands of Pashtuns from the neighbouring Pakistan border regions throughout Afghanistan in both the 19^th and 20^th centuries, especially to areas formerly dominated by other ethnic groups (e.g. the Uzbeks or Hazaras);
• land reclamation and settlement projects favouring foreign Pashtun immigrants over local Afghan residents of other non-Pashtun ethnicities;
• the aggrandizement of Pashtun quota numbers within the government and military to bolster Pashtun dominance and pre-eminence among the Afghan population;
• Pashtun exemption from taxes and sometimes also military service;
• the branding of Pashto as the official national language of administration and education;
• the establishment of Pashto language schools and universities, along with education grants awarded only to Pashtun students from either Afghanistan or Pakistan;
• the funding of research into Pashtun culture and tradition in order to academically ‘prove’ the superiority of the Pashtun race, in their bloodlines as well as their thoughts and beliefs;
• the propagation of Pashtun propaganda to the effect that the Pashtuns are ‘perfect examples of humanity’ whose style of dress and ‘Pashtunwali’ code of conduct must be imitated by all;
• and finally, the editing of history to include only the histories of the Pashtun rulers, tribes and peoples to the exclusion of all others ethnic people groups living in Afghanistan.[97]

Such measures have also correspondingly allowed the growth of Pashtun extremism in Afghanistan, as Pashtuns have exploited the support and opportunities created by successive Pashtun governments to pursue policies of both Pashtun fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism at the same time.[98]

Four Hazara women brace themselves against the Afghan wind in Bamiyan Province in the Hindu Kush mountains – as well as against regular bitter winds of persecution and hate from Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups over the centuries, especially the Pashtuns.[99]

According to Mousavi, over the years this so-called ‘romantic chauvinism’ of Pashtun supremacy in the nation has been widely propagated by both Afghan and Western academics, journalists, historians, film-makers, poets and writers, and to such an extent that this Pashtun-dominated image of Afghanistan and the Afghan population – so completely out of step and out of tune with the social, political, historical and economic realities of Afghanistan – ‘has now become an image so universally accepted that few would consider questioning it’ nor ‘the generally discriminatory tenets of Pashtunism’.[100]

‘Afghan nationalism’ – otherwise known as ‘Pashtunism’ – has thus become detested by the majority of the Afghan population (58% of which is, after all, not ethnically Pashtun).[101] They consider Pashtunism to not only create a ‘false image’ of Afghanistan, but also to work as:

‘A mechanism for [Pashtun] tribal domination and oppression [that] has been enforced upon society and the people of Afghanistan for over a century.’[102] 

In point of truth, even the very word ‘Afghanistan’ as the name for the country is a loaded and tainted term for the majority of the country’s native and ethnically diverse inhabitants.[103]  In its correct and proper usage, ‘Afghanistan’ should only refer to the land area stretching from Kandahar in the south across the eastern Suleiman Mountains to the Sind River, just as ‘Hazaristan’ refers to the area inhabited by the Hazaras, ‘Turkistan’ likewise to the Turks dwelling areas, and ‘Baluchistan’ to the land of the Baluchs.[104]

Indeed, the name of ‘Afghanistan’ for the whole country has never been accepted by the other ethnic groups in the land, since it implies Pashtun superiority over all the other inhabitants of the land.[105]  As Mousavi states: 

‘The use of the name Afghanistan as the name of the entire country signals, at once, a monopoly of power and the enforcement of Afghan identity on non-Afghans, and the denial of the respective identities of the other peoples inhabiting the land.’[106] 

While this fact is little known outside Afghanistan, within the country it is taken for granted, the inhabitants preferring to speak of themselves as ‘Khorasanis’ living in ‘Khorasan’ – the ancient name for the land under which Afghans have ‘lived happily for centuries’ and which was the official name of the country from ancient times right up until the late 1800s.[107] 

 “Khorisanis” celebrating life and their differences in music, singing and dancing.[108]

 

The Taliban: The Pakistan-Backed, Pashtun Militia of Islamic Fundamentalism

The Taliban are the latest and most recent example of the Pashtuns’ efforts to dominate the affairs of the non-Pashtun majority population of the country, and to ‘Pashtunize’ (aka ‘Afghan–ize’) its diverse ethnic peoples.

When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, thereby ending 10 years of open warfare, and nearly 70 years of Communist influence on the Afghan government since its independence from Britain in 1919, the country was left in a state of devastation. A million Afghan civilians had been killed during the war, a third of the population displaced by the fighting (with 4.5 million fleeing as refugees to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran), many were disabled from either landmines or the spread of the polio disease, the institutions of government were in tatters, essential State infrastructure broken and weak, the economy destroyed, food scarce, health care inaccessible, violence and criminality rife, and opium drug-trafficking and smuggling for many the only means of survival.[109]

In addition, the seven diverse Mujahideen guerrilla groups that had fought against the Soviets (most either Pashtun or Islamic Fundamentalist in nature, or indeed both simultaneously) were unable to unify to form an Afghan government and began to fight against each other in yet another violent war.[110]  

After three years of fratricidal civil war throughout the country, Ahmad Shah Massoud (the so-called “Lion of Panjshir”), a powerful, university-educated, Tajik leader and military commander of the only multi-ethnic, Tajik-Pashtun-Uzbek guerrilla faction in northern Afghanistan, called on the Mujahideen leaders to work out an elite settlement that would outline a framework for the establishment of legitimate and stable governance in Afghanistan.[111]

Strong in his belief that ‘only a rainbow coalition of various ethnic groups could deliver Afghanistan a stable order’ and legitimate effective governance, Massoud proposed the installation of an interim coalition government in Afghanistan that would lead ultimately to a national general election, and thereby the selection of a legitimate popular Afghan government – comprised of democratically-elected and ethnically-diverse Afghans – to lead and govern Afghanistan and its peoples throughout the war-torn country. [112] Following the resulting ‘Peshawar Agreement’ of  24 April 1992, a Pashtun transitional government was first established, then replaced by an interim Rabbani-Massoud coalition government, in preparation for a legitimate, democratically-elected Afghan government via a planned general national election. It seemed to all that the Afghans would finally succeed in re-establishing legitimate governance and the return of the rule of law in their extremely war-weary country. 

However all of these developments were not at all welcome to most of the Pashtun population of southern and eastern Afghanistan, or indeed, to Afghanistan’s Pashtun-populated, eastern neighbour – Pakistan.

Having at that time controlled the capital city of Kabul, and thereby dominated the whole of the country, for a period of 245 years (1747-1992), the establishment of a multi-ethnic, legitimate, democratically-elected government by the full, ethnically-diverse population of Afghanistan came as a ‘psychological shock’ to the Pashtun population of the Khorasan nation and the region.[113]

Pakistan, meanwhile, had since partition always seen the country of Afghanistan on its western flank as its ‘backyard’ and a balancing ‘counterweight’ in its never-ending rivalry with its neighbour to the northeast, east and southeast – India – which is territorially much larger and more populous than Pakistan.[114]  It also wished to gain access and influence – via Afghanistan as the most direct route – to the resource-rich, Muslim, Central Asian republics, where a political, economic and cultural vacuum was opening up with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[115]  For Pakistan, therefore, the installation of the new, multi-ethnic, Rabbani-Massoud government was an obstacle to its own national and regional interests.  Massoud especially was seen as an enemy, because he wished to remain independent of Pakistan, and did not appear to be at all amenable to subjugating Afghan nationalist objectives in favour of assisting Pakistan with its national and regional ambitions.[116] 

This being the case, Pakistan – with the support of Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan ‘Durand Line’ border – set out to derail the nationalist and democratic political process that was bringing peace, stability and legitimate governance to Afghanistan. 

Pakistan’s Plan A: The Pashtun Warlord Hekmatyar

Pakistan’s first strategy was initially to support its chief ally, the Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hizb guerrilla group of Mujahideen.  During the Soviet-Afghan War from 1979-1989, Pakistan had channelled the bulk of foreign arms and financial aid to this Islamic Extremist Pashtun group, while 360 officers of Pakistan’s covert Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) had assisted the group in training its guerrilla fighters and managing its day-to-day operations.[117]

Hekmatyar first sabotaged the interim Rabbani-Massoud coalition government by refusing to accept the role of Prime Minister offered to him, and then demanding that some of Massoud’s forces (Dostum’s Uzbek forces) leave the Capital, thereby fracturing Massoud’s alliance. 

In August 1992, having been provided with logistic support and a large number of rockets from Pakistan’s ISI agency, Hekmatyar then launched a vicious and devastating attack against Kabul and the Rabbani-Massoud government, which killed 1,800 Afghan civilians.[118] Following the expansion of Hekmatyar’s anti-government forces (when Dostum self-interestedly and treacherously switched sides and joined Massoud’s arch enemy Hekmatyar – the very one who had just recently coercively forced the departure of Dostum’s own forces from Kabul), the group continued its assault on Kabul, killing another 25,000 civilian non-combatants, injuring a further 100,000, and destroying half of the city that had withstood ten years of Soviet-Afghan warfare only the decade previously.[119]

As Saikal states, ‘ultimately it was Hekmatyar’s and his Pakistani backers’ obstructionism that rendered the [Peshawar] Agreement totally ineffective’, thereby ending the democratic political process towards peace in Afghanistan and restarting Afghanistan’s civil war.[120]

Nevertheless, despite the carnage and destruction, Hekmatyar failed to fulfil the Pashtun and Pakistani goal of ousting the multi-ethnic, Rabbani-Massoud government from power.  Pakistan’s ISI therefore abandoned Hekmatyar and turned to its second strategy – the Taliban.

Pakistan’s Plan B: Creating & Enabling the Pashtun Taliban

In September 1994, Mullah Mohammed Omah, a one-eyed veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War who had become a simple Pashtun village cleric in the Maiwand region outside Kandahar, gathered his Islamic students and veteran friends together to take revenge on a local warlord, who had raped and killed all the girls and boys of a visiting family from Herat. [121] [The homosexual abuse and rape of young male boys by grown adult men, in addition to young Afghan girls, in a practice of ongoing forced sexual slavery of young, Afghan, child minors by male adults, was an appalling but common practice in Afghanistan during this time, which in fact continued under, and by, the Taliban adult fighters and power-holders during their regime].

Flushed with success after having avenged the family, Mullah Omah and his tiny band of followers swore to rid the entire country of all other Mujahideen factions but their own, and impose their own version of ‘true Sharia’ onto all Afghan peoples.[122]  For this purpose they next ransacked an arms depot and seized 18,000 AK-47s in addition to tons of ammunition.[123]  The group became known to locals as the ‘Taliban’ (meaning ‘students’ in Pashto or ‘seekers’ in Arabic), because nearly all of its members were graduates of radical, Islamic fundamentalist, Pashtun schools (‘Madrassahs’) in the border regions of Pakistan.[124] In addition, many of the veterans had previously received training during the 1980s from ISI officers in nearby Quetta, one of the Pakistani cities in the  border regions of Pakistan.[125]

In this tiny band of Islamist and violent Pashtuns near Kandahar, Pakistan found an alternative strategy for influencing the politics of its neighbour and thereby securing its own national and regional interests in and through Afghanistan.  Having successfully tested their fighting abilities the following month in October, on a number of ‘test missions’ within southern and eastern Afghanistan in which they rescued a captured Pakistani convoy, several kidnapped Pakistani officials, and a few overrun Pakistani border posts near Spin Baldak, the group won the support of the Pakistan’s ISI, its military and Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Jamiat-e Ulema Islam political party in Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s ruling coalition government, which was also then in charge of Pakistan’s foreign affairs parliamentary committee.[126] 

The Pakistani government in Islamabad decided to turn the small group into a massive movement and fighting force that would conquer and rule the land and population of its neighbour, Afghanistan, thereby securing its own self-aggrandizing interests in the region. 

The ISI immediately took charge of the Taliban, transforming what was originally a tiny Afghan band near Kandahar, that if left alone would probably have remained only one of hundreds of obscure fighting groups within the country, into a ‘credible ideological and fighting force’ – ‘the Taliban’ as it is known today.[127]  Specifically, the ISI provided training, weapons, logistic support and financial aid to the group in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, in addition to an influx of thousands of additional Pashtun fighters, which the ISI deliberately recruited and dispatched from Pakistan’s radical Deobandi Madrassahs in Pakistan’s Federally-Assisted Tribal Area (FATA) border regions (see endnote).[128]  Indeed, so full and complete was Pakistan’s role in adopting and transforming Mullah Omar’s tiny group into a credible and well-manned fighting force, that Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Naseerullah Babar, became subsequently known in Pakistan as “the Godfather of the Taliban”.[129]  As one analyst has stated on the matter:

‘Members of the Taliban were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated in Pakistani madrassas, trained in Pakistan and carried Pakistan identity cards.’[130]

Consequently, as can be seen by this quick overview, ‘the Taliban’ movement has always been in essence a de facto Pakistan militia – staffed, guided and assisted by Pakistan – while operating under the rubric of a ‘native’ Afghan movement.  As an Afghan teacher living and working in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province once stated to a foreign journalist:

‘The Taliban are the slaves of foreigners. They work for their masters. They want to destroy the foundation of this country.’[131]

Pakistan’s ‘Great Game’: The Taliban Conquest of Afghanistan

In November 1994, and with full support of Pakistan’s government under President Farooq Leghari and Prime Minister Bhutto, the Taliban launched a surprise attack and captured Kandahar along with substantial numbers of small arms, artillery, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, transport helicopters and twelve Mig-21 jets.[132] Over the next three months they conquered twelve southern provinces as their ranks burgeoned from 800 to 25,000 – most volunteer Pashtuns from tribes and refugee camps in the semi-autonomous FATA along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.[133] 

In early 1995 the Taliban turned eastward overrunning the city of Ghazni and storming through the eastern mountains, Mujahideen groups surrendering or joining the movement as the onslaught approached.[134] Baker states that by this point:

‘The new force was heavily armed, even by the standards of Afghan militia, and had tanks and fighter aircraft.  It was likely that in its early days at least the Taliban had received these heavy weapons from the Pakistanis.’[135]

Having destroyed or recruited the forces of Hizb, causing Hekmatyar to flee the country, the Taliban then bribed and fought their way toward Kabul and the Rabbani-Massoud government which was desperately making new alliances to oppose what it rightly saw as Pakistan’s ‘creeping invasion’ of Afghanistan.[136]

A Massoud-led counterattack saved the city, but the Capital would undergo sporadic artillery and rocket bombardment by the Taliban throughout the next year.[137] Convinced that the Taliban’s jihad was in essence not about the ‘true faith’ but rather money and foreign patrons securing the resource-rich countries of Central Asia, military commander Massoud continued to seek new support, including the appointment of the abandoned and newly-returned Hekmatyar as Prime Minister of the coalition government.[138] Responding to Pakistan’s attempts to undermine his government, notably Prime Minister Bhutto’s ludicrous declarations that his government was ‘illegitimate’, Massoud also internationally condemned Pakistan’s interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs in meetings at both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.[139]  Upon this public condemnation, anti-Pakistan protests immediately broke out in Kabul, resulting in an attack on the Pakistan Embassy that killed one and entailed the beating of the Ambassador and his staff by an angry Kabuli mob.[140] However, Massoud’s efforts and pleas to the international community secured no help and were ultimately to no avail. The Kabuli assault on the embassy, however, bolstered Pakistan’s determination to achieve a decisive Taliban win in Afghanistan.[141]

The Taliban next turned west and north-west capturing Herat and the regions bordering Turkmenistan, so that in total the Taliban ruled 27 of Afghanistan’s then 32 provinces.[142]  In April 1996 these Pashtun fighters returned to Kandahar for a Taliban Shura – based on the Arab religious model, not the Afghan tribal one – where Mullah Omar was elected ‘Commander of the Faithful’ (the title of ancient Caliphs last used 1,000 years previously), much to the alarm of Muslims worldwide (see endnote), and thousands of Taliban swore oaths of allegiance to him and to their ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ (IEA).[143] 

Having consolidated his forces, Mullah Omar’s assault on Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan began in earnest.  In September 1996, its ranks in receipt of heightened logistic and military aid and bolstered by hundreds of Pakistani ISI officers, military troops and volunteers, the Taliban seized Jalalabad and won over the support of Hekmatyar, who despite Pakistan’s previous abandonment and the role of Prime Minister in the Rabbani-Massoud government, had once again treacherously switched sides.[144] Hekmatyar’s defection spelt the end of Afghanistan’s legitimate Rabbani-Massoud government.  Kabul became ‘indefensible’ and Massoud withdrew his forces northward and to his home valley of the Panjshir in the Afghan North.[145]  

The Capital city of Afghanistan fell to the Pashtun Taliban – reportedly without a shot fired – thanks in large part to the manipulation, contribution and support of neighbouring Pakistan.[146] In fact Pakistan had provided logistic and combat assistance, including night-vision binoculars, in order to bring about the fall of Kabul.[147]

The excessively violent and armed, Islamist, Pakistani militia operating in Afghanistan from 1994, known locally and internationally as “The Taliban”. [148] 

The ‘Terror State’ & Pashtunization: 5 Years of Taliban Rule, 1996-2001

‘Within twenty-four hours,’ states Allen, ‘the strictest form of Sharia Islamic Law ever seen outside Saudi Arabia was imposed on the country.’[149]  Indeed, the Taliban embraced ‘a highly brutal, medievalist’, extreme, and singular form of Sharia that led to grave and widespread human rights abuses throughout Afghanistan.[150]

Under their regime Afghan law-breakers were flogged, beheaded, or had their arms, hands or ears amputated depending on the severity of their crime, while those accused of adultery by anyone – whether accurately or falsely – were publicly stoned without due process in a fair and just court of law.[151] Murderers, or those deemed to be ‘enemies’, were shot repeatedly in the back by their accusers with AK-47 rifles, their bodies later mutilated and left hanging from streetlights, cranes, tank barrels, and even soccer field goalposts in gory and savage displays of the Taliban’s merciless and unlimited power over Afghan citizens.[152] As one journalist wrote from Afghanistan at the time of the Taliban’s rise:

‘The Taliban have plunged millions of Afghans into a new chapter of brutality that echoes the harshness of Afghanistan’s distant past.’[153]

Cinema, VHS movies, television, photography, traditional kite-flying, sports, games, dancing, music, singing, and even whistling became illegal.[154]  In fact, the Taliban displayed their vehemence for modern technology by destroying satellite dishes, antennas, and Western-influenced books and movies, and by further symbolically ‘executing’ television sets, video-cassette players, and stereo systems and other modern technology in public ‘hanging’ spectacles in the Capital Kabul and throughout the country.[155]

All Western suits and clothing were absolutely banned.[156] All Afghan men were required to wear traditional Afghan clothes, have untrimmed, non-Western beards of a specific length, and were required to attend mosque five times a day.[157]

Afghan women, however, were marked out by the Taliban for especial oppression, brutality and abuse, so much so that the treatment of Afghan females under the Taliban – both adult and child – deteriorated to shocking and horrific levels that can only be described as an expression of hatred for the human female sex.

To exemplify, under Taliban rule Afghan women were forbidden legally from being physically visible at all to persons outside of their own home and immediate family members. This meant that all female human flesh – heads, faces, hands and feet – had to be completely covered in public by the all-encompassing head-to-toe ‘burqa’ (or ‘chadri’), in which their vision was severely limited by the material grid before their eyes, so that between the long and voluminous fabric and the eye-level material grid, walking and manoeuvring was difficult.  In addition, all of the windows of their homes were blackened with black paint, in order to prevent the women from ever being seen at all by ‘strangers’ outside via the windows of their house.

Afghan women – before and after the Taliban takeover of the Afghan State.[158]

Although many women had received a good education at Afghan universities under the Communist Afghan government in previous decades (prior to and even during the Soviet-Afghan War from 1979-1989), some graduating from Kabul university to become teachers, lawyers, doctors, businesswomen and even air hostesses on a national Afghan airline, it henceforward became illegal for any educated Afghan woman to practice her profession at all in Afghanistan. 

All girls were banned from attending school and thereby receiving an education, while female youths and adults were forbidden to receive any higher-education at Afghan universities.  Even females learning – or teaching others – the basic human skills of reading, writing and counting within the confines and privacy of their own homes was an illegal and punishable offense under the Taliban. 

Forbidden to work, or be involved with education of any kind, half of the entire population of Afghanistan was forced to remain at home, behind blackened windows, unable to venture out of their darkened homes without a male relative at their side (e.g. to buy food groceries and household or personal supplies), or to mix with any Afghan male that was not their immediate kin by blood or marriage.[159]

This law particularly penalised and punished Afghanistan’s many widows and orphans, whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons had been killed during the decade-long Soviet-Afghan War or the ensuing civil war between the Mujahideen, forcing these destitute and helpless females into a state of extreme penury and starvation. Indeed, husbandless, fatherless, and brotherless families were common in the country at this time. Lacking a male bread-winner in paid employment, and without a male escort to venture outside of their houses into the streets (rendering their homes physical prisons), young girls were compelled to cut their hair, disguise themselves in boys’ clothing, and risk their lives each and every day in order to buy bread and draw water for their family. Other young girls around the age of 8-9 or above were forced into arranged marriages against their will – many to adult men twice or even three times their own age, a practice which took place throughout the country.

Afghan girls – before and after the Taliban takeover of the Afghan State.[160]

Women were also uniformly forbidden by Taliban law from participating in musical expression, from singing, from laughing, from showing their tongues while talking or eating, or from even talking at a volume above a whisper – among many, many other unnatural and draconian restrictions.[161]  The wearing of make-up, such as eye-liner, mascara or lipstick, was strictly forbidden, as was the wearing of white socks and white shoes (the Taliban flag was white).[162]

The breach of any of these restrictions by any Afghan female resulted in many cases in whippings, imprisonment, and public execution by tyrannical Taliban soldiers, who enjoyed making public spectacles of their female victims as they ‘administered justice’ in disused sports arena and stadiums, in which the local population was forcibly driven and compelled at gunpoint to watch and witness.

Finally, it was illegal for Afghan women to receive medical care or medicine from either male or female medical doctors or nurses, since female doctors and nurses were forbidden from practicing their profession at all in the country, and male doctors were forbidden from ever talking to or touching a female – much less examining and treating her medically. This meant that half of the entire population of Afghanistan – the female population of approximately 15 million women – were left largely untreated and unhelped by medical professionals in all of their physical illnesses, sufferings and pain during the five years of Taliban rule from 1996-2001, including for menstruation problems, during pregnancy, to treat miscarriages, and even in the agonising pain and complications of childbirth (not to mention recurring instances of despicable savagery – genital mutilation – carried out by the Taliban against grown women, teenagers and even young female children, either as a form of punishment or simply for their own sadistic pleasure and amusement). 

In short, under Taliban rule, Afghan women became faceless, voiceless, expressionless, anonymous, silent, suffering, second-class citizens – victims of extensive and merciless injustice.  Indeed, Afghan women were considered by the Taliban to be almost sub-human – to be of far less value in many cases than even agricultural or domestic animals.

[For two personal accounts of female life during the five terrifying years of Taliban Rule in Afghanistan, see Latifa, My Forbidden Face – Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story, London, Virago Press, 2002, and S. Shakib, Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes To Weep – A Woman’s Story of Courage, Struggle and Determination, London, Century Random House, 2002.]

Illegal to be Free: Under Taliban rule, Afghan women were forced to live a severely restricted and controlled life. They were forced to wear burqas in public, stripped of their professions, education and medical care, and were deprived of nearly all of the basic human freedoms of expression and choice they had previously had and enjoyed for decades under earlier Afghan governments.[163]

While all religious minorities were libelled, Shi’ia Muslims – particularly the Hazara ethnic group – were also singled out for special persecution, abuse and murder (even genocide) by the Pashtun Taliban.[164] 

The more educated, more international, and therefore more ‘Western’ inhabitants of the capital city of Kabul were likewise set apart and designated for additional punishments and executions, since they were viewed by the Taliban as ‘the source of Afghanistan’s ills’.[165]  

All of this was devised by the Taliban’s rulers – a secretive Council or Shura comprised of six shadowy Muslim clerics, known as Mullahs.[166]  Their decisions, made in secret, were announced publicly as decrees with the threat of death for any non-compliance.[167]  The laws were enforced by the Taliban’s notorious ‘religious police’ under the auspices of the ‘Department for the Propagation of Virtue and Suppression of Vice.’[168]

While the Taliban claimed their version of Islamic Law stemmed from the Sunni sect of Deobandism, with the inclusion of some threads of Wahhabism for good measure, in reality ‘the Taliban represented nobody but themselves, and they recognised no Islam but their own’.[169] Indeed, though many Taliban were illiterate, did not understand Arabic, and had never read the Koran, the Taliban declared jihad against any Muslim who refused to acknowledge or submit to their authority and interpretation of Sharia.[170] 

As a Pashtun movement, the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law was in fact influenced by the Pashtun tribal code – ‘Pushtanwali’ – which is considered by the Pashtuns to even trump the Muslim religion.[171] The Pashtun Taliban often participated in jihad chanting the slogan of ‘for Islam, for homeland, and for honour’.[172] As a famous Pashtun poet, Khushal Khan, once wrote: ‘The very name Pakhtun spells honour and glory/Lacking that honor what is the Afghan story?/In the sword alone lies our deliverance’.[173]  While Deobandism fosters distrust of hierarchy, particularly tribal and feudal structures involving tribal leaders, the Taliban adhered to the Pashtun view of an Afghan socio-ethnic pyramid with Pashtuns at the top of all ethnic groups.[174] Their consequent strong tradition of Pashtun xenophobia also played a large role in the Taliban regime’s policies and military actions of ethnic discrimination and even ethnic cleansing throughout Afghanistan, as the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras can well attest.

It is only the Pashtun ethnic and cultural identity that can also explain the Taliban’s obsession with controlling – even to the most minute detail – the clothing, education, socialisation, outings, mannerisms, behaviour, and even facial or vocal expressions of Afghan women, and with harshly and violently punishing them for any violation, no-matter how minor. This is because, according to the Pashtun tribal honour code, Pashtunwali, male pride and honour is measured chiefly by the degree to which their women are utterly controlled by them.

In short, the Taliban comprise a heady, explosive and brutal mix of Pashtun fascism with Islamic extremism.

The Tyrannical “Terror Taliban”: The Pakistan-backed Pashtun Fascists & radical Islamists who ruled the Afghan “Terror State” they had established, nurtured and governed for 6 years from 1996 until their removal by a UN mandated and U.S.-led multinational Coalition of the Willing in 2001. [175]

The Taliban’s regime was financed by poppy cultivation, heroin production and drug trafficking which by 1999 occurred in 97% of Taliban territory, making the regime the largest heroin producer in the world, with an output of opium three times higher than the rest of the world combined.[176] 

While this Pashtun Taliban militia had initially been welcomed between 1994-1996 by a large proportion of disillusioned and war-weary Afghan civilians, who had at first been willing to pay any price to put a final end to the civil war between the seven Mujahideen guerrilla groups, within a very short time many began to question what kind of people the Taliban really were to carry out such brutal and inhumane things against other human beings – the defenceless citizens of Afghanistan.[177] 

For many Afghans the prospect of living within a cruel and merciless prison of Islamic totalitarianism was a price too high to pay. The result was a massive exodus of native Afghans from their native land. Multitudes of Afghans, especially those from the professional middle class of Kabul, sought escape and freedom during the following years by fleeing the country each night under the cover of darkness, riding on donkeys, camels, trucks and buses to Pakistan and other destinations such as Iran and the northern Muslim republics of Central Asia, where they either settled or continued travelling in search of sanctuary in other nations around the world.[178]

Pakistan’s Next Step: The Introduction of Osama Bin Laden to the Taliban

With its own national and regional interests in Afghanistan thoroughly secured, Pakistan now made a dangerous strategic move that would have disastrous consequences for Afghanistan, for America, and for the entire world. 

Between the end of the Soviet War and the rise of the Taliban in 1994, tens of thousands of Islamic radicals and outcasts from 40 different countries had already flocked to the site of ‘Islam’s greatest triumph over infidels’ since the 16^th century in order ‘to learn the lessons of the jihad, the holy war, to train for armed insurrection, to bring the struggle back home.’[179] Indeed, according to the CIA, Afghanistan had become an international centre for the training and indoctrination of terrorists and assassins – ‘a university for jihad’ – as illustrated by the rash of attacks Afghanistan-trained jihadists committed around the world in the 1990s (see endnote).[180] It also became a refuge for both successful and unsuccessful terrorists fleeing from the scene of their crimes, such as an American jihadist who assassinated two U.S. CIA employees in 1993, and an Uzbek jihadist who attempted but failed to kill President Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov of Uzbekistan in 1999.[181]  Thousands of these foreign radicals remained to fight within the ranks of the Taliban and were welcomed by the new regime under the guise of Afghan tribal hospitality (according to the Pashtun tribal code, Afghans are obliged to give their guests sanctuary and provide them protection, even at the cost of their own lives).[182]  

During the early 1990s, Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terrorist group was not, as yet, among these terrorists hiding or training in Afghanistan under the shelter and protection of the Taliban regime. However, the ISI’s relationship with Osama bin Laden is one that extends back four decades to the Soviet-Afghan War.  During 1996 the ISI colluded with Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, by reportedly facilitating his introduction to the Taliban via a meeting with Mullah Omar in Kandahar.[183] As a result of this Pakistan-orchestrated introduction, the Taliban ‘army of terror’ entered into an agreement with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network – a connection which Allen has since named ‘the unholy alliance’ – a terror-based alliance that would lead directly to a series of terrorist attacks around the world in subsequent years (see endnote).[184]

Pakistan was also active in furthering Bin Laden’s terrorist influence in Afghanistan, and actually established some of his terrorist training camps.[185] Indeed, Pakistan’s ISI, ‘the mastermind of the Taliban’s policy behaviour and actions’, was both complicit and supportive of this new lethal Taliban-Al-Qaeda alliance, happy as they were, with the tacit approval of the JUI party, to use Al-Qaeda’s terrorist camps to train Pakistani jihadists en route to Jammu and Kashmir.[186]

For his part, Bin Laden reportedly funded the Taliban’s capture of eastern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul in September 1996.[187]  A year later in 1997, Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al-Qaeda’s master strategist and second-in-command, returned to Afghanistan and the terrorist organisation began planning its new wave of attacks in earnest – attacks against two U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, against the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and the cataclysmic 9/11 terrorist attacks against the American homeland in 2001, which would cause the Afghan War to remove the Taliban terror regime hosting Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

A month after the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the remnants of the Rabbani-Massoud government and other anti-Taliban warring groups of the ‘Islamic State of Afghanistan’ (ISA) came together in northern Afghanistan to form ‘the Supreme Council for the Defense of the Motherland’ – the next year reformed into the ‘Northern Islamic United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan’ (U.F.), more commonly known as the ‘Northern Alliance’.[188] They were Massoud’s Tajik Jamiat forces, Dostum’s Uzbek Junbish-I Milli, Qadir’s Pashtun ‘Eastern Council’ Shura-yi-Mashriqi and Khalily’s Hizb-i Wahdat Hazaras with headquarters in Taluqan in Takhar Province, Mazar-i Sharif in Balkh Province, Shiberghan in Samagan Province, and Bamiyan in Bamiyan Province.[189]

In 1998, a year after 40 Northern Alliance leaders were killed in a plane crash, 1,500 Pakistani military personnel, deployed by Pakistan’s government under President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, participated in a Taliban attack on Northern Alliance territory, retaking Mazar-i-Sharif, Bamiyan and most of the Hazarajat (where thousands of Hazaras were tortured and massacred in a human atrocity), as well as Massoud’s headquarters in Taluqan.[190] The following year the Taliban were assisted again by Pakistan, which provided another 6-8,000 Pakistani militants to assist the Taliban in another attack against the Northern Alliance.[191]  In fact, between the years 1994-1999 an estimated 80-100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan with the Taliban.[192]  All of this caused Rashid to remark:

‘Afghanistan has become the hub of a worldwide terrorist network, even though none of this is the fault of the misery-stricken Afghan people who are facing drought, famine, civil war and enormous deprivation as a result of the continuing war between the Taliban and the anti-Taliban forces of the United Front (UF) [Northern Alliance].’[193]

Forced back towards the Tajikistan border, Massoud began a national and international diplomatic campaign for help, attending meetings with former Mujahideen leaders in Kandahar (one Hamid Karzai) and Nangarhar Province, as well as with government officials in Uzbekistan and Iran, collaborating with the exiled King Zahir Shah, and visiting Strasbourg in France to address the European Parliament of the European Union (EU) in April 2001.[194]  According to Tanner, in all these endeavours Massoud hoped ‘that the world at large would realize the abomination the Taliban presented and eventually come to his aid’ (emphasis added).[195]  In particular, Massoud starkly warned the international community that:

‘Afghanistan was being turned into a centre for not only medievalist theocracy, but also international terrorism, involving thousands of al-Qaeda Arab, Pakistani, Kashmiri and Chechen operatives’ (emphasis added) [196]

Massoud was killed in a targeted assassination by Al-Qaeda terrorists only two days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America, which killed nearly 3,000 people – citizens of 115 different countries – most of whom were unarmed civilians travelling or working in the United States.[197]  

The date of Massoud’s death, 9 September 2001 (or “9/9” – akin to the “7/7” attacks in London in 2005), was in fact the original date of the planned 9/11 plane attacks (they were delayed by two days), thereby once again proving the strong link between the internal affairs of Afghanistan and worldwide terrorism.

After 9/11: Ongoing Support, Funding, Training, Weapons & Transport

In the aftermath of the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the American homeland on 9/11, and the resultant mass casualties, devastation, and global shock and anger against such despicable acts of indiscriminate terrorism against innocent, unarmed, civilians, Pakistan too – the Taliban’s key creator and sponsor – reluctantly agreed to help the U.S .capture Bin Laden.[198] Indeed, following 9/11 Pakistan was forced to shelve its policy of staunch support to the Taliban regime, until that time viewed as a national imperative, and instead side with the United States and a large number of allied nations in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) against its own Frankenstein-like handiwork in Afghanistan, that it had itself created and supported to conquer and subjugate the population and interests of its Muslim neighbour. 

However, the Pakistan policy of assistance and support for the Taliban did not remain shelved for long.  According to Maloney, following the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 it was Pakistani propaganda which encouraged the Taliban to regroup and wage guerrilla war against the new embryonic Afghan interim government and its international protector, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).[199] In fact, official and unofficial ISI support for the Taliban insurgents has reportedly been taking place since 2002, with both active and retired operatives assuming the tribal dress and beard of Mujahideen to provide cash, weapons, and training to the Pashtun militants.[200] As Boot stated in 2006:

‘Pakistan isn’t just turning a blind eye to Taliban activity. Its Inter-Services Intelligence agency seems to be increasing the amount of training and logistical support it provides to Islamist militants.’[201]

Reports include that both the ISI and the Pakistan Army have been involved in ferrying militants back and forth to training camps in the FATA region where they receive ‘an excellent education in guerrilla warfare’ – sometimes taught by ISI agents – including in the use and calibration of GPS devices and the provision of 6-foot Sakar-20 rockets.[202]  

Anti-Government Enemy Insurgents: Photos of some of the Taliban & ‘Neo-Taliban’ insurgents of the Taliban ‘Army of Terror’, that were operating in Afghanistan between 2010-2014.[203]

Political “peace deals” between the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and various tribal groups along the border between 2006-2008 led directly to huge spikes in insurgent attacks on ISAF and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. These Pakistan-insurgent treaties resulted in huge swathes of territory being effectively turned over to Taliban control, along with numerous access routes along the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, thereby providing the insurgents with a secure base and ‘safe haven’ from which to launch cross-border attacks against neighbouring ISAF and ANSF forces (during one of these treaties, the Musharraf government also released from prison 2,500 foreign fighters linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to cement the deal).[204] 

As a result of Musharraf’s “deals”, attacks against ISAF and Afghan military forces increased exponentially in Afghanistan during 2007 and 2008. In 2007, for instance, attacks increased by 300 percent and cross-border raids by 200 percent, while the number of suicide-bombings rose by 500 percent.[205] In mid-2008, the Commander of the ISAF (COMISAF) Dan McNeill reported that insurgent attacks had again doubled in number during only the first four months of the year, stating that ‘analysis shows a link between increased violence in Afghanistan and deals with militants in Pakistan’.[206] 

According to Cole, although this Pakistan-Taliban link had been a well-known and established fact amongst Afghan and American intelligence circles since at least 2005, it was only at this time that the Pakistan’s critical role in the Afghan War, in encouraging, assisting, training, equipping, funding and transporting Taliban and other insurgents in the FATA border regions to kill Afghan, American and ISAF coalition forces in Afghanistan, reached policy-makers in Washington D.C. [207]  ‘Our guys are getting killed because Pakistan has a double policy,’ said one American policy advisor in Afghanistan.[208]

Pakistan’s culpability in enabling the anti-Government insurgents within Afghanistan of course extends to its covert Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) which, according to multiple intelligence sources, has also been abetting the modern Taliban insurgency by arming, training, recruiting and funding Taliban fighters – even reportedly providing them transport to the Afghan frontline, just as it did for the Mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989. In 2008 U.S. intelligence indicated that the ISI was providing medical aid, hospital care, intelligence and military strategy to the militants – and furthermore utilising part of America’s US$10 billion Pakistan military aid package to do it.[209] As Cole stated in March 2008:

‘The U.S. is paying for both sides of the war in Afghanistan. As is becoming increasingly clear, for at least two and a half years, and perhaps far longer, the Pakistani government has been receiving massive U.S. aid while its intelligence agency and elements of its military have been pursuing their own anti-American agenda within Afghanistan. The U.S. has given the Musharraf regime $10 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, but Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and factions within the Pakistan army, while helping the U.S. track al-Qaida with one hand, have been aiding the Taliban with the other, both inside Afghanistan and across the Pakistani border in Tribal Areas like North Waziristan. In part because of Pakistani help, the Taliban have made a steady comeback and American and Afghan casualties are at their highest annual levels since the war began.’ [210]

According to NATO reports, only in September 2008 did Pakistan begin to see terrorists and insurgents along the border as potential threats to the security of Pakistan itself, not just Afghanistan, leading to the Pakistan military’s counter-insurgent offensives in the Swat valley. [211] This event led Cole to remark that:

‘The ISI and the Pakistani army are now at war with a powerful, many-tendriled insurgent band they helped to create. The ISI’s history of double-dealing has come back to haunt it.’[212]

However, although the Pakistan Taliban’s uprising in Pakistan alerted the Pakistani government and the ISI to the danger the Taliban posed to its own creators, significantly it did not lead to the total cessation of its assistance to insurgents and terrorists operating in Afghanistan, which continues in various forms until this present day.[213]  

The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, was reportedly living under ISI protection in Quetta and then Karachi as late as 2009, a report lent further credence by the location and seeming protection of Al-Qaeda leader, Bin Laden, in the Pakistan town of Abbottabad until the time he was killed by U.S. Special Forces in May 2011.[214]

Indeed, many academic defence experts and military commanders continue to assert – with an ever-growing mountain of supporting evidence dating from the end of the Taliban regime in 2001 until today – that Pakistan’s support for the Taliban has, in fact, never ended.

Consequently, the issue of Pakistan and its ungoverned FATA border regions, in which the Pashtun Taliban militia and various other terrorist and anti-Government insurgent groups have found sanctuary, in their violent combat against the legitimate rule of a democratically-elected, native, egalitarian and multi-ethnic Afghan government, continues to be the largest external issue for NATO-led coalitions in Afghanistan – the ‘elephant in the room’ – casting long, menacing, and influential shadows over developments, events and overall security and stability in Afghanistan.

In many respects, Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan war today – and even in the very creation and development of the Pashtun Taliban fighting force since 1994 – can be described as a modern Pakistani version of the ‘Great Game’ for control over Afghanistan and domination of their internal domestic affairs, once played centuries ago by both the British and Russian empires.

In this sense, the Pashtun, Islamist, Taliban forces Pakistan has done so much to create, assist, train, fund and support, from its very infancy in 1994 until the present day in 2019, are essentially Pakistan’s proxy forces operating to secure Pakistan’s own national and regional interests in the sovereign territory and political affairs of its neighbour Afghanistan.

 

A Tribal Structure, A Tribal State

As one can see by this brief perusal of Afghan society and history, Afghanistan has over the last three centuries remained in reality a ‘tribal State’ – a state based on the protection of Pashtun tribal interests above all – rather than a ‘nation-state’, since this implies a State inhabited predominantly by a single homogenous ethnic nation, or at minimum, in which the ethnographic landscape of the population is fairly represented in the political structures of the State.[215] 

In failing to meet this latter requirement, Afghanistan has historically never offered the cultural cohesion and political unity inherent to citizens when a people share a common cultural or ethnic identity.[216]  Certainly, according to Mousavi, until recent times, there has been no sense of common national identity existing within Afghan society at all, since such a cohesive ‘national’ identity had never been created during its long history.[217] 

For although the Afghan ‘nation’ as a political entity was forged for the first time under the native Pashtun Durrani Empire in the late 18^th century, it was never inclusive of all Afghanistan’s inhabitants, causing the non-Pashtun tribes to become disenchanted with the concept and to return to the traditional means of tribal self-government which had always prevailed until that time.[218]

Even during the Soviet-supported and -enforced Communist era in Afghan history, from 1920-1989, a period generally considered to have greatly diminished the native tribal structure of Afghanistan in favour of political parties and centralised government, the traditional tribal organisation of Afghan society – as well as the Pashtun dominance of the socio-tribal pyramid – still remained intact, simply manifesting themselves through the new political structures.[219]

The permanence of this tribal structure is perhaps also illustrated by the Mujahideen guerrillas during this era, who, while fighting against the foreign Soviet invaders during the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989, continued to organise themselves into warring insurgent groups along ethnic and tribal lines.

The same ethnic and tribal divisions can also be argued to be true today, with regard to the Pashtun Taliban as well as the various other insurgent fighting groups currently waging insurgency war against the central Afghan government today – with the sole exceptions being the ‘foreign’ Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist groups, comprised of many radicalised, Islamist citizens recruited from a wide range of other nations around the world.

According to Mousavi, the enduring rigidity of the fundamentally tribal structure of Afghanistan meant that by the 1990s the country was plunged into a ‘national identity crisis’, because the social realities of Afghan life for the population at that time were not at all matched or reflected in the political institutions of the State.[220]  Mousavi argues that this mismatched situation can only be rectified when the social heritage and cultures of all of Afghanistan’s multi-ethnic inhabitants (nationhood) are fully and fairly represented or acknowledged by the political vehicle and institutions of the State (a common nationality).[221] 

Until this goal is fully achieved – perhaps most logically through a federal political system in which all of Afghanistan’s ethnic people groups in Afghanistan’s disparate regions are considered culturally, socially, politically and economically equal, and represented in a State of Federation – the true Afghanistan is set to remain a fundamentally tribal and fragmented State, where ‘loyalty to ethnicity’ and tribe will always outweigh ‘loyalty to the nation’. 

Indeed, until this necessary, fair and full political representation of all Afghanistan’s ethnic people groups is embraced as a fundamental value of the State and is – most importantly of all – built into the nation’s political institutions, the Afghan tribes today may temporarily rally behind a strong and dynamic leader for a good common cause, but will generally continue to be distrustful and wary of government, and to live as they have historically for centuries – under the independence and self-autonomy of local tribal government.[222] 

 

A Tajik girl and her baby brother from northeastern Afghanistan.[223]

 

The Character of Afghanistan’s Peoples: 10 Enduring Traits

In conclusion, this short examination of Afghanistan’s history, and the role of its landscape and ethnic peoples within that history, can in fact reveal important points regarding the general character of the Afghans, as diverse and disparate as they are.  

First, because of Afghanistan’s history of invasion by foreign powers and peoples, Afghans typically hold an attitude of disdain and antipathy towards foreigners, whether from distant or neighbouring lands. This tradition of contempt for foreigners (‘feringhees’ ) extends back to the terrifying invasion by Genghis Khan and his Mongolian hordes, but was inherited and carried forward though successive generations of Afghans of all different ethnicities to the point that it still remains a strong cultural trait today, especially among the severely xenophobic Pashtuns.[224] As a consequence Afghans also generally resent the imposition of foreign cultures, especially the Persian/Iranian culture, which is particularly unwanted due to Persia’s history of both territorial and cultural domination within Afghanistan.

Afghan children in celebration mode, enjoying their own cultures, festival fairs, games, food, and ways of life.[225]

Second, while there is no uniform ‘national culture’ in Afghanistan, there is nevertheless a number of cultural norms shared by the ethnic tribal groups, partly due to the deliberate spread of Pashtunism by Pashtun rulers.[226]  These norms include:

• the centrality of tribal honour and pride as the cornerstone of Afghan society;
• corporate responsibility to take revenge against offending tribes for insults or infractions against this honour;
• long, unforgiving memories with abiding resentment toward such offenders;
• preference for marriages between or within tribes of the same ethnicity, preferably between first cousins;
• tribal institutions such as the jirga in which individual tribal members may express themselves freely as equals;
• and a code of conduct similar to Pashtunwali.[227]

Third, due to the constant, destructive conflicts between Afghan tribes throughout the land’s history, Afghans have over the centuries developed a chiefly ‘warrior culture’ – its men raised to be fierce and courageous, to continually hone their martial skills, and to carry a weapon at all times.[228] In fact Afghan peoples have always earned a reputation for their primitive and predatory military nature.[229] Indeed, when the British first invaded Afghanistan in 1839 during the ‘Great Game’, they were struck by the military bearing of the Afghan men.[230]  The same could be said to be true today 180 years later.  This tradition of military prowess and invincibility can be seen celebrated in Afghan literature, penned as much by Uzbeks and Tajiks as by Pashtun poets, even though the Pashtuns  has generally been regarded as the most ferocious of all Afghan tribes.[231] 

Fourth, due to this warrior culture, combined with the continuous rhythm of inter-tribal warfare, Afghan peoples find it difficult to trust anyone.  This means that they can be very distrustful, not only of foreigners, and Afghan people of other ethnic groups, but even amongst themselves between and within their own ethnic tribes and families. One Pashtun warrior-poet, Khushal Khan Khattak, perhaps best explains this trait in his poem on the matter:

‘Whenever I have said a word
To any single friend
Immediately the secret’s spread
Till all the world has known…
I’ve many quite devoted friends
The prize of passing years
But to their thousands there’s not one
To call a confidant.’[232]

Fifth, continual inter-tribal fighting means that, just like the British who found that control of the capital Kabul did not equate to control of the Eastern Pashtun tribes, securing cooperation from one tribe, ethnic group or even city, does not guarantee or secure cooperation from other tribes, ethnicities or cities.[233] As one British envoy wrote during the early phases of the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), while trying to secure the Afghan tribes’ cooperation: ‘At no period of my life do I remember having been so much harassed in body and mind…the Afghans are gunpowder’.[234]  The Afghan royal monarchs of Afghanistan’s own empires too, while sometimes influencing the tribes, have generally struggled to gain their cooperation or to control them.[235]  Perhaps the sentiments of such monarchs are best encapsulated by one such depressed former Afghan King, Yakub Khan, who, having failed to secure support from local tribes to uphold his regime, stated as he went into British custody: ‘I would rather be a grass-cutter in India than the ruler of Afghanistan’.[236]

Sixth, ever since it was introduced in the 7^th century during the Arab Conquest, Islam has proven to be one of the strongest forces for uniting Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and tribes.  Islam has had a particularly strong appeal among Afghans since they are a people who have historically held a strong devotion to the notion of justice, a fact once marvelled at by Alexander the Great in 328 B.C.[237] Additionally, Islam has meshed well with Afghans’ general dislike of foreign peoples and cultures, simply adding to such people new terminology and frames of reference centering on non-Islamic infidels or non-believers, as well as supplying a new rallying cry for repelling foreign invaders under the banner of jihad or ‘holy war’.  Certainly many jihads have taken place in Afghanistan as a result, dating from the Mongol invasion, through the three Anglo-Afghan Wars, to the Soviet-Afghan War, and the present day. These jihads have repeatedly been led by Ghazis – ‘pan-tribal warriors led by mullahs intent on holy war’.[238] While the Afghan population only slowly adopted this new religion as their own in the 800s, many forcibly converted by threat of death from Zoroastrianism, Buddhism or Shamanism in the following centuries, today 99% of the total population of Afghanistan are Muslim.[239] Religion is therefore one of the greatest commonalities existing today among all of Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic peoples. 

Seventh, even with the new freedoms for women experienced under the new, democratically-elected, legitimate Afghan government since 2001, extremely conservative cultural norms still prevail with regard to the treatment of women in Afghan society.  These conservative norms stem from centuries of ‘Pashtunization’ and the deliberate dissemination and enforcement of the Pashtun tribal honour code – ‘Pashtunwali’ – in which male pride and honour is measured not by an Afghan man’s respect, care, protection, and provision of and for his grandmothers, mother, sisters, wives, daughters and granddaughters, but by the degree of absolute control and dominance he can exert over them all.  As a result, Pashtunwali is now strong within Afghan culture, especially in the southeastern crescent of Afghanistan where the Pashtun ethnicity predominates, to the point in fact that Pashtunwali is even considered to trump Islamic beliefs.

Eighth, Afghans hold a strong and somewhat insatiable attitude towards accumulating wealth and money, perhaps resulting from the deeply-rooted Afghan belief in a ‘material road to spiritual enlightenment’ via gold, women and land (‘zar, zan, zamin’).[240]  This love of material wealth has often times caused Afghans to: support only those leaders who can guarantee material gain; change said loyalties in order to take full advantage of more profitable parties or opportunities; and become very susceptible to bribery, even on very important issues with countrywide ramifications. The Afghans’ long tradition of switching sides for greater, or more immediate, material gain has earned them a reputation for being deceitful and treacherous betrayers, an opinion shared as much by Alexander the Great’s Macedonians as by Queen Victoria’s Imperial British soldiers.  As Sir Henry Rawlinson, a member of the British India Council, stated in 1879: ‘With such a people as the Afghans, one must always be upon one’s guard.’[241] 

Ninth, in this cultural context of temporary allegiances for immediate or more advantageous material gain, providing money or material wealth has always been the key to acquiring Afghan loyalty. Ahmad Shah, the ruler of the Afghan Durrani Empire in the 18^th century, for instance, maintained his royal position only by spreading his wealth among his tribal supporters, and similarly kept the eastern passes to India open only through bribing the Pashtun Afridi and Ghilzai tribes.[242] During one of the British campaigns in the Anglo-Afghan Wars in the 19^th century, the British likewise were compelled to bribe the Eastern Pashtun tribes to gain entry and exit to and from central Afghanistan.[243] In fact it seems that it is money, combined with a sense of tribal purpose, that has generally proven to be the recipe for peace and stability within Afghanistan, with the lack of either sparking restlessness, conflict and extremism in the country.[244]

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the Afghans are a people who highly prize their individual freedom. It is because of this love of freedom that the Afghan population generally resent and reject those who would seek to control them against their will.  Afghan history is peppered with evidence to this effect, with Afghan tribes continually forming ad hoc coalitions to defeat all aspiring rulers – even those of native Afghan origin. Indeed, it is due to this much cherished ideal of complete, individual freedom that Afghans have always remained so defiant of political powers to this day.  As one old Afghan man explained to a British envoy nearly two hundred years ago in the 19^th century, ‘We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood,’ but ‘we will never be content with a master.’[245]

It seems most certain then that the Afghan population will continue to distrust a central, national, Afghan government, along with its institutions and officials, unless and until that government fully and fairly represents the interests and needs of all of their ethnic groups within the land, and until it safeguards their basic human right to individual freedom within the confines of good and just, but also merciful and proportional Afghan laws, that both serve and protect the population of Afghanistan.

Afghan Hazara men watching and waiting for progress and a brighter future in Afghanistan…[246]

 

* For information on the extent and impact of national caveats on the NATO-led ISAF Operation in Afghanistan, see Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices (including ISAF national caveat lists), which can be freely viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984.

 

Endnotes

[1] Modification of a topographical map of Afghanistan, ‘Geography of Afghanistan’, Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia [online map] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Afghanistan#mediaviewer/File:Afghan_topo_en.jpg, (accessed 11 November 2008).

[2] S. Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Cambridge, United States, Da Capo Press, 2007, p. 5.

[3] Ibid., p. 5

[4] United States Central Intelligence Agency (U.S. CIA),‘Afghanistan’, The World Factbook, 2009, https://www.cia.gov/libray/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html, (accessed 1 April 2009).

[5] Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), Embassy in Washington D.C. (United States), ‘Afghanistan in Brief’, https://www.afghanembassy.us/, (accessed 1 April 2009).

[6] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[7] Modified images taken from ‘The beautiful Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan’, Reddit, 2015, https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2nd45h/the_beautiful_hindu_kush_mountains_of_afghanistan/, (accessed 10 August 2019); ‘Green hills near Maimana, Faryab Province’ and ‘Brilliant red mountains near Musa Qala in Helmand Province’, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/afghanistan-is-beautiful-photos-2017-12?r=US&IR=T#-and-sights-of-jaw-dropping-serenity-8, (accessed 10 August 2019); ‘Afghanistan deserts sand Wallpaper’, hdwallsbox.com, 2019, https://hdwallsbox.com/afghanistan-deserts-sand-wallpaper-83793/, (accessed 10 August 2019).

[8] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, p. 4.

[9] Ibid., p. 4.

[10] Ibid., p. 4.

[11] Ibid., p. 3.

[12] Ibid., p. 2.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., p. 9.

[15] Ibid., pp. 32-51.

[16] Ibid., p. 51.

[17] Ibid., p. 81.

[18] Ibid., p. 95.

[19] Ibid., p. 100.

[20] Ibid., p. 107.

[21] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, A Bobbie Kalman Book: The Lands, Peoples, and Cultures Series, UK, Crabtree Publishing Company, 2003, pp. 7-10, 14.

[22] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, pp. 176-187.

[23] General Roberts, veteran of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, cited in Tanner, ibid., p. 217.

[24] Tanner, ibid., p. 241.

[25] Ibid., p. 255-257.

[26] Ibid., p. 5.

[27] Ibid., pp. 18, 23, 28, 116.

[28] Ibid., pp. 3, 123.

[29] Ibid., p. 4.

[30] Ibid., p. 4, 123.

[31] Ibid., p. 4.

[32] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009; United States Central Intelligence Agency (U.S. CIA), ‘South Asia:: Afghanistan’, The World Factbook, 2019, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html, (accessed 8 August 2019).

[33] Modified images taken from  ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., pp. 1,4,16, 25.

[34] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[35] United States Central Intelligence Agency (U.S. CIA),‘Pakistan’, The World Factbook, 2009, https://www.cia.gov/libray/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html, (accessed 1 April 2009); United States Central Intelligence Agency (U.S. CIA), ‘South Asia:: Pakistan’, The World Factbook, 2019, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html, (accessed 8 August 2019).

[36] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, p. 7.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Cited in Tanner, ibid., p. 64.

[39] Ibid., pp. 57, 60.

[40] Ibid., p. 65.

[41] Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), Afghan Embassy in Warsaw (Poland), ‘Ethnic Groups’,  https://www.afghanembassy.com.pl/eng/, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[42] Ibid.; ‘Pashtun Tribes’, Pashtun Foundation, 2009, http://en.pashtunfoundation.org/bodytext.php?request=66, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[43] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, ibid.; U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[44] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, ibid., 2009.

[45] United States Library of Congress, ‘Tajikistan – Historical Background’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-13606.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[46] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[47] United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tajik’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[48] Ibid.

[49] Ibid.

[50] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Modified images taken from  ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., pp. 5, 16 and ‘AFGHANISTAN – the land’, A Bobbie Kalman Book: The Lands, Peoples, and Cultures Series, UK, Crabtree Publishing Company, 2003, p. 13.

[53] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 81.

[54] Ibid., p. 100.

[55] Ibid., p. 100; United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Hazara’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[56] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[57] Ibid.

[58] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Hazara’, op. cit.

[59] S.A. Mousavi, ‘Introduction’, The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study, New York, St Martins, 1997, p. 17.

[60] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[61] United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Other Groups’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[62] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., pp. 101-102.

[63] Ibid., p. 112.

[64] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.; United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Uzbeks’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[65] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Uzbeks’, ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[68] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 78.

[69] United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Turkmen’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[70] Ibid.

[71] U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[72] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Turkmen’, op. cit.; GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[73] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., p. 18 and ‘AFGHANISTAN – the land’, op. cit., p. 26.

[74] GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[75] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit.,p. 152.

[76] Ibid., p. 133.

[77] United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009); ‘Pashtun Tribes’, Pashtun Foundation, op. cit.

[78] ‘Pashtun Tribes’, Pashtun Foundation, ibid.

[79] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.

[80] ‘Pashtun Tribes’, Pashtun Foundation, op. cit.

[81] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 153.

[82] Winston S. Churchill, ‘Chapter XI – The Mahmund Valley’, My Early Life, London, Thornton Butterworth, 1930, p. 121.

[83] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 133.

[84] Ibid., p. 134.

[85] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.

[86] United States Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Interethnic Relations’, Country Studies Series, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-39.html, (accessed 15 May 2009).

[87] Ibid.

[88] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.

[89] Ibid.

[90] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the culture’, A Bobbie Kalman Book: The Lands, Peoples, and Cultures Series, UK, Crabtree Publishing Company, 2003, pp.18-19.

[91] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Interethnic Relations’, op. cit.; U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.

[92] Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 4-6.

[93] Ibid., p. 6

[94] Ibid.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid.

[97] Mousavi, ibid., pp. 6, 7, 8; U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Interethnic Relations’, op. cit.; GIRoA Embassy in Warsaw, ‘Ethnic Groups’, op. cit.

[98] Mousavi, ibid., p. 7.

[99] Modified image taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., p. 15.

[100] Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 9, 14.

[101] Ibid., p. 7

[102] Ibid.

[103] Ibid., p. 5.

[104] Ibid., p. 4.

[105] Ibid., p. 5.

[106] Ibid., pp. 4-5.

[107] Ibid., p. 3.

[108] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the culture’, op. cit., pp. 14, 16 and ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., p. 20.

[109] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 255; A. Rashid, ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, Foreign Affairs 78, no. 6 (November/December) 1999,  p. 23; B.R. Rubin, ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan – State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2^nd ed), New Haven(Conn), Yale University Press, 2002, pp. x-xii.

[110] C. Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, God’s Terrorists: the Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad, London, Little & Brown, 2006, p. 272.

[111] A. Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, Modern Afghanistan: A Struggle and Survival, London, I. B. Tauris, 2004, pp. 211, 214.

[112] Ibid., p. 211, 214.

[113] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 277.

[114] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 220.

[115] Ibid., p. 220.

[116] Ibid., p. 220.

[117] Ibid., p. 210.

[118] Ibid., p. 220; Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 277.

[119] Saikal, ibid., p. 220; Tanner, ibid., p. 277.

[120] Saikal, ibid., p. 215.

[121] Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 290.

[122] Ibid., pp. 290-291.

[123] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 279.

[124] Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 291.

[125] K. Baker, War in Afghanistan: A Short History of 80 Wars & Conflicts in Afghanistan & the North-West Frontier 1839–2001, Australia, Rosenburg Publishing Pty Ltd, 2011, p. 202.

[126] Baker, ibid., p. 202; Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 221; Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 279.

[127] Saikal, ibid., p. 221.

[128] The Madrassahs had been founded during the 1980s under the military regime of General Zia, who had taken power determined to ‘Islamicise’ Pakistan. According to Allen, General Zia created an authoritarian Islamic state in Pakistan which in fact had little support from the people of Pakistan. Under his authoritarian Islamic state, 9,000 additional Madrassahs were established on the sub-continent, the majority in Pakistan proper, but also in the semi-autonomous FATA tribal areas on Pakistan’s western border, where Zia hoped the new Islamic fundamentalist schools would win over the Pashtun population of Pakistan. These 10,000 total Madrassahs in Pakistan, supported by Pakistan’s Islamist parties and the Saudi and United Arab Emirates missionary movement, adhered mostly to the Deobandi (7,000 or 70%) or Wahhabi brand of Islam. Generations of male youths were radicalised in these Madrassahs, taught to prize jihad, to be anti-Shia, anti-Hindu and anti-Christian, and trained to fight. Many joined Pakistan’s civil service, army and ISI organization where they remain to this day. Many others joined the Taliban (Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, pp. 272, 274-275).

[129] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 221.

[130] Cited in Baker, War in Afghanistan: A Short History of 80 Wars & Conflicts, op. cit., p. 202.

[131] ‘Episode 5’, ‘Ross Kemp – Back on the Frontline’, dir. Southan Morris, U.K., Television Channel Sky 1, British Sky Broadcasting (216 mins), 2011 [DVD].

[132] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 280.

[133] Tanner, ibid., p. 280; Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 221.

[134] Tanner, ibid., p. 281.

[135] Baker, War in Afghanistan: A Short History of 80 Wars & Conflicts, op. cit., p. 203.

[136] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 281; Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 222.

[137] Saikal, ibid., p. 222; Tanner, ibid., p. 280.

[138] Saikal, ibid., pp. 222-223.

[139] Ibid., p.224.  

[140] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 283.

[141] Ibid., p. 283

[142] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 222.

[143] Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 291.

Mullah Omar’s use of this title, along with the donning of a centuries-old cloak preserved in Kandahar’s main mosque as a garment worn by Mohammed, shocked many Muslims in Afghanistan and abroad since these actions implied that he saw himself as a leader for Muslims beyond the borders of Afghanistan (J.F. Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Rule by Ultra-Strict Clerics’, The New York Times, 7 October 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/07/world-afghanistan-s-professional-class-flees-rule-by-ultra-strict-clerics.html, (accessed 28 April 2009).

[144] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 224.

[145] Ibid., pp. 224-225.

[146] Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Ultra-Strict Clerics’, op. cit. 

[147] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 225.

[148]  Modified images taken from ‘Moments in U.S. Diplomatic History. “A Recipe for Endless War” – The Rise of the Taliban’, Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training, 1998, https://adst.org/2014/08/a-recipe-for-endless-war-the-rise-of-the-taliban/, (accessed 10 August 2019) ; ‘Photos: The Taliban’, in E Labott, N Paton Walsh & T. Hume, ‘Rocket strikes in Kabul intended for John Kerry, Taliban say’, CNN, 10 April 2016, https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/10/politics/kerry-afghanistan-taliban-rockets/index.html, (accessed 10 August 2019); H. Bloch, ‘The View From Kabul’, NPR, 8 September 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/08/492000767/the-view-from-kabul-on-sept-11-2001, (accessed 10 August 2019); and ‘The Taliban: How it began, and what it wants’, CNN, 13 March 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/03/13/taliban-militant-afghanistan-pakistan-war-soviets-orig-lon-ak.cnn, (accessed 10 August 2019).

[149] Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 292.

[150] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 222; United States Department of State (DoS), ‘Background Note: Afghanistan’, 2007, http://www.state.gov/r/pas/ei/bgn/5380.html, (accessed 2 September 2008).

[151] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 284; J.F. Burns. ‘The Fiercely Faithful – A Special Report: From Cold War, Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, The New York Times, 14 February 2006, http://www.nytimes/com/1996, (accessed 28 April 2009).

[152] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, op. cit.

[153] Ibid.

[154] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 284; Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Ultra-Strict Clerics’, op. cit. 

[155] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, op. cit.

[156] J.F. Burns, ‘New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code’, The New York Times, 1 October 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/01/world/new-afghan-rulers-impose-harsh-mores-of-the-islamic-code.html, (accessed 28 April 2009).

[157] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xv; Burns, ‘New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code’, ibid.; Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Ultra-Strict Clerics’, op. cit. 

[158] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit., pp. 23, 29.

[159] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 284

[160] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the culture’, op. cit., pp. 4, 25-26.

[161] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 284.

[162] Ibid., p. 284.

[163] Modified images taken from S. Levi, ‘The Long, Long Struggle for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan’, ORIGINS – Current Events in Historical Perspective, Published by the History Departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University, Vol. 2, issue 12, September 2009, https://origins.osu.edu/article/long-long-struggle-women-s-rights-afghanistan, (accessed 10 August 2019) and ‘Photos: The Taliban’, in E Labott, N Paton Walsh & T. Hume, ‘Rocket strikes in Kabul intended for John Kerry, Taliban say’, CNN, 10 April 2016, https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/10/politics/kerry-afghanistan-taliban-rockets/index.html, (accessed 10 August 2019).

[164] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xv.

[165] Ibid., p. xvii.

[166] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, op. cit.; Burns, ‘New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code’, op. cit.

[167] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, ibid.

[168] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p.284.

[169] Rubin, cited in Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, op. cit., p. 291.

[170] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, op. cit.; Allen, ibid., p. 291.

[171] V. Liebl, ‘Pushtuns, Tribalism, Leadership, Islam and Taliban: A Short View’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, vol. 18, no. 3, (September) 2007, p. 492.

[172] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xvii.

[173] Cited in Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 113.

[174] Rubin, cited in Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 291.

[175] Modified image taken from ‘Taliban’ in ‘The Afghan War’, Em Esber Blog 2 [online blog], 28 July 2010, https://jibraelangel2blog.blogspot.com/2010/07/the-afghan-war.html, (accessed 10 August 2019).

[176] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xxiv; Rashid, ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, op. cit., p. 33.

[177] Burns, ‘The Fiercely Faithful – Afghans Inherit Brutal New Age’, op. cit.; Burns, ‘New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code’, op. cit.; Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Ultra-Strict Clerics’, op. cit. 

[178] Burns, ‘New Afghan Rulers Impose Harsh Mores of the Islamic Code’, op. cit.; Burns, ‘Afghanistan’s Professional Class Flees Rule by Ultra-Strict Clerics’, ibid.

[179] J.F. Burns, ‘Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield’, The New York Times, 13 March 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/13/magazine/blowback-from-the-afghan-battlefield.html, (accessed 5 May 2009).

[180] Ibid.

Attacks took place in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burma, China, Egypt, India, Jammu-Kashmir, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Tadzhikistan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Yemen and the United States (Burns, ‘Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield’, ibid.; Rashid, ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, op. cit., p. 23).

[181] Burns, ‘Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield’, ibid.; Rashid, ibid., p. 30.

[182] Rashid, ibid., p. 22, 31.

[183] Allen, ‘The Coming Together/Unholy Alliance’, p. 292; Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 226; S. Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 30, no. 12, 2007, pp. 1019-1020.

[184] Allen, ibid., p. 292; Saikal, ibid., p. 226.

In point of fact the alliance between the Al Qaeda and the Taliban was an unnatural phenomenon – with little common ground except for their mutually-compatible needs (territorial sanctuary for Al Qaeda and financial support and training camps for the Taliban), and their love of terror, inhumane brutality, and death.  Outside of these commonalities, the two sides are intrinsically ideologically incompatible.

The Pashtun belief in Sufism is considered apostasy, even hypocrisy, to the Wahhabists, while Arabs and Wahhabists are usually anathema to xenophobic Pashtuns. At this point of time, however, both sides had something to gain from this unusual alliance.

Nevertheless, the truth is that the Wahhabist-oriented Al Qaeda simply tolerate the Taliban as ‘a lesser evil to be used against the greater evils of deviant Islam and the West in that order’.  In the long term, because they are considered heretical, Pashtun Sufis and the Taliban ‘will be ‘cleansed’ as the apostates they are perceived to be once they have served Al Qaeda’s purpose in defeating the ‘majority-rule’ democratic and freedom-loving States (“Governments of the people, by the people and for the people”):

(1) first, the collection of ‘majority-rule’ pro-democracy and pro-freedom State Allies in the Middle East region and the entire Muslim world (including Muslim population-representative democracies in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia and Indonesia etc.), referred to by the extremely-controlling, Islamo-fascist, and totalitarian terrorists as merely Muslim ‘puppets’; and

(2) secondly, the even greater number of historically-derived and experience-proven, British-model Democratic States of “the Collective West” all around the world, including a large collection of Democratic States that stretch from Europe to Africa, to Asia, and to the Pacific (Liebl, ‘Pushtuns, Tribalism, Leadership, Islam and Taliban: A Short View’, op. cit., pp. 505-7).

[185] Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, op. cit., pp. 1019-1020.

[186] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 227;

[187] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xxviii.

[188] Ibid., p. xix-xx.

[189] Ibid, p. xix-xx; J.F. Burns, ‘Fighters in Afghan mountains Live for Next Battle’, The New York Times, 15 October 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/15/world/fighters-in-afghan-mountains-live-for-next-battle.html, (accessed 28 April 2009).

[190] Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., p. 225; Rubin, ibid., p. xx-xxi; Rashid, ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, op. cit., p. 27.

[191] Rashid, ibid., p. 27.

[192] Ibid.

[193] Ibid., p. viii.

[194] Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. xxi.

[195] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 285.

[196] Cited in Saikal, ‘Mujahideen Islamic Rule, Taliban Extremism and US Intervention’, op. cit., pp. 227-228.

[197] ‘9/11 by the Numbers: Death, destruction, charity, salvation, war, money, real estate, spouses, babies, and other September 11 statistics’, New York Magazine, September 2014, https://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm, (accessed 5 June 2009).

[198] Rashid, ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, op. cit., p. 32.

[199] S. M. Maloney, ‘A Violent Impediment: The Evolution of Insurgent Operations in Kandahar Province 2003-07’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 19, no. 2, June 2008, p. 23.

[200] M. Cole, ‘Killing Ourselves in Afghanistan’, Salon.com, 10 March 2008, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/10/taliban/print.html, (accessed 12 June 2010).

[201] M. Boot, ‘Get Serious About Afghanistan’, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), 4 October 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/11598, (accessed 4 February 2010).

[202] Cole, ‘Killing Ourselves in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[203] Modified images taken from the International Herald Tribune, www.iht.com, and ABC News, www.abc.news, (accessed 14 January 2011).

[204] Boot, ‘Get Serious About Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[205] B. Roggio, ‘Al Qaeda’s Pakistan Sanctuary – Musharraf appeases the Taliban’, Worldwide Standard Online Journal, vol. 12, no. 28, 2 April 2007, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/457/rzpvh.asp, (accessed  2 June 2010).

[206] U.S. Mission NATO HQ (released by Wikileaks), Cable 08USNATO200, ISAF Commander McNeill Praises Allied Unity, Highlights Remaining Challenges In His Farewell Address, 6 June 2008, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/06/08USNATO200.html,(accessed 17 January 2014).  

[207] Cole, ‘Killing Ourselves in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[208] Cited in Cole, ibid.

[209] Ibid.

[210] Ibid.

[211] U.S. Mission NATO HQ (released by Wikileaks), Cable 08USNATO347, Readout: September 24 North Atlantic Council Meeting, 25 September 2008, http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=08USNATO347&q=afghanistan%20canberra%20caveats, (accessed 26 July 2013); U.S. Mission NATO HQ (released by Wikileaks), Cable 09USNATO30, Readout North Atlantic Council Meeting January 28, 2009, 29 January 2009, http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09USNATO30&q=afghanistan%20canberra%20caveats, (accessed 26 July 2013). 

[212] Cole, ‘Killing Ourselves in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[213] Boot, ‘Get Serious About Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[214] E. Lake, S. Carter & B. Slavin, ‘Exclusive: Taliban chief hides in Pakistan’, 20 November 2009, The Washington Post,http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/20/taliban-chief-takes-cover-in-pakistan-populace/?page=all, (accessed 3 February 2014).

[215] A. Heywood, Key Concepts in Politics, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, p. 252.

[216] Ibid., p. 253.

[217] Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. 10.

[218] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 123.

[219] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.

[220] Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan, op. cit., p. 11.

[221] Ibid., p. 11.

[222] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., pp. 123, 127.

[223] Modified image taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the people’, op. cit, p.15.

[224] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 101.

[225] Modified images taken from ‘AFGHANISTAN – the culture’, op. cit., pp. 11, 17 and ‘AFGHANISTAN – the land’, op. cit., p. 26.

[226] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Interethnic Relations’, op. cit.

[227] U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Tribes’, op. cit.; U.S. Library of Congress, ‘Afghanistan – Interethnic Relations’, ibid.

[228] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 143.

[229] Ibid., pp. 124, 126, 129.

[230] Ibid., p. 143.

[231] GIRoA Embassy in Washington D.C, ‘Afghanistan in Brief’, op. cit.

[232] Cited in ‘Afghanistan in Brief’, ibid.

[233] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 204.

[234] Ibid., p. 148.

[235] Ibid., p. 205.

[236] Ibid., p. 210.

[237] Ibid., p. 37.

[238] Ibid., p. 152.

[239] Ibid., p. 76; U.S. CIA, ‘Afghanistan’, 2009.

[240] Liebl, ‘Pushtuns, Tribalism, Leadership, Islam and Taliban: A Short View’, op cit., pp. 497, 500.

[241] Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History, op. cit., p. 208.

[242] Ibid., p. 118, 123, 157.

[243] Ibid., p. 139.

[244] Ibid., p. 152.

[245] Cited in Tanner, ibid., p. 134.

[246] Modified image taken from a photograph in a powerpoint presentation prepared by New Zealand Army Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Nick Gillard, Commander of NZ PRT14 (April-November 2009), and entitled ‘BRIEF 101: Bamyan Briefing Notes, New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team Bamyan’, New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), 20 April 2010.