Profile 20: Jihad “Johnny” Lind Walker and Adam Gahdahn

The Taliban are mostly Afghan, but there are exceptions. In October 2001, an estimated 150 British-born Muslims fought alongside the Taliban. James McLinton was nicknamed the Tartan Taliban because the Scottish-born, Catholic-raised Briton moved to Pakistan and became involved in the insurgency. The British Tipton Taliban, or Tipton Five, were captured on Afghan battlefields. Raised in the English Midlands and committed to jihad in Afghanistan, they were sent to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation. There were other Westerners as well, but only one was known as Jihad Johnny.

Intelligent and self-motivated, the California boy John Phillip Walker Lindh converted to Islam at age 16 after reading Malcolm X’s autobiography. Coming from an upper-middle-class background with parents who described themselves as progressive and divorced when he was young, he wanted to learn to speak and read Koranic Arabic. This was unusual for a boy raised in the leafy suburbs of Washington, D.C. Few who knew Walker as a teenager would have predicted he’d join any militant organization. His father said, “John is a very sweet kid, devoted, and religious.”

Walker moved to Pakistan, enrolled in a madrassa, and immersed himself in Urdu, Pashto, and Islamic studies. He became valuable to Islamist groups because he understood American customs, ceremonies, and sensitivities, and his open dedication to Salafist Islam impressed fellow Muslims. His mother told Newsweek that his son was not “totally streetwise.” In a broad understatement, his father acknowledged that his boy “made a bad decision going to Afghanistan,” but added, “we love him unconditionally.”

Few Americans were sympathetic to him when he was caught, wet, simpering, and hiding in a cave. A December 2001 poll showed that 70 percent of respondents believed Walker should be jailed or executed. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he remains today. While John Walker is introspective and intellectual, his fellow Californian, Adam Gadahn, displays a foolish persona. Like Walker, he converted to Islam to find spirituality lacking in his countercultural lifestyle. His early religious background was eclectic and confusing. His grandfather was Jewish and married a Presbyterian, and his father is a self-described atheist. His mother is nominally Roman Catholic. Adam spent part of his childhood living with family on a California goat farm. Dissatisfied with farm life, he searched online for employment and found Islam instead. He embraced Islam after seeing videotapes of Muslims killing Americans and others. He joined al-Qaeda and acts as a propagandist of questionable effectiveness. For his numerous calls to kill Americans, Adam Gadahn is wanted for treason. However, he is mostly regarded as an embarrassment to al-Qaeda. Few non-Muslim Americans see his Jihadist bombast as anything more than tired chatter.

**Summary**

The Taliban’s fighting capabilities have significantly improved. They employ infiltration, ambushes, hit-and-run tactics, sniper strategies, roadside bombs, and other methods. Advocating a narrow, militaristic ideology, they are well-organized and often ruthless. Since 2001, the Taliban’s tactics and abilities have steadily grown, despite many international observers initially believing they had been defeated. Their more effective tactics include assassinations, roadside bombs, infiltration, impersonation, and suicide attacks. The Taliban are also skilled in offensive and counterintelligence operations. Two of the more colorful, if unbalanced, figures linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda-supported insurgency are the Californians John “Taliban Johnny” Walker and Adam “Azzam the American” Gahdahn.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

There are many attacks that are difficult to thwart. For example, in Herat Province in April 2007, Taliban fighters dressed in fake ANP police uniforms set up an illegal checkpoint and tried to ambush a combined ANA and Coalition patrol as they approached. Afghan and Coalition forces seized over 100 fake uniforms and recovered more than a dozen false ID documents in a single raid. The Taliban might have acted alone or received the uniforms and IDs from inside sources. Another example of a carefully planned, multi-tactic attack was against the Defense Ministry in Kabul in 2011. The attacker had a special pass allowing him entry. Once inside, a man in an army uniform jumped from a car and stormed the main office building, shooting and killing two soldiers before he was shot. This attack involved pre-operation surveillance, understanding the security system and staff schedule, predicting when a high-ranking official would be present, obtaining the necessary passes, possibly securing inside agents, and training at least two operatives for what was almost certainly a suicide mission.

The Taliban may have had insiders involved. The police are heavily targeted by infiltrators. Since 2006, infiltration efforts have steadily increased. By 2010, concerns arose about a potential plot to assassinate British Prime Minister David Cameron during his visit. Since then, infiltration techniques have become more advanced and widespread. One of the most notorious infiltration operations was the assassination of President Karzai’s brother in July 2011. A trusted bodyguard, a longtime family friend, shot him after asking to speak privately with Karzai. The Taliban claimed responsibility, and it’s likely they had a hand in the operation, which was almost certainly a suicide attack. The bodyguard was quickly killed and did not reveal his motives. Successful Taliban infiltration has also enabled large-scale, theatrical escapes.

Similar to the famous World War II “Great Escape,” in June 2008, 480 inmates escaped from Kandahar prison by tunneling for over five months, constructing a 1,050-foot tunnel to the main prison, bypassing checkpoints, watchtowers, and razor-wire-topped barriers. In August 2011, the U.S. announced it would keep control of Afghanistan’s high-profile prison indefinitely, citing concerns about the rule of law.

Profile 19: Three Bullets and One Leg - The Life and Death of the Taliban’s “al-Zarqawi” – Mullah Dadullah Akhund Born in Kandahar Province, Daduallah Akhund, known as Mullah Dadullah, was educated in a madrassa in Balochistan. He fought against the Soviets and lost a leg to a landmine. Despite this, he continued fighting the Soviets, the Northern Alliance, the Karzai government, and Coalition forces. Using contacts with Pakistani leaders, he helped the Taliban protect supply convoys from Turkmenistan to Pakistan traveling through Herat. He made his mark. He fought the Northern Alliance in the late 1990s and helped capture Mazar-e Sharif. He was captured by Adul Rashid Dostum’s forces but escaped despite his missing leg. He became a hero among his tribesmen. Most accounts say Dadullah had many lives on his hands. He was closely linked to atrocities against the Hazarra. After 2001, he became a leading field commander for Mullah Omar but was disliked by his associates because of kidnappings, beheadings, his ego, and unpredictable violent fits. In his final years, he earned the nickname the “al Zarqawi” of Afghanistan because of his bloodthirsty zeal for beheading hostages. He’s also credited with creating the “kamikaze tactic” discussed earlier. Feared by enemies and peers alike, he produced ghastly propaganda films. One showed him and others slitting six men’s throats, accused of spying for the Americans. Dadullah was most active in FATA, where he helped build the Taliban to about 20,000 fighters, with help from Pakistani agencies. In 2005, a Pakistani court sentenced him to life for trying to kill a politician, but he still moved freely in Quetta. When he was killed in May 2007 at age 39, his body—with one leg and three bullet wounds—was shown to journalists to prove he was truly dead and hadn’t once again dodged Coalition forces. Once a prolific killer, he had been on the coalition’s most-wanted list for years, and eventually, he was taken off. Now, lying motionless on a stainless-steel table, Dadullah was truly dead, having stopped his violent ways.no more.

Profile 17: Best Friends and Broken Hearts in the Afghan Hurt Locker

Two Britons, Liam and Theo, were partners in a particularly dangerous assignment. They were counter-IED specialists whose mission was to find hidden IEDs planted by the Taliban. This required steady nerves and precision. The two had undergone rigorous, specialized training before serving together. Although they shared much beyond their courage, they were also physically quite different. Lance Cpl. Liam Tasker was a Scottish-born soldier in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, and Theo was a Springer Spaniel. They were also best friends.

The two were inseparable, hunting for roadside bombs in Helmand province. Once, Theo discovered a Taliban underground facility where IEDs were probably made. They set a record for finding the most weapons and bombs in Afghanistan. They loved each other. Tasker’s father recalled, "Theo would sleep at the bottom of his (Tasker’s) bed, but he would wait until he thought Liam was asleep and then get in beside him." They slept together, lived together, and worked together. They both died on the same day in Afghanistan.

The UK Ministry of Defence issued the following statement: “On 1 March 2011, LCpl Tasker was participating in a patrol with his dog, Theo, when they were engaged by small arms fire, during which LCpl Tasker was struck and died from his injuries. Sadly, on return to Camp Bastion, Theo suffered a seizure and died.

Earlier, Liam had nominated his partner for a special medal of valor for combat animals. Liam’s mother said, "Liam was so proud of Theo. He was his world. I treasure the letter he wrote recommending him for the medal." Their remains returned to Britain together on the same flight. Theo’s ashes were handed to Liam’s girlfriend, Leah. Both Liam and Theo were remembered with love and respect by their unit’s soldiers. One soldier said, “Theo and LCpl Tasker did a brave job together in Afghanistan and … saved a lot of lives.” British Defence Secretary Dr. Liam Fox added that Britain will be “eternally grateful.” Liam’s mother expressed her gratitude for the love Theo gave her son, but she remains unsure whether her boy’s best friend died of a seizure. “He and Theo had a very special bond. They worked together and died together.” Tasker’s mother believes Theo “died of a broken heart.”

Unlike Theo, most dogs deployed in Afghanistan come home safely. Courageous canines, like their human comrades, are recognized for valor in Britain. Treo, not to be confused with Theo from Profile 17, is an 8-year-old black Labrador who received the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross for bravery in Afghanistan on February 25, 2010. Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra presented Treo with the medal at the Imperial War Museum. The citation praised Treo “for his gallantry in saving countless human lives. He continued his duties despite the dangers and, in the process, saved many lives." Treo is also the subject of a biography written by his owner.

Since 2012, American and British forces have increased their use of dogs to detect explosives. As one handler said, “If something is not supposed to be in the ground, a dog will find it." The U.S. Army also uses dogs in Afghanistan. The “Houn Dawg,” 203rd Engineer Battalion, Missouri National Guard’s explosive detection team, has cleared about 75 percent of the IEDs in their area. They sometimes receive K9 support, but often rely on route clearance equipment and ground troops.

Profile 18: Collin J. Bowen—“He Went to Afghanistan to Protect the Land”

“It's been 3 yrs, Bud… you will never be forgotten.” — SFC Carl Olney

If he hadn’t been in his vehicle on Khost Road on January 2, 2008, he probably would have been home, safe, two weeks later. His wife and children eagerly awaited his return. His home was in Maryland, where the 38-year-old Staff Sgt. Collin J. Bowen had earned his computer science degree, hunted, fished, and raised his family. He loved the Army, especially teaching computer skills to eager Afghan soldiers. A natural teacher and a warm man, he completed his first combat deployment and signed up for another. Very popular with children, Collin loved giving out candy, pencils, and trinkets to street kids, who would smile and rush along with their gifts.

He finished his last mission and was 6 miles from his base when his vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb. He sustained burns over 50% of his body, but was expected to survive. With a breathing tube in his throat, he was sent home. After the attack, he couldn’t talk, but on good days he could lift his fingers to signal that he understood some words. Unfortunately, his injuries were too severe, and multiple infections proved lethal. He passed away after 13 surgeries in March 2008 and was buried at Arlington. Posthumously, he was promoted to E7.

His sacrifice was honored by the People’s Burn Foundation, which awarded him the True Blue Award for loyalty after his death. They quoted the Greeks: "all men have fears… but the brave put down their fears and go forward… sometimes to death… but always to victory."

Roadside Bombs and “Pink Mist”

            Roadside bombs continue to terrorize soldiers and hinder movement. Like ambushes hidden among the greenery of the Afghan spring, roadside bombs have a devastating psychological impact on Coalition Forces. About 70% of attacks on Coalition Forces are caused by roadside bombs, and their sophistication has increased over the past 11 years. Many bombs are still quite simple but remain powerful, deadly, and difficult to detect. 

`           Afghanistan was heavily mined during the war against the Soviets. In farms, footpaths, and roads, landmines injured and killed Afghans for generations. The so-called “butterfly bomb" was the weapon, frequently planted in areas suspected of harboring mujahedin, designed to maim insurgents. These munitions could not tell the difference between fighters and civilians and were triggered by the weight of an average person. Hundreds of thousands of these bombs were dropped by helicopters. As they fell, their small wings fluttered, earning them their seemingly gentle nickname.

            The dread of landmines became a dramatic theme for journalists and dramatists. In David Edgar's play, Black Tulips, Soviet soldiers are briefed by a sapper on the profusion and lethality of their own landmines, which were retrieved by the mujahedin and used against Soviet armor resourcefully. The mujahedin would place an anti-personnel mine on top of other mines, and the blast power would destroy armor. The Taliban used this tactic effectively against ISAF forces.  The tactic still works.

            The Soviets left stockpiles of munitions for the Afghans, but there are many other sources of weapons. Today, bombs and bomb components pour into Afghanistan from other countries, namely Pakistan, Iran, and China. British diplomats claimed that advanced anti-aircraft missiles, components for armor-piercing roadside bombs, and land mines were discovered and traced back to Chinese factories. But Pakistan is, by far, the major source of munitions and chemical elements needed to fabricate improvised bombs. Particularly threatening has been the stream of ammonium nitrate.  Senator Richard Blumenthal has demanded, "The Pakistanis need to prove that they are stopping and stemming the flow of fertilizer." His is not a lone voice.

            Much of the ammonium nitrate is imported from Pakistan, but most of the bombs are fabricated in Afghanistan. In one raid in 2009, Coalition Forces uncovered 225,000 kilograms, or half a million pounds, of ammonium nitrate. This single haul could have powered thousands of bombs. A typical improvised bomb weighs less than 30 kilograms.   Seizures of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer in Afghanistan doubled in the first 7 months of 2012 compared to the same period last year in 2011. According to a senior U.S. advisor, “We are sweeping ammonium nitrate fertilizer off the battlefield at historic rates. But the bombs are going up at historic rates, too, and it is directly related. It is a supply issue."

            Roadside bombs are very difficult to detect. For this reason, Coalition Forces have experimented with both offensive and defensive tactics and vehicles. Transportation vehicles have become more rugged. Mine-protected troop carriers have been developed to withstand direct hits from roadside bombs, with personnel escaping with relatively minor injuries. Mini-flails have become much more effective than the traditional flails, attached in front of armored anti-mine vehicles.  But there is the constant dread by soldiers and Marines on patrol. U.S. Marine Cpl. Matt Bowman explained, “We were on patrol.  We ran into an IED. I was the one who got hit by it.” The high school wrestler from Indiana lost both legs above the knee and most of his left hand.

Murder Holes and Snipers

            Ambushes in Afghanistan happen both in the countryside and within the 'green hell.' A senior NATO official compared these tactics to those used by Hezbollah in Lebanon. In cities, Taliban disguise themselves in many outfits, including women’s clothing. "This kind of strategy is very, very difficult not only for NATO in Afghanistan but also in other parts of the world." The city Taliban have created their own hell for Coalition and Afghan security forces within urban areas. They cleverly hide sniper fire inside buildings, often with remarkable precision. In towns and cities, Taliban gunmen bored holes in the homes of sympathizers or hostages that provide a sniper with a direct shot up to 400 meters. The Taliban use camouflage and keep the holes small enough to go unnoticed from a distance.

            The Taliban’s marksmanship has grown sharper. Although U.S. trainers have had difficulty improving the overall accuracy of ANA marksmen, the Taliban have developed outstanding sharpshooters. The Taliban’s use of camouflage, stealth, high-powered optics, and coordinated attacks has made them tough marksmen.

            One Taliban sniper was particularly deadly. In 2009, an intense battle began that resembled the famous sniper duel in Stalingrad, where elite snipers from the Red Army and Wehrmacht faced off in a deadly contest. A British officer was determined to find and eliminate the Taliban’s top shooter. By April 2010, the Taliban sniper had killed seven British troops over five months. The youngest victim was 19. “Their sniper is giving us real problems, and we’ve not yet figured out how to take him out,” said a British officer. Three of the sniper’s victims were British sharpshooters. Coalition leaders believe Taliban snipers are being trained outside of Afghanistan. The snipers kill and wound civilians. One was a middle-aged, part-time postman in England, who previously served in elite British units like the SAS. An official combat artist deployed to Afghanistan, Graeme Lothian was photographing military operations when a Taliban sniper shot him in his left hand in late June 2013. “The tragic thing is that he was a fine artist—his painting is his life—and he is left-handed," said his physician girlfriend.

            There is one case of a Taliban sniper killing two British soldiers with one bullet. These victims had the mission of finding and killing Taliban snipers, but it was they who became prey. Taliban snipers are effective in cities where they can hide more easily.  Sometimes, Taliban snipers reveal their positions, which proves to be a lethal mistake. A British lieutenant explained that the Taliban place wet leaves around their murder hole so dust does not emerge. But sometimes it doesn’t work. “One of these guys (Taliban) used a murder hole to shoot one of my guys, so we used a guided missile to take him out. 

            But Coalition snipers are often the match of their Taliban counterparts. Like the best Taliban snipers, Coalition snipers frequently hit their targets at long distances and sometimes lie in wait for days to kill their prey. In 2009, British Corporal Christopher Reynolds killed his 33rd suspected Taliban. Firing from a tiny hole at a target over 2,000 yards away, “Crackshot Christopher” shot a man carrying an AK-47 who collapsed in the arms of the Taliban behind him. “Crackshot” guffawed as he delivered a “lead sleeping pill.” “I was quite proud of that – it is the longest record kill in Afghanistan. I am going to use that fact as a chat-up line in the pub when I get back home.” He did, and it scored him a girlfriend.

            Ambushes in Afghanistan happen inside and outside the “green hell” of the countryside. A senior NATO official compared the tactics to those used by Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the cities, Taliban disguise themselves in many outfits, including women’s clothing. "This kind of strategy is very, very difficult not only for NATO in Afghanistan but also in other parts of the world." The city Taliban have created their own nightmare for Coalition and Afghan security forces in urban areas. Cleverly hidden Taliban snipers fire from inside buildings, often with impressive accuracy. In towns and cities, Taliban gunmen bored holes in the homes of sympathizers or hostages, giving snipers a direct line of fire up to 400 meters. The Taliban use camouflage and keep the holes small enough to go unnoticed from a distance.

The Taliban’s marksmanship has improved. Although U.S. trainers have struggled to increase the accuracy of ANA marksmen, the Taliban have produced excellent sharpshooters. Their use of camouflage, effective stalking, high-powered optics, and coordinated attacks have made them formidable marksmen.

            One Taliban sniper was particularly deadly. In 2009, an intense struggle began, reminiscent of the famous sniper duel in Stalingrad, where elite Red Army and Wehrmacht snipers faced off in a deadly contest. A British officer was determined to find and eliminate the Taliban’s top shooter. By April 2010, this Taliban sniper had killed seven British troops over five months. The youngest among his victims was 19. “Their sniper is giving us real problems and we’ve not yet figured out how to take him out,” said a British officer. Three of the sniper's victims were British sharpshooters. Coalition leaders are convinced that Taliban snipers are being trained outside Afghanistan. 

            The snipers kill and wound non-combatants. One was a middle-aged, part-time postman in England who had earlier served in elite British units like the SAS. An official combat artist stationed in Afghanistan, Graeme Lothian was taking photos of military operations when a Taliban sniper shot him in his left hand in late June 2013. "The tragic thing is that he was a fine artist—his painting is his life—and he is left-handed," said his physician girlfriend.

There is one case of a Taliban sniper killing two British soldiers with a single bullet. These soldiers were on a mission to find and kill Taliban snipers, but instead, they became prey. Taliban snipers are effective in cities where they can hide more easily. Sometimes, Taliban snipers reveal their positions, which proves to be deadly mistakes. A British lieutenant explained that the Taliban place wet leaves around their firing holes so dust doesn’t escape, but sometimes it doesn’t work. “One of these guys (Taliban) used a firing hole to shoot one of my guys, so we used a guided missile to take him out. 

            But Coalition snipers are often the match of their Taliban counterparts. Like the best of the Taliban snipers, Coalition snipers often hit their mark at long distances and often lie in wait for days to kill their prey. In 2009, British Corporal Christopher Reynolds killed his 33rd suspected Taliban. Firing from a tiny hole at a target over 2,000 yards away, “Crackshot Christopher” shot a man who was carrying an AK-47 and who collapsed in the arms of the Taliban behind him. “Crackshot,” guffawed, he delivered a “lead sleeping pill.”  “I was quite proud of that – it is the longest record kill in Afghanistan. I am going to use that fact as a chat-up line in the pub when I get back home.” He did, and it scored him a girlfriend.

Profile 16: Juma and Sameena - A Boy and a Girl

He said he was 4, but he was probably about 6 or 7. He was too tall for a 4-year-old. Like the other boys in Ghazni Province with whom he played, rag-clad and hair-mussed Juma Gul collected scraps of metal to help his family eat. Juma enjoyed watching soccer. In June 2007, the Taliban grabbed the boy off the streets and placed a suicide vest on him. They told him to hurl himself against U.S. soldiers and pull a magic cord.

But Juma thought the better of it and decided to deliver himself to Afghan soldiers, saving his life and probably that of several Afghan and U.S. troops. "When they first put the vest on my body, I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb. After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help."

The Taliban denied the story, adding that they did not involve small children in suicide operations. They did not, however, explain how a suicide belt managed to fasten itself to the torso of a 6-year-old boy. Juma did not walk away empty-handed from his decision not to blow himself up among American soldiers. U.S. forces in the area passed the hat for Juma, and the boy was given ample money to feed his family without having to collect scrap metal for months. He had plenty of time to watch soccer.

Sameena was 13 in 2008 when she and another schoolgirl were ensnared in a suicide-bombing training program run by teachers at a madrassa in North Waziristan. When she went missing, her mother contacted local police, who began a search. In the program, Sameena was indoctrinated into the jihadist cause. “We saw thousands of video clips showing the atrocities of the U.S. forces against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. We were ready to act as suicide bombers, kill pro-U.S. forces, and win the blessings of God." She was rescued by police, one of whom said, “The situation is extremely bad. We have saved the two girls from becoming suicide bombers, but indications are that the trend of women training as suicide bombers has gained currency."

Ambush Attacks - “Green Hell” and “Omar’s Bed”

Suicide bombs are dreaded for their unpredictability and lethality. So are ambushes, a common Taliban tactic. Ambushes rely on stealth, preparation, and coordination. They are intended to outmaneuver the superior military capabilities of the Afghan and Coalition Forces.

The Taliban will attack government patrols in teams, often firing volleys of two or three RPGs from multiple firing positions, followed by light and heavy machinegun fire. Sometimes the order is reversed, with bursts of machinegun fire preceding RPG and mortar attacks. The Taliban often attack from mutually supporting fields of fire.

The Taliban will often fire from trenches that adjoin the roads. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, they will hide in the nearby mountains, open fire, and then retreat into the mountains. One U.S. soldier said, “This is what they do. They come out of their hideouts and fire at the troops and then disappear.” The Taliban also taunt patrolling soldiers by wrapping white ribbons around trees, demonstrating their ability to attack at will. One U.S. soldier explained that the Taliban signal, 'we're here and we're watching you.’ This causes anxiety among U.S. forces because "It's the way the Taliban operate that makes the war so terrifying and so difficult. You can't even see the enemy before they open fire.”

Ambush is a daily fear for soldiers and Marines, and bullets and munitions appear from nowhere and everywhere. In 2010, Marine LCPL Kyle Carpenter, shown in figure 11, saw a hand grenade tossed from a rooftop during the battle of Marjah. It landed near a fellow Marine, and Carpenter shielded the Marine, absorbing much of the blast and shrapnel. As a result, he lost an eye and the use of an arm. His face was permanently and severely scarred. Carpenter has been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Throughout the year, the Taliban ambushed the government and Coalition Forces. But springtime gives the Taliban a strong tactical advantage because parts of Afghanistan are draped in thick vegetation. As with the foliage and canopy exploited by insurgents in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central America, Afghanistan’s green belts give the Taliban concealment. Snipers have become adept at using foliage to screen their movements and to lure Afghan patrols. One American officer explained, “They've watched us all winter, seeing how we work."

The green grasses and balmy nights of springtime draw fighters from Waziristan and Swat in Pakistan, as well as from Afghan provinces, to sleep outdoors. One tribal elder referred to the masses of Taliban sleeping under the stars as “Mullah Omar’s beds.”

The lush spring vegetation makes it easier to conceal and plant roadside bombs. As one American soldier explained, “Everywhere we walk out there could be our last step. Guys are very meticulous about what they do. They're scared, I hate to use that term, but they're just very aware of what they're doing.”

The Taliban have improvised and shifted their tactics. Their military capabilities continue to improve. In 2007, a group of 75 Taliban tried to overrun a US-led Coalition base in southern Afghanistan in a rare frontal assault. They attacked from three sides, firing their weapons and supported by mortar fire and 107mm rockets. The capability for these large-scale, coordinated attacks increased. By summer 2010, some Taliban fighters were using tactics similar to Coalition Forces. The Taliban have also adapted to urban surveillance and sniping.

Suicide Attacks

"Children taliban leaders say they are tools to achieve God’s will, and whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it," a Taliban commander told a Western journalist. The first Taliban suicide attack happened in 2004, and these attacks continue. Volunteers for suicide missions are sometimes mentally ill, developmentally disabled, addicted to drugs, or too young to make their own decisions. Others seek martyrdom. Incentives include money given to families of suicide bombers, often from foreign supporters, and the lure of an Islamic paradise filled with virgins. Additionally, they receive praise from insurgent leaders, who often act as father figures. However, many boys and young men forced into these attacks are neither naive nor slow-witted. They are simply held captive. Usually, boys are taken from their families and placed in madrassas, where they are educated, sheltered, and fed at no cost to their families. In return, they are expected to kill themselves and others when ordered. While many madrassas deny involvement in violence, some do support it. It is estimated that there are between 10,000 and 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan. To prepare for these attacks, boys are isolated from their families. This process mirrors techniques used by cults in Western societies to cut ties to the past. In the madrassa system, boys are gradually and gently groomed to kill and sacrifice themselves. If they hesitate, they are shamed, mocked, and compared to girls. When they show enthusiasm for cruelty, the boys are praised. They are also filled with hatred toward Westerners, Jews, and Americans with particular zeal. There may be an underground, informal trade in abandoned children. Some American journalists have claimed that there is a trade in children destined to become suicide bombers, with some children costing up to $14,000 each. One example of an attempted child suicide bombing was the arrest of two 10-year-old boys wearing suicide vests in southern Afghanistan. They were caught and, given their age, pardoned. One of the boys, Azizulah, explained that the Taliban had assured him that when “the Americans fire at you (they) cannot hit you.” “They taught me how to blow my vest; they showed me how to press the button in my hand.” They ordered him to sit by the road and wait for foreign forces to come, but the police arrested him. Back in school as of early 2012, Azizulah does not want to repeat the experience. “I ask all my madrassa teachers not to teach kids to become suicide bombers.”

            Almost anyone in Afghanistan can become a victim of a suicide attack. Many victims are civilians, completely disconnected from the insurgency. Suicide bombings often target broad, opportunistic targets. Hotels, such as Kabul's Serena, which cater to foreign workers, are prime targets. The Taliban considers that since all non-Muslim foreigners are the enemy, they are all vulnerable to violent attacks.

The Taliban faces a challenge in public opinion. Suicide bombings alienate some Afghans who might otherwise support the Taliban. Many see the forcing of captive, mentally disturbed, or brainwashed young men and schoolchildren—sometimes called “Omar's missiles”—as clearly un-Islamic and an unacceptable form of warfare. Before the Taliban's rise, suicide attacks in Afghanistan were almost unknown. Some tactics have become gruesome, such as booby-trapping bodies and storing the bodies of killed Coalition soldiers to exchange for money or munitions.

Attacks in bazaars and marketplaces are random. It is often unclear why the Taliban targets public gatherings that are unlikely to attract government or foreign workers. Children, adults, brides, grooms, widows, and widowers are possible targets. At the funeral of a former provincial governor, a suicide bomber disguised as a mourner killed those paying their last respects as the governor was laid to rest.

While many attacks are random, others are carefully planned and narrowly targeted. For example, an attack on the Defense Ministry in 2011 was sophisticated and involved several Taliban tactics. It included at least four planning steps. First, there was pre-operational surveillance. The Taliban has strong human intelligence capabilities. Second, there was infiltration of the ministry to gain access and information. Third, there was an attempt to impersonate Afghan government personnel. Finally, there was the suicide blast. The attacker, who was not an employee of the Ministry, gained access past the first barriers. This was one of the most heavily guarded facilities in Afghanistan.

Some suicide bombings are both narrowly targeted and indiscriminate in killing. They aim to hit a specific target while also killing innocent people. For example, a suicide attack at a wedding in Samagon Province killed top officials—a provincial member of parliament and a security director—but also killed up to 15 others attending, most with no political role. Among the dead were the bride and her father.

Not all attacks go as planned. Some children are fortunate and never hurt themselves or others. This was the case with a 9-year-old schoolgirl who was kidnapped, drugged, armed with a suicide vest, and then escaped. In a common kidnapping method, adults abduct helpless children they have never seen before. However, most girls are not abducted; instead, they are groomed to become suicide bombers. These girls are guided by trusted individuals, making them easier to manipulate and kill.

The motives behind some attacks remain unclear. For example, in mid-September 2012 in Kabul, a woman carried out a suicide bombing. Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami explained that a car bombing, which killed 12 people, was the trigger for a low-budget, amateurish film, “Innocence of the Muslims.” The bomber, identified as Fatima, detonated herself in a car near a wedding hall. Many of the victims were foreigners, which might explain the specific targeting.

Suicide bombings also occur in Pakistan. A major attack took place at the Punjab Regiment Centre in northwestern Pakistan. A young teenager, disguised as a cadet in a new blue uniform, slipped past several security checkpoints—probably with assistance from Taliban operatives. He surged into a crowd, killing 31 Army cadets and young men, and injuring more than 40 others. This was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since a Christmas Day 2010 suicide bombing, when a woman killed 43 people at a UN food distribution point in the tribal district of Bajaur.

Tactics

From Timid Tactics to Blitzkrieg Warfare

Some of the early tactics, especially during their first rise to power in the mid-1990s, were unconventional and often daring, known as “Mad Max style.” They were effective, though primitive. Also called “blitzkrieg” combat, some early Taliban tactics involved heavily armed men supported by armored pickup trucks plunging into enemy positions. These tactics were developed by the mujahideen in the 1980s. They stripped weapons from Soviet MI-8 and MI-24 gunships and mounted them on pickup trucks. These were initially used against the Northern Alliance and later against the Coalition. They called these armed trucks, which formed a makeshift cavalry, ''ahu,'' or deer.

In this tactic, pickup trucks armed with crew-served weapons charged at full speed, firing as they advanced to disorient the targets. In some charges, as many as 50 trucks participated, shooting, terrorizing, and scattering the enemy. Some of these attacks proved effective.

Many of the Taliban’s vehicles suited the environment well. The al Qaeda leader and strategist Al-Adel, in his observations of early battles, praised the durability and adaptability of the “Corolla vehicles.” Not all of the Taliban’s trucks were Toyotas, but Adel joked that “if the Japanese had seen the vehicles in action, they would have used them in advertisements.” Motorcycles, called “iron horses,” along with living, four-legged horses, were quick and agile, well suited to mountainous terrain. Horses often replaced trucks in transporting leaders to hidden caves and encampments. Like other insurgents, the Taliban preferred traveling light, relying less on roads or logistical resupply. But the Taliban dominate their environment and have mastered desert-like terrain.

By 2003, the Taliban began to conserve some of their larger-caliber munitions. According to al-Adel, the Taliban and al Qaeda stopped firing on Coalition aircraft because their anti-aircraft guns were not accurate enough to bring them down. Also, firing these weapons revealed their location and invited counterfire from Coalition forces.

Profile 15: Aafia Sadiqui - Brandeis’ Lady Al Qaeda

In some ways, Dr. Aafia Sadiqui (sometimes spelled Saddiqui or Siddiqui) fits the standard profile of many American-educated Islamists. Like several other al Qaeda compatriots who studied in the West, the Pakistan-born, Texas-raised, MIT-educated neuroscientist was heavily involved in Islamic activities during her university days in Boston. She was active in the MSA.

She earned advanced degrees in the sciences. What certainly sets her apart from other al Qaeda cadre is her receipt of a Ph.D. in brain science from Brandeis University, an unlikely venue for promoting Islamic supremacy. In Boston, where she lived in the late 1990s, she became deeply involved in the Muslim community, particularly the more devout subculture. She became involved in the workings of the Islamic Society of Boston, where the Tsarnaev brothers would later attend services. She became enamored of the works of Abdullah Azzam. She married a Pakistani, had three children, got divorced, and then left the United States for Pakistan on Christmas Day 2002. She married the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM), the planner of the September 2001 attacks, who is also a cousin of Ramzi Yousef, a man convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. People joked that she married into al Qaeda royalty. What happened during the next 5 years remains mysterious.

She was arrested at a border crossing into Afghanistan and remanded to U.S. authorities. She possessed information on chemical and biological weapons and other documents found on a disk that were connected to terrorist operations. She also possessed sodium cyanide and couldn’t explain why she was carrying it into Afghanistan. Earlier, KSM had mentioned her name. He accused her of being involved in al Qaeda fund-raising operations. While in U.S. custody, Sadiqui obtained an assault rifle and, screaming profanities, fired at a U.S. soldier. She missed, but the soldier returned fire, striking her in the abdomen. She survived and was brought back to the United States to stand trial.

At trial, her lawyer claimed that Sadiqui's identity had been stolen by a woman who might have worked with KSM. In court, Lady al Qaeda, who had become a sensation in her native Pakistan, began to act brusquely. Despite her ties to Brandeis, Aafia demanded that no Jews sit on her jury. She shouted at Judge Berman, “The next question will be on anti-Semitism. Israel was behind 9/11. That's not anti-Semitic!” She yelled at an Army officer, "I was never planning a bombing! You're lying!” Her facial contortions, simpering, and outbursts did not help her case. In September 2010, the tirade-prone 37-year-old was sentenced to 86 years in federal prison for attempted murder, armed assault, and other charges.

Her case was taken up by Yvonne Ridley in Britain. Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney dubbed the sentence “political” and proclaimed in Lahore, “I am here for Sidiqui (sic).” I decided to support her when I heard of her. The sentence was upheld on appeal in November 2012. But the whole affair confused some of Sadiqui’s old Boston acquaintances. They remembered a shy, studious, and exotic young woman who spent much time at the local mosque. "She was just nice and soft-spoken… and not terribly assertive."

“An Afghan man will kiss his rifle before he kisses his wife.” An old Afghan saying

            Many Taliban members carried their weapons to Pakistan, but they left larger individual and crew-served weapons behind. What worried Coalition Forces most was the number of weapons caches and the Afghan reluctance to surrender them. The Taliban used donkeys to transport shells made in countless small Pakistani villages along the tribal belt by the Afghan border. Skilled horsemen, many Taliban regularly used their mounts across various terrains, and in some cases, horses outperformed four-wheel-drive vehicles.

It was common for Afghans to own several weapons, which is part of their culture. However, this did not explain the numerous hidden weapon stockpiles in barns, basements, and attics. Instead, many villagers obstructed the Coalition’s efforts to locate these caches. The policy was to leave one AK-47 per family, but many Afghan men, like many American men, had a strong interest in firearms. More difficult to justify was the private ownership of rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bomb components for protection.

Early in the counterinsurgency, U.S. military personnel realized that disarming Afghanistan of large-caliber, crew-served weapons and stopping the production of explosives would be difficult. Some weapons still remained from the Soviet era. Gradually, U.S. soldiers had to go door-to-door in Taliban-sympathetic areas like Kandahar to find weapons and components. Sometimes homes were destroyed to eliminate booby traps, using armored bulldozers, explosives, and air strikes. Many Afghans were less cooperative than expected, with some becoming hostile, and many Coalition Forces faced increasing resistance.

Individual Weapons

            Like many other insurgents, the Taliban prioritized mobility over firepower. Their standard individual weapon is the Kalashnikov, the AK-47, and its modern variants like the AK-47M or AK-74. These are the most widely produced personal firearms today. The AK-47's durability, quality, and military reputation have established it as the global assault rifle of choice. Because they are relatively simple, skilled Afghan gunsmiths can repair them using scrap metal in back-alley workshops.

Both sides in the early fighting favored the AK-47. Its ease of carry and maintenance was crucial in the humid, swampy terrain of Southeast Asia and again in Afghanistan. During the early phase of the Afghan war, many British SAS troops armed themselves with these weapons to better blend in and scavenge ammunition. Today, a typical Taliban fighter carries a knife, a pistol, and possibly a shoulder-fired RPG-7 Soviet rocket launcher. Some also have grenades. Similar to Vietnamese insurgents, Taliban fighters have a distinctive, local appearance rather than a uniform. The iconic cone-shaped “Viet Cong” headdress from Vietnam is comparable to the Afghan “lunge,” which resembles a turban and is often worn by the Taliban. They might wear a woven hat called a pakol. Usually, they wear long-sleeved chapan jackets and trousers. The soles of their sandals are often made from tires, and they carry their own blankets. Much like the AK-47, the RPG-7 is simple, rugged, and deadly. Like the Kalashnikov, the RPG-7 is legendary among guerrillas. It is an improved version of the German tank-busting “Panzerfaust," which caused severe damage to Allied armor, especially in the final year of World War II. Most Taliban fighters can carry two of these 14-pound weapons.

 The RPG can pierce more than 6 inches of armor, making U.S. helicopters vulnerable. These weapons, in the view of al-Adel, proved very effective. There are many sources of weapons. Afghanistan had been flooded with weapons left by the Soviets for years. The Taliban had easy access via smuggling routes. As one smuggler said, "I have my customers in Kandahar. I make a good profit. I can buy an AK-47 for $200 in the north and sell it for $400 in the south." Profit, as much as ideological solidarity, drove the early post-war arms trade. External sources, particularly Iran and China, also supplied weapons. Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeatedly commented on Chinese and Iranian arms used against Coalition Forces. Quickly, the Coalition Forces began to fear the Taliban’s ability to innovate with explosives. They faced increasing challenges from the Taliban’s skills and ingenuity in crafting and upgrading weapons to increase their lethality. One example is an RPG packed with ball bearings capable of killing people within a 30-foot radius upon impact. As a British soldier said, "This is a worrying twist as their weaponry becomes more and more sophisticated. Who knows how many of these rockets are out there?"

Chapter five examined the fall of the Taliban. It discussed the blueprint created in Bonn to promote sustained development and ensure military and political stability in Afghanistan. It examined the Taliban’s strategy, tactics, targets, and overall rebuilding efforts. Chapter six will explore the tactics in more detail. This chapter focuses on how the Taliban fight and kill.

From the start, the Taliban used a hide-and-wait strategy. Jallaluddin Haqqani, a seasoned anti-Soviet fighter closely linked with Mullah Omar, believed that, like the Soviets he helped defeat, the Americans couldn't sustain a long war. By October 2001, the Taliban moved most of their remaining tanks and artillery out of sight from U.S. aircraft. Taliban fighters dispersed in different directions.

Tough Fighters and Four-Legged Warfare

Throughout recorded history, Afghans have been skilled and determined fighters. Although the Pashtuns have long been the dominant group in Afghanistan, they haven't been the only revered Afghan warriors. Other ethnic groups, such as Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks, have also proven their fighting skills. Early in the current war, the Northern Alliance—comprising Tajiks and Uzbeks—tested their mountain-fighting abilities against the Taliban’s military strength. Backed by U.S. tactical air support and military equipment, they performed well, especially in the mountainous north, as discussed in chapter four. Like their Taliban counterparts, many fought while climbing mountains in sandals and sleeping outdoors wrapped in blankets.

But the Taliban are especially persistent and clever fighters. From the beginning, they demonstrated military innovation, resilience, and determination. Their toughness and adaptability were clear early in the post-September 2001 fight, which worried U.S. military planners. Confidence in the early aftermath of the Taliban's fall started to fade as they successfully regrouped, repositioned, and built strongholds. Although still somewhat disoriented in early 2002, the Taliban mainly harassed Coalition forces through hit-and-run attacks and planning for future operations.

Taliban units not destroyed in late 2001 allied effectively with al Qaeda forces in 2002 and 2003 to develop and improve their tactics. Al Qaeda had expertise, and its operatives were trained in unconventional warfare. They studied warfare closely, and some leaders were educated and experienced in military matters. Al Adel, the al Qaeda military commander and insurgent theorist, strongly advised mujahedin to follow key principles to counter U.S. military superiority. First, convert large military units into small bands of fighters led by effective leaders. Al Qaeda found it easier and less detectable to control smaller groups of 10-15 fighters than to manage large units.

The second suggestion was to build defensive fortifications, called “trenches,” which were temporary dirt shelters placed near homes in Kandahar. Building close to homes was preferred over open fields to avoid potential bombing by Coalition forces, who might hesitate to target them out of concern for civilians.

Third, al Qaeda recommended conducting reconnaissance, setting traps, and raiding rather than executing large-scale attacks. They also emphasized the importance of acquiring anti-aircraft weapons since air warfare gave the Coalition a significant advantage. Fourth, as with other insurgent groups, they stressed the use of political rhetoric.

From the outset, tensions existed between the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Arabs often seemed patronizing, offering unwelcome advice and issuing orders they weren’t authorized to give in Afghanistan. Despite these tensions, many Taliban leaders recognized the benefits al Qaeda brought, including bin Laden’s funding, expertise, and committed fighters.

Profile 14: Mohammad Ashan: Home Alone

The Taliban are known for their ingenuity and battlefield skills, but many are not very sophisticated. This was evident in the get-rich-quick motives of Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban member in Paktika province, who casually identified a Taliban member on Afghanistan’s most-wanted poster to a Coalition soldier. Holding out an open hand with his palm up, he asked for the $100 finder’s fee. This amount is months’ income in parts of Afghanistan. Interestingly, the wanted poster bore an uncanny resemblance to the man demanding the reward. A U.S. soldier asked him, ‘Is this you?” Mohammad Ashan responded enthusiastically, ‘Yes, yes, that’s me! Can I get my award now?” Ashan was arrested, and it’s unknown whether he received the promised $100.00. “This guy is the Taliban equivalent of the ‘Home Alone’ burglars,” one U.S. official said. Another official scoffed, "Clearly, the man is an imbecile." an imbecile."

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

The Taliban uses fear of impending violence. A common tactic is the shabnamah, or “night letter,” a message sent to a target that states they will face punishment. The message warns that unless demands are met, the punishment will be quick and severe. This theme recurs frequently. For example, in 2008, residents of Khost received a letter warning tribal elders not to cooperate with government forces, or else they would face consequences. Those working for the Karzai or regional governments were told to quit immediately, or else they would witness unprecedented violence. Anyone aiding government forces during a firefight would face the same fate as the "U.S. puppets," meaning they would die.

Information Operations

“The Taliban are lying through their teeth." – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2001, responding to early Taliban allegations of U.S. atrocities.

The insurgents, especially the Taliban, use media to spread propaganda. Their main themes include portraying the government as corrupt, illegitimate, ineffective, and controlled by Western powers; claiming Afghanistan is a battleground in an international crusade against Islam led by the U.S.; and suggesting Islam offers solutions to Afghan problems. The latter dominates in Islamist reformist circles.

The Taliban exploit national anxiety and unmet expectations. Disillusionment grew early in the insurgency as people’s hopes clashed with poor service delivery. Many Afghans didn’t understand why civilians, sometimes unintentionally, suffered casualties at the hands of Coalition Forces. The Taliban exploited this, using accidental killings as false evidence of American murderous intent. Today, the Taliban utilizes print and digital media. Their publication Azam, meaning "tenacity" in Pashto, was shut down in 2003. However, outlets like Al Somood and others continue in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Somood is their flagship paper, featuring glossy pages, statistics, and interviews, published by the Taliban’s media center, likely based in Quetta.

Taliban DVDs include poetry recitations, interviews with leaders like Jalaluddin Haqqani praising Islam’s virtues, and footage of executions of suspected enemies. Even the more graphic content is posted on their website, El Emarah. Topics often covered include Pashtun nationalism, Afghan patriotism, and anti-American sentiment. Guantanamo, often compared to Devil’s Island, is frequently criticized.

Some propaganda efforts have had an impact. In February 2006, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed concern that America was "losing the media war to Al-Qaeda.” Others agreed. For instance, in January 2012, U.S. Marines filmed themselves urinating on Taliban corpses, and a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the authenticity, saying, “It turned my stomach.” The next year, U.S. soldiers posed with the remains of suicide bombers. Generally, the Taliban have struggled to get Western journalists to write flattering stories about them. An exception is Yvonne Ridley, who wrote in “In the Hands of the Taliban” that they treated her with courtesy and respect. She appreciated how the Taliban introduced her to Islam and believed Islam grants women freedom and respect. “My heart has been stolen by Afghanistan.”

However, even sympathetic reporters face risks covering the Taliban. Joanie De Rijke, a Dutch journalist, interviewed Taliban commander Ghazi Gul in 2009. After the interview and taking photos, Gul kidnapped her, held her captive for six days, and then ransomed her for an unspecified amount. Surprising herself, she later accepted the sexual violence, reasoning Gul was overwhelmed by testosterone and knew it was wrong. She described his treatment as respectful and generous. Gul offered her one of his wives for a threesome, which she declined, but she accepted tea and biscuits.

Chapter Summary

In 2001, Western and Afghan forces made significant military gains, driving the Taliban from Afghanistan. The U.S. received widespread international and domestic backing. Yet, the Taliban regrouped into four Shuras, with the main one in Quetta, Pakistan. The Taliban's hierarchy includes the top leadership, the Shura Council, cadres, foot soldiers, and mercenaries. The Taliban found sanctuary in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan and are now regaining strength, aiming to impose a new totalitarian regime in Afghanistan. They are one of several insurgent groups striving for a Salafist Afghanistan, alongside al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and Hekmatyar Gulbuddin’s Hizb el Islami. Their goals include crippling the economy, terrorizing opponents, expanding their base, strengthening external support, and breaking the will of nations, especially the United States.

The Taliban’s Four Strategies

            The term “strategy” is key to the language of war. It refers to a broad plan of action to secure victory. These strategies aim to weaken Afghanistan’s economy, terrorize the enemy, increase their support base, and destroy the national will of states backing the current government. These four strategies remain central, and chapter six will detail the specific tactics. One primary Taliban strategy is to weaken the economy. Insurgents target the economy because a prosperous Afghanistan would strengthen the government’s credibility, attract more international investment—especially in natural resources—encourage domestic savings and investments, and develop human capital. Afghans would become stakeholders if they saw good returns on their investments. In turn, young Afghans would be drawn to vocational education and to fields like technology, engineering, and science that offer financial benefits. Talented Afghans might be less likely to spend their energy memorizing the Koran if they could pursue education that improves their living standards. That’s why donors in Bonn prioritized economic growth, and why the Taliban see it as a threat. Another Taliban strategy is to terrorize both Afghan and non-Afghan enemies. Fear successfully suppressed early dissent during their 1996-2001 rule. The insurgents have many enemies, including those involved in modernizing the country. They have targeted teachers, healthcare workers, public administrators, military and intelligence personnel, many NGO workers, and others seen as collaborators.

            A third strategy involves expanding the Taliban’s support base. This includes financial backing, access to weapons, and recruitment from across the Islamic world. In the 1990s, Pakistan provided millions of dollars, arms, and adolescents to the Taliban. The Pakistani connection to the Taliban persists. Pakistan has also supported other insurgent groups, as discussed in chapter eight. Along with domestic and Pakistani support, the Taliban continue to receive substantial aid from Arabs.

The fourth strategic goal is to undermine the resolve of the government’s international backers. The Taliban have made significant progress in gradually weakening the once-strong will of Western societies to sustain their military presence in Afghanistan, as demonstrated by polls. Five years into the counterinsurgency, President Bush grew concerned that American resolve would lessen as U.S. soldiers were killed. 

The Taliban’s Basic Sets of Tactics and Targets

The term “strategy” refers to the Taliban’s core military and political agenda. The strategy is implemented through “tactics.” The Taliban have successfully adapted their tactics to the environment and circumstances. There are three main groupings of tactics: violent attacks, non-violent intimidation, and information operations. The basic sets are discussed below, and the specific tactics will be discussed in the next chapter.

            Violent Tactics

            The first tactic is brute force. The mujahedin tortured and mutilated the bodies of Soviet soldiers, and some of these insurgents continued their brutal tactics in their next war as the Taliban. Since 2001, the Taliban has killed and injured their enemies during their ongoing campaign to conquer. Assassination and indiscriminate murder are proven, cost-effective weapons in an insurgency because of the fear they create. The insurgents have studied terrorist trends from Iraq and Israel and have determined that human and roadside bombs are highly effective. There are many targets for the Taliban. Some of the main target groups include education, communications, the civil service, and police and security forces, which are listed below.

Target Set- Economic and Entrepreneurial Enterprises

            One target set of the Taliban centers on businesses or businessmen who cater to affluent Afghans, foreigners, or pro-government personnel. Upscale hotels and restaurants are prime targets for several reasons. The Taliban and the Haqqani insurgents see swanky hotels as pretentious and view the proprietors and wait staff as collaborators serving a foreign, conquering force. These venues also attract the rich and powerful of Afghanistan. The Taliban also attacks cafes, markets, and shopping centers.

            The Taliban also terrorizes impoverished entrepreneurs. Attempting to support their families by selling second-hand goods, toiletries, DVDs, and cosmetics, these poor vendors expose themselves to the Taliban’s often-erratic and always-brutal moral codes. The Taliban morality police beat individuals who listen to music, wear Western clothes, watch television, or participate in all but the most Islamic and primitive activities. They also severely punish entrepreneurs who sell banned clothing, DVDs, and television sets. In doing so, the Taliban further limits Afghans' ability to earn a living.

Target - Education

            “Education is the factory that turns animals into human beings."  Ghulam Hazrat Tanha, the director of education in Herat.  "

            From the beginning, the Taliban persistently and aggressively targeted education.  During their 5-year rule, they shuttered schools, completely segregated the sexes, and purged the texts for what they considered un-Islamic elements. Today, out-of-power, the Taliban fear the power of education in building national capacity, empowering women, creating physical infrastructure, assuring competent administration, promoting job creation, and fostering a sense of national purpose.

             They attack a broad set of educational targets: students, teachers, parents, and facilities. Tactics include stand-off attacks, assassinations, murders, and morbid, disfiguring attacks, such as throwing acid into the faces of schoolchildren. One of the countless attacks occurred in August and September 2003, when the Taliban burned several buildings at an elementary school near Kabul and, as their standard modus operandi, left leaflets threatening to kill teachers, parents, and children should they pursue education. After the attack, nearly 200 of the 400 boys and girls stayed away for some time.

The Taliban’s intimidation worked and often still does. But out-gunned Afghans sometimes fight the Taliban. The Afghan villagers have organized broadly and often effectively against Taliban attacks on educational facilities, educators, and students.  By summer 2012, there were more coordinated, village-level self-defense efforts to save the schools. Sometimes with or without government help, villagers took up arms to protect their schools.  According to a report, a school principal organized 500 students to fight against the Taliban's attempts to shut down the schools in August 2012.

            Additionally, villagers have opposed the Taliban through non-violent resistance. Fully aware of the risks if they are caught, school teachers and administrators have kept schools open, often cautiously and secretly. They have hidden in guesthouses, teaching in small groups to minimize the chance of being discovered. In eastern Afghanistan, an underground education system has developed. Sometimes, government forces have kept Afghanistan’s schools open; other times, they have made compromises with the Taliban regarding school content and attendance. In some cases, the Taliban have shut schools completely.

Target – Communications

            The Taliban also targets communication systems and their operators. They regularly attack radio broadcasts and transmission towers. Cell phones have helped bypass older, less advanced forms of communication. Counterinsurgency forces use transmissions to fight the insurgents. The Taliban attacks towers and threatens to kill operators and technicians who maintain them. When these threats are credible, service is often disrupted during the night and sometimes during the day. The Taliban believes informants use cell phones to alert U.S. troops after dark. In neighboring Pakistan, Voice of America operators agreed to the demands of local insurgents to stop broadcasting. 

Target- Civil Servants and Police

            Taliban kill Afghans who work for the Kabul government and Coalition Forces.  From the beginning of the counterinsurgency, there was a limited pool of well-educated Afghans who had in-demand skills. They are called the "second civil service." These skills include English, technical skills—especially in information systems—and accounting. The Taliban need to kill these individuals or discourage them from aiding the government.

Of the civil service branches, the Afghan police have been the most targeted. The U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual clearly states that the police, not the military, are the front-line soldiers in counterinsurgency. As David Galula notes, the police are the government’s most effective and efficient organization for removing insurgent political agents from the population. For Coalition Forces to hold and develop an area, a credible police force is essential. Through daily interaction and relationship-building, police develop detailed knowledge of the physical and human terrain. They gather intelligence from local villagers about Taliban presence and identity. Additionally, there is a criminal motive for killing police officers. Because the Taliban engage in criminal enterprises, they oppose police who remain uncorrupted.

The Taliban employ various methods to kill and injure police. Many are killed by explosives, especially mines placed on roads. Sometimes, police officials such as chiefs are targeted. For example, in August 2012, the Taliban tracked the route of a police chief. When he traveled a route in Badghis Province, a roadside bomb was detonated, wounding him and killing others. Some attacks involve the Taliban impersonating police officers. In the first recorded attack of this kind, an Afghan policewoman killed a U.S. police contractor in late December 2012.

Taliban terror also affects the Pakistani police. In Peshawar, home of one of the four shuras, Taliban fighters often outgun their opponents and fight with brutal ferocity. A police inspector said in December 2012 that violence against security forces has damaged morale at many local stations and checkpoints, causing them to suspend night patrols.

Targeting Health Care Providers

The Taliban target health care providers, especially those connected to NGOs. Sometimes they kill these workers randomly; other times, they target specific health professionals. Superstitions can also drive kill orders. For instance, the Taliban and some Afghans believed that efforts to eradicate polio—long conquered in much of the West—were un-Islamic and part of American plots. In late December 2012, Western medical personnel were killed while administering polio vaccines.

As a result, some NGOs have pulled out of Afghanistan. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) withdrew early in the insurgency, in June 2004, due to their inability to protect their employees. MSF had served in Afghanistan for nearly 25 years. Other NGOs, such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), have become wary.

Thank you for listening to this excerpt from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any individual or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening

            The Taliban is organized hierarchically from the supreme leader, Mullah Omar, to the foot soldiers. At the top, the Supreme Leadership, in conjunction with the Shura Council, gives guidance.  The cadre comprises dedicated mid- to senior-level operatives.  Foot soldiers are the rank and file of the Taliban. Finally, mercenaries are fair-weathered Taliban whose devotion to the ideology is tenuous and who serve for lack of better employment opportunities.

            Rings of Support

            The Taliban’s structure is hierarchical, from the Supreme Shura, through the foot soldiers, to the pool of mercenaries. But support levels can also be viewed as concentric rings. As with other insurgent and terrorist groups, such as the defunct German Red Army Faction, the Taliban have expanding rings of progressively weakened support.  There is a nucleus of hardened fighters and key decision makers at the Taliban’s core. The rings beyond this nucleus are increasingly less senior, though still important. 

            The ring beyond the inner nucleus is that of the active fighters. This nucleus is composed of the most dedicated and hardened, and usually veteran, support. Moving centrifugally, there is a second ring of active key cadre who serve as leaders and trainers. They, too, are veteran fighters but do not have the high-leadership position of the first-ring cadre.

            Beyond this ring is a third ring of active, non-combatants. They are active in the group's political, fundraising, and information activities.  They sometimes conduct intelligence and surveillance activities, and provide safe haven, shelter, financial contributions, medical and transit assistance. They are particularly instrumental in madrassas, where they recruit and groom future foot soldiers and leaders.

            The fourth ring comprises passive supporters and sympathizers. They may not be aware of their precise relation to the terrorist group. Sympathizers can be useful for political activities, fundraising, and intelligence gathering, and other non-violent activities.

            The Committees

            Along with the four regional commands, the Afghan Taliban have 10 functional committees that address specific issues. Some of the members of the committees are also members of the Quetta Shura.  The committees are: Ulema Council, or Religious Council; Finance; Political Affairs; Culture and Information; Military Council; Prisoners and Refugees; Education; Recruitment; Repatriation; and Interior Affairs.  Figure 8 shows the committees and their functions.

            Funding

            In addition to trading in commodities, trafficking in narcotics, and running extortion rackets, the Taliban operate the informal money transfer system commonly known as hawala. In this system, money is transferred between two parties informally. There is little paperwork kept. These formal and informal value transfers enable the Taliban to sustain the organization.

            According to the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies director Haroun Mir, there is a vast network of charities that solicit funds for the Taliban.  Much funding comes through rich donors in the petrol-exporting Gulf states. The funds are flowing through ghost charities. “Nobody has an idea where this money goes as it is being used by extremist groups to purchase weapons or recruit suicide bombers."

            Intelligence, Security functions, and Interrogation

            Intelligence plays a vital role in the Taliban’s operations. The Taliban cannot match the military capabilities of the Coalition Forces, so they try to erode the will of the enemy through unconventional tactics. Without strong intelligence, the Taliban would not be able to commit effective suicide bombings, nor could they infiltrate the Afghan military, intelligence, and police effectively. Without effective intelligence, the “green-on-blue” attacks, Afghan soldiers turning their weapons on fellow soldiers and Western soldiers, would be very difficult.

            The Taliban’s offensive intelligence operations rely on human intelligence. These operations include pre-attack surveillance. They spread disinformation about Coalition Forces, gather intelligence-related data for use in green-on-blue attacks, monitor villagers' behavior, conduct surveillance of places and persons of interest, and engage in a wide variety of intelligence operations.

            The Taliban have experience in collection activity. During their rule, they had developed a quasi-totalitarian security apparatus to cement their Sharia-based theocracy.  Today, the Taliban has personnel who exclusively focus on intelligence and counterintelligence. They are deployed at the regional and provincial levels to facilitate the flow of information and to run informant networks. At least one Western official has stated that the Afghan Taliban have a de facto head of intelligence, although the identity of this individual remains unclear.

            Well-dressed Taliban, often young men, perform pre-operational surveillance. They photograph areas with digital cameras, obtain GPS coordinates, and watch people and places. Operatives will spend many hours observing who walks into buildings connected to intelligence or military services.  Some of the operators bring an array of sophisticated tracking devices and webcams, and are careful not to bring weapons.  In Kabul, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif, the Taliban also reconnoiter cities from motor vehicles.  There are also countermeasures in cases where they are apprehended.  Files on Taliban computers are disguised under filenames such as “poetry” or “jokes.” 

            The Taliban are skilled at counterintelligence. They are capable at unmasking penetrations or double agents who are cooperating with Coalition Forces because the Taliban have extensive knowledge of the leading families, tribal elders, and widows in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. As in former communist states, they channel much of their limited resources towards spying.  This fits into the strategy of terror.  Taliban intelligence targets include Afghan government forces, Coalition Forces, military personnel, non-combatant, and foreign non-combatants.       

            The Taliban's mind is well-suited to intelligence, particularly counterintelligence. The mentality of the Taliban is one of suspicion and hostility to nonconformity. Its view holds that lying is as acceptable and sometimes required in defense of Islam.  The Taliban have a broad license to extract information through even the most grim interrogation techniques.  Taliban suspected of collaborating with Coalition Forces can be executed without appeal or pity, and their severed heads could be exposed on Taliban-run media.  Taliban mullahs justify the torturous interrogation by references in the Koran.

The Leaders

            Mullah Muhammad Omar is the current leader of the Taliban and was profiled in chapter two. He is the Afghan Taliban's supreme leader, believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

            Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar - Generally considered the second-most important leader in the Taliban, Mullah Baradar is an intimate of Mullah Omar and was captured by the ISI. He is of the same clan and sub-clan as Hamid Karzai, a Populzai Durrani Pashtun. He was captured and imprisoned by the ISI. In late September 2013, he was released on the condition that he remain in Pakistan.

            Muhammad Hassan Rahmani - A strategist and leader, he was a governor of Kandahar and may be the shadow governor today. Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir - A commander of operations for southern Afghanistan. Captured in 2001 and held in Guantanamo until 2007, he was transferred to Kabul and freed in 2008. He is assumed to be active today, organizing attacks against Coalition Forces in the south. Zakir has charisma and experience, and should Mullah Omar be killed, he is a candidate to replace him.

            Maulavi Abdul Kabir (captured) - Commander of forces in eastern Afghanistan. Kabir was a member of the Quetta Shura.

            Mullah Abdul Razzak - Chief propagandist for the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, Mullah Razzak was arrested by Pakistan in 2003. He was released and rejoined the group, where he serves today as a strategist.

            Amir Khan Muttaqi - He currently heads propaganda efforts.

            Sayyid Tayyab Agha - The Taliban’s chief diplomat.

Peshawar Regional Military Shura

            The Peshawar Shura directs activities in eastern and northeastern Afghanistan. In many places, Peshawar resembles Quetta, with sprawling back alleys, bazaars, haunts, and slums. There is a similar atmosphere of anxiety in Peshawar’s streets because of the summary justice meted out by factions and tribes competing for control and power. The Taliban’s control of Peshawar ebbs and flows. The Taliban have enough control to enforce their puritanical Islamic code. There is a conflict with well-placed residents and old families who will not easily surrender their status or influence to the Taliban, whom they consider uninvited and unwanted guests.

            In the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, formerly known as the Northwest Frontier Province, Peshawar is the capital. The Taliban have committed 1,962 acts of terror since 2008, killing 6,200 people and injuring more than 9,000 others.

Miramshah Regional Military Shura and the Haqqani Connection

North Waziristan’s Miramshah Regional Military Shura directs activities in southeastern Afghanistan, including the provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Logar, and Wardak. Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin, command an element of the Taliban that has far more independence than any other. The Haqqani Network has been described, incorrectly, as an entirely autonomous terrorist-narcotic gang. The Haqqanis have sworn fealty to Mullah Omar, though this arm of the Taliban has greater license to conduct independent operations. At times, they operate autonomously and in conjunction with other militant groups, including other Taliban elements.

In mid-November 2012, the father-son duo Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani indicated that they would participate in peace talks with ISAF negotiators if the Taliban agreed, with Chechens, Kashmiris, Pakistanis, and Afghans living in FATA. Its areas of influence extend from North and South Waziristan to Parachinar and the Kurram agencies, all in Pakistan. From these bases, the Haqqanis conduct attacks in the border areas of Paktika, Khowst, and Paktia provinces. The Haqqanis also had a strong connection to bin Laden.

Gerdi Jangal Regional Military Shura – Based in Baluchistan, this regional military shura focuses exclusively on Helmand Province and, perhaps, Nimroz Province.  

            The shura principle is rooted in the Koran, as noted in chapter one. It is a council that deliberates and passes judgment on social and political issues affecting the Islamic community, or ummah. Mullah Omar is, by far, the most important decision-maker, but he does not rule like a dictator. The Taliban Supreme Shura, heavily guided by Omar, conducts strategic planning, issues directives to regional commanders, and disseminates them to village cells as fatwas, or diktats. The village cell operates semi-independently, with minimal oversight from higher echelons. Sometimes the orders from the Supreme Shura are precise; often they take the form of broad guidance.

Quetta Regional Military Shura – Life in the Pakistani Badlands

            The term ‘Quetta Shura’ originated with Mullah Omar’s relocation of the Taliban organization to Quetta, Baluchistan, after spending time in Waziristan. In Quetta, Mullah Omar’s Taliban refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Quetta Regional Military Shura directs activities in southern and western Afghanistan.

            Balochistan is impoverished, even by the standards of Pakistan, and seethes with resentment of federal governance. Some of the ethnic prejudices of Afghanistan pour into Baloch territory. As in Afghanistan, the Hazaras, who are set apart from many other South Asians by their distinct East Asian appearance, are relegated to menial work as a lower caste. In June 2012, a university bus filled with Hazaras was blown up, killing four. According to the Hazara Democratic Party, over 700 Hazaras have been murdered since 2002 in sectarian violence. The Baloch also feel exploited by the Punjabis, the dominant ethnicity of Pakistan’s 180 million. The police patrol just 5% of Balochistan. The rest is manned by tribal bands and 50,000 Pakistani troops.

            Today, Quetta, like the fabled outlaw territory of the American Old West, is a vast danger zone, and its inhabitants are often inclined to sling weapons. Many individuals, groups, and political cohorts live outside the law. In the 1980s, the city served as a sanctuary for anti-Soviet fighters and as a transit route, or “jihad trail,” for their supplies. By the 1990s, there were criminal enterprises, weapons smugglers, camps of Islamist and separatist fighters, adventurers, and desperados. Bin Laden was popular in Baluchistan, and by the late 1990s his smiling image was ubiquitous in shops and coffeehouses.

            For over 30 years, Afghans and Arabs have intermarried with local women, and many have obtained Pakistani identification documents. Today, the blend of cultural and national backgrounds makes it difficult to distinguish between some indigenous and Afghan residents. Reliable information about Quetta is scarce because so many journalists are killed, particularly those critical of powerful men.

            Death is common in Quetta. A woman professor of communications was shot dead in a rickshaw while traveling to a radio station. It was probably related to her politics. A former Olympian boxer was shot by unknown assailants for reasons unknown. The body of a boy, approximately 10 years old, was found in Quetta. He had been strangled and his body dumped by the road. In a tribal clash, three people were shot to death, including a woman. The assailants escaped. A much-respected Baloch scholar, writer, and poet, Professor Saba Dahtyari, authored 24 books on Balochi literature. He loved his Baluchistan, and many of his country’s intellectuals loved him. But in June 2011 he was shot and killed. Sometimes the sick and dying cannot be treated in Quetta. There are periodic strikes when doctors protest issues such as hospital privatization and low wages. These homicidal anecdotes represent the constant death that is daily life in Baluchistan today.

            Life has become progressively worse for women. By 2009, most restaurants had stopped serving women. At the behest of the Taliban and their ideological cohorts, owners posted signs stating, “For gentlemen only. Women not allowed.” Of Pakistan’s four provinces, Balochistan has the fewest per capita female health care workers. The Taliban are largely responsible for that.

            From early in the insurgency, some U.S. military and political leaders fulminated that Pakistan had turned a blind eye to the presence of the Taliban. Some drew analogies to Vietnam and the sanctuary in Cambodia that communists enjoyed.  In 2006, British Colonel Chris Vernon, Chief of Staff for southern Afghanistan, identified Quetta as the key center of operations.  He also accused the Pakistani military of training and arming the Taliban in Quetta. 

            For years, Coalition generals and diplomats have advocated a hard-hitting response. Lieutenant General David Barno, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said, “The Quetta Shura is extremely important. They are the intellectual and ideological underpinning of the Taliban insurgency.” General Stanley McChrystal, former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the Taliban leadership was there. In 2009, General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, a White House official on Afghanistan, recommended extending drone operations to Quetta.

            The Taliban’s Leadership in Quetta

            Much as the political landscape of Baluchistan is, the inner workings of Quetta are shrouded in secrets. The Taliban’s leadership provides tactical direction and guidance to its fighters and commanders in the field. Senior commanders resident in Afghanistan travel to Quetta to confer on strategy, obtain supplies, provide intelligence, and receive instruction from the Shura. 

            The Quetta leadership typically sets goals at the beginning of the spring fighting season. The operational orders usually take the form of a planned offensive, subject to revision and adaptation. The Quetta Shura also provides tactical direction and guidance to its fighters and commanders in the field. The shura is composed of indigenous and foreign fighters. It serves as the nerve center for all of the Taliban's operations. Its leaders direct military strategy, craft policy and political and military strategy, appoint field commanders, and manage a shadow government. Fearing U.S. drone attacks, a large number of Taliban leaders have shifted from Quetta to Karachi, Peshawar, and other cities.

Profile 13 -Saad Haroon- Pakistani Funnyman and His Burka Woman

            “Burka woman I love you still; come on and give me a thrill.” From Saad Haroon’s “Burka Woman” to the tune of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” on Youtube.

            If anyone can find humor in the Taliban’s mounting menace in Pakistan and the generalized misery there, it is the U.S.-educated Saad Haroon. With his friend, the young humorist, he hosts a unique website from their Karachi-based home. He mocks the Taliban and the dreary life they seek to impose on his country. Armed with an indestructible sense of humor, Haroon is determined to fight the Taliban with jokes after witnessing a terrorist attack in Karachi that killed 140 people.

            Some topics are off-limits for comedic barbs. Jokes about the Pakistani Army or major political parties would not be a laughing matter to Pakistani authorities. Clowning about Islam could become gallows humor. But Haroon rips into burkas with a satirical song. A popular parody of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” is “Burka Woman.” In this routine, posted on YouTube, a young Pakistani man fantasizes about the female flesh hidden behind the burka. “My love for you grows every time I see your toes. Nail polish, Rrrrrrr," goes one line. "With your eyes, my mystery prize." One of his most popular jokes is, literally, toilet humor. He snickers that Pakistani public toilets are the dream of terrorists; they are biological warfare themselves.

His routine brings chuckles to the South Asian diaspora. He has performed in New York, London, and other communities with large Pakistani populations. Not everyone thinks he is funny, and some Pakistani elders are concerned that he is part of an Indian conspiracy to corrupt the morals of Pakistan’s youth. Others simply find his comedy stale. Still others salute his efforts to find anything funny about Pakistan or the Taliban. As a blogger wrote, “In general, Pakistan is just not funny these days. Bless this comic nevertheless; he has his work cut out for him.”

------------------------------

            Chapter four discussed the Taliban’s downfall and the security and developmental priorities for the conquering nations, which met in Bonn.  Chapter five will analyze the specific target sets, tactics and their effects on the counterinsurgency with greater granularity.  This is a chapter on how the Taliban fight.

               The Taliban’s Diaspora

            Before its ejection in late 2001, the Taliban’s governmental structure was similar to those other impoverished Third World, one-party states. The Taliban had a monopoly on the use of force and law enforcement.  There were chains of command and a clearly stated, if not always followed, hierarchy of control from Mullah Omar to the regional bureaucrats. But communications were poor and effective decision making was often decentralized outside of Kabul and Kandahar.

            The Taliban had nothing that resembled a professional civil service.  However, there was a rank order of decision making in the Taliban. Most important decisions were made by Mullah Omar and religious clerics on the basis of their interpretation of religious law. Hiring and promotion was based on performance but also on cronyism and patronage. Within the government, there were rivaling factions, ambitious bureaucrats, petty arguments and other characteristics universal to large organizations.  When the Taliban became outcasts, they took this system of governance, with all its assets and idiosyncrasies, and adopted it to the circumstances and environment of their exile.

            Leaving Afghanistan, the Taliban looted what remained of the Afghan treasury. In early 2002, the Taliban traded in barter and began to expand its criminal operations. By 2011 the Taliban would raise nearly $400 million per year. This money would come from taxes, donations, and criminal enterprises, to be discussed in chapter seven.[1]

            The Taliban needed sanctuary. Mao Tse Tung, recalling his long march to escape Nationalist Chinese forces, defined sanctuary as a strategically located area where insurgents can train and build their forces. The area should provide limited freedom of movement but not for conventional maneuver. In sanctuaries, insurgents can supply, refit, and regroup free of significant enemy interference. The ideal local population would welcome the insurgents. In early 2002, the Taliban certainly found sanctuary in Waziristan. Waziristan is an autonomous tribal zone contiguous to Afghanistan. Stretching 1,500 miles from Baluchistan to the Hindu Kush, it is largely Pashtun, deeply religious, and, for the Taliban, friendly.

            When they were scattered into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, they were fortunate to have preexisting logistical networks, madrassas, and charities that served as billeting facilities and, later, bases of operations.  As in their earlier climb to power, or phase one in the government’s insurgency model, the Taliban forged amicable relations with local mullahs.  In FATA and the Northwest Frontier Provinces (NWFP), renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mullah Omar pooled his resources and lent his prestige to local chieftains, some of whom would emerge as important allies. 

            The Taliban improved relations with Baitullah Mehsud, who forged his local Taliban organization, the TTP, in 2007, as discussed in chapter eight. The bond between Mehsud and Omar was strong but sometimes ambiguous. Mehsud served as the subordinate member of this Taliban team from the beginning, even though he was hosting the fugitive Omar. Even before the TTP was formalized, Mehsud required his forces to prove fealty to Omar as their leader.

            The local Taliban under Meshud, in conjunction with the Omar’s exiled Taliban, imposed order on territories that had eluded the Pakistani government’s forces. They punished criminals swiftly and severely. They also suppressed or eliminated village elders who defied them. They enforced Sharia. The Taliban recuperated in Waziristan, and then many dispersed across different regions of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Pashtun belt. Mullah Omar went south to Baluchistan, and so did many other Taliban.

            The Taliban received a warm reception from Quetta’s devout and elderly residents in the hardscrabble Baluchi capital. But not everyone welcomed them, and Quetta’s small middle class, particularly its women, detested them. The flood of unemployable and penurious Taliban youth put pressure on the already-fragile economy. Tourism, already weak, declined, and owners of the few cyber cafes faced uncertain prospects.

            Within 1 year, clerics openly preached hatred of America and recruited in the cities' madrassas and mosques. In the bazaars, the Taliban hawked jihad paraphernalia – taped speeches of bin Laden and bumper stickers advocating martyrdom. Quetta became no place for the liberal-minded.

The shura appointed four committees -- military, political, cultural, and economic -- to regulate all relevant matters. Other committees would be established. As of mid-2013, Mullah Omar led the Quetta Shura and the other three. He was presumed to live in Quetta. He was assisted by a staff with military and organizational responsibilities. Some of these leaders had overlapping regional responsibilities. The Afghan Taliban had regional military shuras for four major geographical areas of operations. The eponymous shuras were named after the areas in which they were based – Quetta, Peshawar, Miramshah, and Gerdi Jangal.  

[1] “Report Says Taliban Raised $400 Million Last Year,” Radio Free Europe, States New Service, September 11, 2012.

To Educate a People

                       Before the Taliban, education was expanding, modernizing, and becoming more secular and accessible, particularly for girls. Elements of Afghanistan’s higher education system were a source of pride among Afghan Western-oriented intellectuals. In the 1960s and early 1970s, half of Afghanistan’s children had access to primary education, and Kabul University attracted the country’s top intellectual talent.

       By 2002, fewer than 40% of primary-school-aged children attended school, and only 3% of girls did. Secondary school attendance was 10%, and only 2% of girls attended. Almost 80 percent of school buildings had been destroyed. Many teachers and administrators had either fled the country or been killed. Those who remained had not been paid for 6 months. Beyond religious indoctrination, the Taliban cared nothing about education.

        The Bonn donors determined that literacy was a vital component of human capital. States with low literacy levels face a striking competitive disadvantage. Education would build the human capital needed to expand sectors of Afghanistan’s economy, empower women, create physical infrastructure, build a competent administration, promote job creation, and foster a sense of national purpose. Vocational education was particularly important because skilled workers are vital to the construction, maintenance, and repair of communication, health, education, and security-related facilities.

            Literacy has strong security benefits because education boosts military capabilities to fight the Taliban. Illiterate Afghan recruits could not be easily taught to function as soldiers. One soldier explained, “I face difficulties. If someone calls me and tells me to go somewhere, I can't read the street signs." But literate soldiers could serve as mechanics, medics, logisticians, and artillery specialists. There are also intangibles that boost morale in the Army. Literacy brings prestige, commands respect, and confers status and credibility. It brings dignity.

            There are secular, after-school activities. The new regime in Kabul brought Boy and Girl Scouting back to Afghanistan to supplement after-school education and instill values of consensual rule. First introduced in Afghanistan in 1931, scouting flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. Afghan Boy and Girl Scouts share the moral code of scouts worldwide, but there are unique elements. In Afghanistan, a boy can earn a merit badge for “identifying land mines and roadside bombs.”

            To Treat and Heal a People

            In 2001, donors in Bonn understood that Afghanistan was a profoundly unhealthy country. Throughout the 20th century, Afghanistan’s dismal health conditions proved to be an ally to Afghans in their wars against foreign invaders, from the British to the Soviets. In the 1980s, disease took a heavy toll on Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Among the diseases Soviet forces suffered from were Hepatitis A, typhoid fever, malaria, dysentery, and even plague.

            For this reason, the victors in late 2001 made health care a top priority, and U.S. military personnel and other counterinsurgency operators were well equipped to contribute. A key counterinsurgency-related health care goal was to develop and implement a basic health care plan with broad application that could deliver quick results. Taliban tactics proved effective in forcing out and keeping out foreign health practitioners. In August 2004, Doctors without Borders closed its medical programs after 24 years in Afghanistan.

 Profile 10:  Khorshid – Sunshine and Happiness

            “If you are scared you end up doing nothing and without doing you cannot achieve anything. But if you do things, all that can happen is you succeed or fail.” Khorshid

            Those who try to boost the mental health of Afghans face an ever-present sense of impending death. But this did not stop Australian skateboarder Oliver Percovich, who became a Kabul sensation in 2007 when he showed children how to ride his skateboard. The children loved it, so Percovich built a skateboard school called Skateistan to give them happiness and allow them to escape, if only for a few moments, the drudgery of their daily lives.

When Percovich arrived with skateboards, children would yell, “Ollie! Ollie!” The pitted, dirty streets of Kabul teemed with rocketing, beaming kids. They cruised, swooshed, collided, and jumped in Afghanistan’s first skate park and school, built by Skateistan. Ollie explained, “The boards are just our carrots. They’re a way to connect with the kids and build trust.”

Khorshid was a 14-year-old girl, born during the late Taliban era and into desperate poverty. She had her own skateboard, earned by volunteering as a skateboarding teacher for girls at Skateistan. She shared it with her 8-year-old sister. Khorshid had to persuade her mother to let her spend time away from hawking goods. But her mother agreed, and Khorshid lit up as she zipped on her board. Other girls looked up to her. If boys could skate, so could girls. The name Khorshid means “radiant sun” as well as “happy.”

People remarked on how radiant she was, particularly for a girl who lived in a home without electricity and sometimes went hungry. She was also a tough girl who supervised other girls and taught them to skate and stand up to boys. One of her students said, “She was very brave and gave courage to all of us girls. She was always telling us to be brave like the boys and then no one would dare to touch us.” Khorshid was a natural leader.

But this leader’s courage did not save her, her 8-year-old sister, or two other young up-and-coming skaters. They were selling trinkets in a park in mid-September 2012 when they were all killed by a boy about 14 years old, the same age as Khorshid, who set off a suicide bomb. The street was directly outside the NATO facilities that were the target. Had they left 5 minutes earlier, had the child suicide bomber changed his mind, or had the bomb failed to detonate, Khorshid might be skating today. She might still be teaching other girls to skate, be strong, and stand up to boys. Perhaps this natural leader would have become a national leader. But, as a Skateistan official wrote, “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

To Build a Civil Service

            A quality civil service has been a key goal in developing Afghanistan. In 2001, the victors in Bonn found a hollow civil service. There was a lack of capacity and weak communication between Kabul and outlying provinces. Under the Taliban, public administrators were poorly and infrequently paid; unprofessional, as they were directed by theocrats; and marginally trained in public administration skills. They were also cowed by the mullahs who controlled important decision-making and could end their careers and even their lives very quickly. It was not surprising that post-Taliban donors to Afghanistan were alarmed at the lack of experience, talent, ambition, and general competence in the civil service. 

            An effective Afghan civil service would spur all other development sectors and increase stability. In larger cities, civil servants would issue construction permits; maintain basic infrastructure, including roads, power stations, water facilities, sanitation, and communications; and perform other civil service duties. This, in turn, would improve health, education, communications, the rule of law, and security. According to the plan, the government's credibility would be boosted if vital services improved, and citizens would become greater stakeholders in reconstruction and development issues. This would weaken the Taliban's attractiveness, and the Taliban knew it.

To Build Communications

            Economists in Bonn concluded that improvements in communications would spur growth across all development sectors. The Afghan economy would grow if costs, expenses, and demand levels were communicated broadly. Civil servants in Kabul needed to communicate with counterparts in the provinces for administrative purposes, and the education and health sectors were dependent on harnessing the power of the internet to modernize. Increased security required soldiers to communicate at all levels, particularly for close-support combat operations and for the rule of law.

            In a country that is isolated, illiterate, and unstable, the side that can better communicate its agenda and coordinate civil and military operations has a distinct advantage. In addition to telephonic communications, radio communications are particularly important in Afghanistan because of the extraordinarily high level of illiteracy. In some areas, the female illiteracy rate is nearly 99%. Radio is the only way the government can communicate its democratization programs, advise farmers on agricultural issues and families on health issues, and warn of security threats by the Taliban. Strong communications enable villagers to contact the ANA, ANP, or ISAF operators. For this reason, the insurgents have placed a high premium on destroying radio towers and have stepped up their use of radio technology to communicate their political agenda. This battle for the “information space” in Afghanistan continues.

Profile 9: Zakia Zaki and her Voice of Peace

            Atop a hill in a lush landscape 70 kilometers north of Kabul, Zakia Zaki and her husband broadcast to 200,000 listeners 4 hours each day. A pioneer woman in Afghan broadcasting, her “Voice of Peace” was initially funded by the French in a Tajik locale in the Panjshir Valley. Its warm voice resonated as an alternative to the Taliban’s cold message of absolute obedience. Her hero was Ahmed Shah Massoud, who helped win the financial support necessary to keep the old equipment running and the staff paid. 

            When the Coalition invaded in 2001, the U.S. continued funding the station to broadcast local news, women’s issues, music, children’s shows, and household and educational programs. The dark-complexioned, 35-year-old Zakia explained in 2004, “This is the only place where they (women) dare to speak out.” She received warm letters from all over Parwan, Kapisa, and Kabul provinces. An inviting sign on the studio’s door read “Voice of Peace” above a picture of a flying dove and a pretty, smiling woman. But inside the broadcasting facility, there was an ambient dread of Taliban attacks. The night letters came, and so did verbal threats. This did not deter Zakia, who was also a teacher, loved by her students.

            In June 2007, as Zakia slept with her 20-month-old infant in her arms in her Kabul home, two Taliban entered and shot her seven times in the head, blowing off half her face. Her 8-year-old son was in the room, too. Immediately, the Taliban called other women journalists, chuckling, boasting, and threatening, “At least people can recognize her from one side of her face. We will shoot your face, and nobody will recognize you.” Another threat came soon, “Daughter of America! We will kill you as we killed her.”

            Zaki was neither the first nor the last female broadcaster killed. In 2005, Shaim Rezayee, an Afghan video jockey who spun popular tunes and dressed in jeans, was shot and killed. After Zaki was shot, another newscaster was murdered in her home. Police apprehended six suspects in Zaki's killing, but they were all released. Authorities determined there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction. a conviction.

To Build an Army

In 2002, Afghanistan lacked a professional army, and one had to be built to maintain order and prevent the Taliban’s return. The Army’s facilities had been shattered during the incessant wars of the previous 2 decades. The military’s leadership was sapped, and most of the weapons were antiquated and unserviceable. The last military entity that could reasonably be classified as an Army crumbled with Dr. Mohammad Najibullah’s Soviet-supported regime in 1992.

What remained was a large pool of guerrilla fighters tied to regional militias or, later, to the Taliban. There was no standardized training, career advancement, nationwide billeting program, unified ranking system, or other indicators of a modern, professional army. Developing the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which includes the Afghan National Army (ANA), became a top priority for Western donors to Afghanistan, particularly the United States.

               An important early security task for the new Army was disarming many Afghans, particularly the Taliban. That would be difficult because firearms hold an important place in Afghan culture. Effective, unified, and credible armed forces could not exist until local militias and former Taliban surrendered most of their weapons, particularly crew-served weapons. A strong security apparatus—robust military capabilities, effective paramilitary forces, and strong civil-military relations—would shore up the government. It would also underscore the government’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

            Many Afghans, particularly those living in areas contiguous to Pakistan, vacillated between periods of optimism, pessimism, confusion, and fatigue as they tried to gauge the staying power of government forces in contested areas. The Afghan government determined that reintegrating militias into a unified, ethnically balanced, well-armed, and well-trained military force would win the confidence of doubting Afghans.

            In building the Afghan Army, there were knotty problems from the beginning, such as high levels of desertion, drug use, illiteracy, and national confusion. The early record of building the Army was mixed. It was commanded by maladroit leaders, offered meager pay, provided uncomfortable billeting and foul food, and made little effort to retain the services of young men who were away from home for the first time.  The high rates of desertion declined by 2009, but still remain high.  The lower rate of desertion was attributed to a presidential decree criminalizing unauthorized leave, a media campaign to discourage it, and higher unemployment. It also indicates that employment in the Army became more attractive to many soldiers.  But in summer and fall 2012, the Army was plagued with a desertion rate somewhere between 14%-20% per year, which is staggering.

To Build a Police Force

“I need 20 good police officers, and could use 100. Good people, not any hashish smokers. And I need sleeping bags and mattresses and a generator for power.” Lt. Col. Amanuddin, Afghan police supervisor, early 2008

Some of the conferees in Bonn in 2001 recognized the importance of a strong national police. They looked to history. In the early 20th century, then-Captain John Pershing built a constabulary force in the Philippines, which became a model for future counterinsurgency operations. Strong policing helped establish zones of security. As the French counterinsurgency theorist David Galula noted, police help identify insurgents and their supporters. Today’s U.S. Army counterinsurgency field manual states that the police, not the military, are the front-line forces in a counterinsurgency.

This applies to Afghanistan. In rural Afghanistan, the police are responsible for maintaining security, addressing community problems, and brokering disputes. Police interact with the public daily, forging ongoing relationships with key community members. Through these daily interactions and relationships, police develop intimate knowledge of the physical and human terrain. For these reasons, the Taliban made the police primary targets for death and intimidation.

            Some of the Afghan National Police (ANP) and Interior Ministry Forces have become effective at patrolling.  However, there is a strong consensus that the overall ANP training program has been weak.  The poor quality of the police was, and remains, a large problem for the public administration and security sectors of human development.  The police force was rampant with tribalism and favoritism, which has played into the hands of the Taliban.  

Profile 8: The “Gangster” Policewoman of Kandahar

 "You have long mustaches, but you have no bravery.”  Officer Malalai Kakar to fellow police officers who ran from the Taliban in a gun fight

                      Like her father and brothers before her, Malalai Kakar was determined to become a police officer. She entered the police academy at 15 and became an officer in 1982. “I’m very famous as a dangerous person in Kandahar. People fear me.” The 5-foot dynamo earned this local fear, as well as nationwide respect, by standing firm when men fled in the face of the Taliban. She also grappled, literally, with street-thug violence. She explained that her arms bore scars from a suspect’s teeth marks after she wrestled him to the ground and arrested him. She called herself “part gangster.” But women in Kandahar loved and trusted her, coming to her to plead for protection from abusive husbands.

            Tales of her bravery served as a recruiting tool at a time when many Afghan city police forces, particularly in Kandahar, were seeking more women recruits. In 2006, 10 men reported to her in the field. “She is higher-ranked than me,” explained a young male subordinate. “So she has to give orders, and I have to obey.” She had long shed her burka and, when she became Kandahar’s first woman investigator, began wearing a man’s loose-fitting police uniform and visibly carrying sidearms. In her office, she adjudicated problems with an emphasis on domestic abuse. Malalai became a touchstone for Afghan police officers.

            During the Taliban era, while living in Pakistan, she married a Western-oriented United Nations employee and, by 2008, had five children. She would prepare breakfast each morning, usually green-onion pancakes. On September 30, 2008, while leaving for work with one of her sons, she was shot in the head by the Taliban, killing her at the scene. Later, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Malalai Kakar Women Police Training Center, which opened in December 2009, Malalai’s father said, “Malalai was proud to serve her country. I thank the United States for making this possible.”

An Agreement Grows in Bonn

            Food started to flow to hungry Afghans in November, if in limited supply. In December, more than 115,000 tons of food, enough to feed 6 million refugees for 2 months, arrived in Afghanistan.  This was the largest amount of food delivered to any country since the 1980s and one of the largest since the Berlin Airlift.  The pounding poverty and tribal feuding continued. But by late January, the Afghans were no longer starving, as aircraft delivered food, dry clothing, medicine, and other supplies. President Bush declared that feeding the displaced people of Afghanistan would be his top priority in Afghanistan. It was.

            The victors in the Afghan war inherited a thoroughly failed state, which they determined rebuild to keep the Taliban at bay. The most important of the early, post-Taliban, international documents was the Bonn Agreement, which created and legitimized the Afghan government; the basic legal structure, particularly the constitution; the Supreme Court; and the economy.  Agreements were hammered out in Bonn in November 2001 among four main Afghan factions. Signed in December 2001, it created the Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) whose chairman, Hamid Karzai, took office on December 22, 2001.

            It also pledged to hold elections, reorganize the armed forces and security and intelligence organizations, and legitimize the role of the United Nations and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as administrators of security, humanitarian, and reconstruction aid in Afghanistan. An Interim Authority would rule for 6 months, after which a Loya Jirga, a deliberative body of elders would convene to elect national-level representatives.

            The Bonn delegates chose Hamid Karzai because he was trusted by Americans, was a Pashtun, and had political and administrative experience as a clan chief for the Polpolzai-Durrani clan, which produced Afghan kings for 200 years. Karzai had strong family connections to the U.S. He was studying political science in India when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. His family fled to major U.S. cities and opened Afghan restaurants. During the anti-Soviet war, Karzai soon moved to Pakistan to support the mujahedeen. 

            In Bonn, Karzai’s main rival, the veteran statesman Burhanuddin Rabbani, was not found suitable by the American and German governments.  The Bonn Agreement did not satisfy all signatories or resolve all the nettling issues. But it did provide a basic peace agreement and a blueprint for building the then-tenuous peace into an enduring one. The donors would craft a blueprint for development in general sectors- generating economic growth; building an army, civil service, police services, communication, education, and health systems. The Taliban could challenge all these goals.

To Build an Economy

      Economists at the World Bank determined that merely balancing the economy was insufficient for Afghanistan’s long-term prospects. That approach would keep the country at relatively primitive levels of human development. An impoverished Afghanistan would be hostage to the Taliban’s resurgence. But developing Afghanistan would create stakeholders and stability. There would be a trickle-down effect across other sectors: the quality of civil service would improve if civil servants were paid higher wages and better trained; security would grow as the number of stakeholders in economic stability increased; and there would be greater capacity for health care and secular-oriented education. This reasoning is the foundation of contemporary human development theory and counterintelligence doctrine.

      Bringing young men into the workforce would give them status and provide enough income to afford to marry. A married man would be less likely to join an insurgency because he would have family obligations. In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan’s economic growth spurred other human development sectors. It could happen again in an Afghanistan rid of the Taliban.

      Some economists were guardedly optimistic, provided sufficient seed money was allocated to begin reconstruction and development projects in earnest. Afghanistan had, by Third World standards, pre-war success in developing key infrastructure projects, such as electric power and gas pipelines. The new government needed to repatriate the educated and talented who had fled the country during the Taliban period. The return of human capital in the post-Taliban era, particularly engineers, businessmen, and computer technicians, was seen as essential for sustained economic development. But they needed to be protected against the Taliban.  

Building in the Villages and in the Provinces

In 2001 and 2002, pro-government donors to Afghanistan’s future were overwhelmed with the reconstruction and development demands. They determined to move quickly to outflank the incipient Taliban threat through building sustained, broad-sector economic growth. Beginning with handfuls of developmental specialists with a formidable military bodyguard, the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) became the engine of local economic growth and village stability.

PRTs were natural instruments for maintaining a light military “footprint" to guard against the Taliban while protecting developmental experts. The first phases of the conflict removed the Taliban and al Qaeda from power; the next phase focused on stabilizing the Karzai Regime and developing the country. By early 2002, the U.S. Army deployed the PRT’s precursor, the Coalition Humanitarian Liaison Cells, as small outposts to assess reconstruction and developmental needs. They were soon nicknamed “Chiclets,” a creative, if not precise, acronym, and comprised 10-15 soldiers, generally with civil affairs backgrounds. Soldiers worked with NGOs in the field.

Local Afghans had been contemptuous of many civilian aid workers in the early post-Taliban period, whom they saw as mollycoddled, excessively bureaucratic, and often lackadaisical. Many also stayed cloistered in safe compounds. In contrast, many Afghans in the Bamiyan Province respected the risk-taking Chiclet-5, whose members were actively and personally engaged with Afghans and could deliver on promises to protect them from the Taliban. The title of these teams was changed again in November 2002.

The first of the newly named PRTs was deployed to Gardez in November 2002. The province was considered a permissive environment for development. The team included staff from several U.S. agencies with interests in developing Afghanistan and in securing peace there. The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) was a major player. Its development specialists served on the front lines of Afghanistan’s development efforts. A dean at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) underscored the need to serve in dangerous, contested territory in Afghanistan. “That (the developmental danger zone) is where the reality is. The Ronald Reagan Building (the headquarters of the AID) is Brigadoon.” 

PRTs were also intended as temporary tools to provide stability and economic optimism. After the developmental and stabilization fundamentals were achieved, the PRT would be dismantled to allow traditional, indigenous development efforts. According to the plan, PRTs would coordinate the reconstruction process, identify and prioritize local projects, conduct village assessments, and coordinate with regional commanders. The Taliban grew to hate the PRTs, which signaled to Kabul that the PRTs were winning.

            Though many Afghans were euphoric, yesterday’s Taliban were tremulous and dispossessed. The Taliban and their supporters had every reason to fear swift vengeance from the armed ethnicities, including the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and, particularly, the Hazaras, whom they had harangued and demeaned for 5 years; from the Americans whom they had outraged; and from the myriad villagers whose lives they had made miserable and mundane. Armed with few skills and having made themselves pariahs in their home villages, many Taliban left for Pakistan. Most had no clear agenda, employment prospects, or precise destination. But they needed to leave Afghanistan immediately. 

            Some former Taliban trimmed their beards and bought Western-style clothes because they felt free to sever their Taliban ties. But others, still true believers, did so to disguise their Taliban connections. Taliban who couldn’t slither back into their tribe or among the masses of refugees needed to wear Western dress to evade detection as former Taliban. Some secretly remained loyal to the Taliban’s cause, but many seethed with resentment toward the Arabs and al Qaeda. Many were confused and began making their way to Quetta, Pakistan.

            The vacuum left in the wake of the Taliban’s ever-present moral watchfulness gave rise to vice, by Salafist standards, and some social license. Dogfighting was back. Afghans would bet on muscular dogs that, with savage barks and bites, chewed each other, sometimes to the death. One of the best dogfighting arenas also offered panoramic beauty atop a local hill. Dogs battled in the long-drained Bib Mahru swimming pool, overlooking Kabul. When the Taliban were in power, they would use the diving platforms as execution planks for their victims.

            In Kabul, sex-starved young men could access prostitutes, many of whom were war widows. Desperate and abandoned, these women were homeless and desperate to feed their children. Gambling dens, forbidden during Taliban rule, reopened in the cities. But, like prostitution, the ready availability of alcohol posed moral dilemmas for more conservative Afghans, who feared a growing national prurience.

            Afghan villages were free of the Taliban, but many villagers were uncertain about their families’ future. The situation was often far worse for those Afghans living in remote villages. For some, life became subsistence. The end of the Taliban did nothing to bring them food immediately. The United States delivered food to many villages, but not everyone was eating. Many Afghans were still hungry and cold, and the oncoming winter brought panic and desperation.

            Western aid organizations made determined and unorthodox efforts to provide relief. PETA, which in October remonstrated against the military action, implored Americans to surrender their fur coats, particularly mink coats, to the freezing Afghans in January 2001. PETA partnered with the American Friends Committee, which helped pay for shipping the furs. Soon, a load of worn minks and ermines was mailed to drape Afghans who were shivering in the midwinter frost.

            Before food could be sent, some of the hungry and cold Afghans in remote areas began to starve. In a village near Mazar-e Sharif, people began eating bread made from grass. Symptoms of starvation developed, accompanied by the lethargy it produces. As one villager said, “We are waiting to die. If food does not come, we will eat dirt. We will die.” 

            Still-imprisoned Taliban and al Qaeda were also concerned about their future. The United States was not freeing all of the captives. Arabs, Pakistanis, and other foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden were caged in camps until the U.S.-led coalition amnestied, locally imprisoned, or transported them to U.S. facilities, such as the Guantanamo military prison, for interrogation and incarceration. The United States insisted that suspected al Qaeda members not be allowed to go free.   Some were taken directly to U.S. military prisons.

            The killing was over, and the United States and other nations were determined to meet and coordinate on stabilization operations in Afghanistan.  A new Afghan dawn was made brighter by the return from Europe of the respected, if geriatric, 87-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. Washington saw Shah as a force to unite the many Afghan ethnicities.  Charities, large and small, were reinvigorating their efforts. Some became creative, such as the mountain-climbing Greg Mortenson, who built schools in the region and would write about his accounts, if embellished, in “Three Cups of Tea.” As for heads of state, the victors agreed to unite their efforts and meet in Bonn to begin rebuilding Afghanistan.

            Though many Afghans were euphoric, yesterday’s Taliban were tremulous and dispossessed. The Taliban and their supporters had every reason to fear swift vengeance from the armed ethnicities, including the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and, particularly, the Hazaras, whom they had harangued and demeaned for 5 years; from the Americans whom they had outraged; and from the myriad villagers whose lives they had made miserable and mundane. Armed with few skills and having made themselves pariahs in their home villages, many Taliban left for Pakistan. Most had no clear agenda, employment prospects, or precise destination. But they needed to leave Afghanistan immediately. 

            Some former Taliban trimmed their beards and bought Western-style clothes because they felt free to sever their Taliban ties. But others, still true believers, did so to disguise their Taliban connections. Taliban who couldn’t slither back into their tribe or among the masses of refugees needed to wear Western dress to evade detection as former Taliban. Some secretly remained loyal to the Taliban’s cause, but many seethed with resentment toward the Arabs and al Qaeda. Many were confused and began making their way to Quetta, Pakistan.

            The vacuum left in the wake of the Taliban’s ever-present moral watchfulness gave rise to vice, by Salafist standards, and some social license. Dogfighting was back. Afghans would bet on muscular dogs that, with savage barks and bites, chewed each other, sometimes to the death. One of the best dogfighting arenas also offered panoramic beauty atop a local hill. Dogs battled in the long-drained Bib Mahru swimming pool, overlooking Kabul. When the Taliban were in power, they would use the diving platforms as execution planks for their victims.

            In Kabul, sex-starved young men could access prostitutes, many of whom were war widows. Desperate and abandoned, these women were homeless and desperate to feed their children. Gambling dens, forbidden during Taliban rule, reopened in the cities. But, like prostitution, the ready availability of alcohol posed moral dilemmas for more conservative Afghans, who feared a growing national prurience.

            Afghan villages were free of the Taliban, but many villagers were uncertain about their families’ future. The situation was often far worse for those Afghans living in remote villages. For some, life became subsistence. The end of the Taliban did nothing to bring them food immediately. The United States delivered food to many villages, but not everyone was eating. Many Afghans were still hungry and cold, and the oncoming winter brought panic and desperation.

            Western aid organizations made determined and unorthodox efforts to provide relief. PETA, which in October remonstrated against the military action, implored Americans to surrender their fur coats, particularly mink coats, to the freezing Afghans in January 2001. PETA partnered with the American Friends Committee, which helped pay for shipping the furs. Soon, a load of worn minks and ermines was mailed to drape Afghans who were shivering in the midwinter frost.

            Before food could be sent, some of the hungry and cold Afghans in remote areas began to starve. In a village near Mazar-e Sharif, people began eating bread made from grass. Symptoms of starvation developed, accompanied by the lethargy it produces. As one villager said, “We are waiting to die. If food does not come, we will eat dirt. We will die.” 

            Still-imprisoned Taliban and al Qaeda were also concerned about their future. The United States was not freeing all of the captives. Arabs, Pakistanis, and other foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden were caged in camps until the U.S.-led coalition amnestied, locally imprisoned, or transported them to U.S. facilities, such as the Guantanamo military prison, for interrogation and incarceration. The United States insisted that suspected al Qaeda members not be allowed to go free.   Some were taken directly to U.S. military prisons.

            The killing was over, and the United States and other nations were determined to meet and coordinate on stabilization operations in Afghanistan.  A new Afghan dawn was made brighter by the return from Europe of the respected, if geriatric, 87-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. Washington saw Shah as a force to unite the many Afghan ethnicities.  Charities, large and small, were reinvigorating their efforts. Some became creative, such as the mountain-climbing Greg Mortenson, who built schools in the region and would write about his accounts, if embellished, in “Three Cups of Tea.” As for heads of state, the victors agreed to unite their efforts and meet in Bonn to begin rebuilding Afghanistan.

Humor was back in style.  Laughing was officially reviled by the Taliban’s mullahs as silly, superfluous, and girlish. But an underground stock of Afghan jokes continued to circulate, of varying quality and cleanliness. Some of the jokes made a public comeback when comedy, including political jokes, was legalized again.

             Often, the jokes had a universal quality with a parochial twist. For example, a standard American yarn might begin, “So, a New Yorker, a Texan, and a Californian go into a bar and …” In the same comedic spirit, an Afghan gagman began his routine, “There are five brothers, a Hazara, a Charikari, a Panshiri, a Shiberghani, and a Kandahari,” and then indulged in regional and ethnic stereotypes that sent his audience into side-splitting laughter. Other routines included a popular male comic impersonating a belly dancer.

            Yesterday’s woolly-minded mullahs and their martinets were today’s fair game for parody. The now-crushed Taliban became a favored target of acidic humor, and the master of caricature was Mubariz Bidar. Dressed in a long black turban and toting a toy AK-47, the Mubariz Show parodied mullahs howling at boys to shave their Titanic haircuts. In restaurants, on the radio and television, and in shops and homes, Afghans were laughing. Some of it was sweet revenge.

            Buzkashi, a game often chaotic, naturally brutal, and always popular in Afghanistan, surged in popularity again after the Taliban retreated. Two horse-mounted, whip-clutching teams vie for possession of a headless goat carcass, which they carry around a flagpole to earn one point. Players thrash their opponents' horses. One enthusiast explained, "We haven't seen this game played in more than 5 years. It's part of our culture, and we're very happy to have it back again." An Englishman described buzkashi as a game “quite like rugby on four legs.”

            Beyond laughter, songs, and games, there was time for Afghans to reflect on the religious state of their country and to recall an Islam practiced earlier and differently. Islam rested at the very soul of Afghanistan. Islam had withstood a surge of Buddhist enthusiasm in the 900s, the animism and paganism of the Mongols, and the atheism of the Soviets. Most Afghans were still strongly connected to their religion. Islam was in Afghanistan to stay. But many had become cynical, and in the early post-Taliban months, many mosques were often vacant.

            A lachrymose mullah, who served in Kabul for 32 years, opined, “When the Taliban came, they defamed the name of Islam. They beat everyone; they forced people to pray. People became disillusioned with  Islam because of the Taliban.” The more optimistic Afghans looked forward to greater religious freedom. As one mullah said, “At the time of the Taliban, most people’s prayers weren’t heartfelt because people were forced to pray. Now, I think people pray for real, because God released them from the Taliban.”

Profile 11: Rapping Sosan - “We Were Kings and Queen in our Own Land”  

“Listen to my story! Listen to my pain and suffering!” Rap lyrics of Sosan Firooz_

            Perhaps it’s the Taliban’s abhorrence of popular singing, as well as their scorn for free-spirited women, that explains the popularity of Afghanistan’s first notable female rapper, Sosan Firooz. Anyone so detested by Taliban mullahs would draw an audience among Afghan youth. It might be the artistic genre itself, rap music, which is heard in clubs and on city streets around the world. Perhaps her songs’ cross-cultural lyrics bridge Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and myriad other ethnic and clan lines. Finally, it might be the 23-year-old, pretty, and plucky singer herself who explains her appeal. Young men and adolescent boys think she is sexy, and girls want to look and sing like her.   

            Like many Afghans, Sosan is a child of poverty, and her lyrics echo the despair of her early youth. She lived in exile in Iran, where her family had fled to escape the Taliban in 1996, and she hated it there. As paupers, her family washed dishes in restaurants and swept streets, scrounging for food and, according to her songs, enduring the taunts and snickers of Iranians. These are the lyrics of her song "Our Neighbors:"

 “In the country of strange our child was abused Our educated ones became street workers… We were kings and queens in our own land But here, we are waiters and dish washers.”

            Some of Sosan’s works have a patriotic appeal, which also explains her popularity. Like other rappers, Sosan is angry, and her art laments the despair of the Afghan diaspora. But many of her verses shine with hope for Afghanistan’s tomorrow.

Sosan has her internet video fans, but she also has detractors, including family members. Her uncle no longer speaks to her family because he considers Sosan flirty and frisky. But her father is her biggest fan and left his civil service job to serve as her bodyguard, chauffeur, and secretary.

            There are those in the West who admire her sassy creativity, even if they cannot understand the lyrics, which are in Dari. Sosan’s words plead for Afghan girls and women to be treated with equality and dignity. She also condemns narcotics as a national tragedy. Accompanying her songs on a website are pictures of the young ingénue in rap poses and Western grabs. Blog commentary on popular Western sites, such as the Huffington Post, wishes her the best but fears the worst. One comment from Ramshackle, a blogger, anticipates, “There will be a sad and predictable update to this story.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

             Often, the jokes had a universal quality with a parochial twist. For example, a standard American yarn might begin, “So, a New Yorker, a Texan, and a Californian go into a bar and …” In the same comedic spirit, an Afghan gagman began his routine, “There are five brothers, a Hazara, a Charikari, a Panshiri, a Shiberghani, and a Kandahari,” and then indulged in regional and ethnic stereotypes that sent his audience into side-splitting laughter. Other routines included a popular male comic impersonating a belly dancer.

            Yesterday’s woolly-minded mullahs and their martinets were today’s fair game for parody. The now-crushed Taliban became a favored target of acidic humor, and the master of caricature was Mubariz Bidar. Dressed in a long black turban and toting a toy AK-47, the Mubariz Show parodied mullahs howling at boys to shave their Titanic haircuts. In restaurants, on the radio and television, and in shops and homes, Afghans were laughing. Some of it was sweet revenge.

            Buzkashi, a game often chaotic, naturally brutal, and always popular in Afghanistan, surged in popularity again after the Taliban retreated. Two horse-mounted, whip-clutching teams vie for possession of a headless goat carcass, which they carry around a flagpole to earn one point. Players thrash their opponents' horses. One enthusiast explained, "We haven't seen this game played in more than 5 years. It's part of our culture, and we're very happy to have it back again." An Englishman described buzkashi as a game “quite like rugby on four legs.”

            Beyond laughter, songs, and games, there was time for Afghans to reflect on the religious state of their country and to recall an Islam practiced earlier and differently. Islam rested at the very soul of Afghanistan. Islam had withstood a surge of Buddhist enthusiasm in the 900s, the animism and paganism of the Mongols, and the atheism of the Soviets. Most Afghans were still strongly connected to their religion. Islam was in Afghanistan to stay. But many had become cynical, and in the early post-Taliban months, many mosques were often vacant.

            A lachrymose mullah, who served in Kabul for 32 years, opined, “When the Taliban came, they defamed the name of Islam. They beat everyone; they forced people to pray. People became disillusioned with  Islam because of the Taliban.” The more optimistic Afghans looked forward to greater religious freedom. As one mullah said, “At the time of the Taliban, most people’s prayers weren’t heartfelt because people were forced to pray. Now, I think people pray for real, because God released them from the Taliban.”

Profile 11: Rapping Sosan - “We Were Kings and Queen in our Own Land”  

“Listen to my story! Listen to my pain and suffering!” Rap lyrics of Sosan Firooz_

            Perhaps it’s the Taliban’s abhorrence of popular singing, as well as their scorn for free-spirited women, that explains the popularity of Afghanistan’s first notable female rapper, Sosan Firooz. Anyone so detested by Taliban mullahs would draw an audience among Afghan youth. It might be the artistic genre itself, rap music, which is heard in clubs and on city streets around the world. Perhaps her songs’ cross-cultural lyrics bridge Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and myriad other ethnic and clan lines. Finally, it might be the 23-year-old, pretty, and plucky singer herself who explains her appeal. Young men and adolescent boys think she is sexy, and girls want to look and sing like her.   

            Like many Afghans, Sosan is a child of poverty, and her lyrics echo the despair of her early youth. She lived in exile in Iran, where her family had fled to escape the Taliban in 1996, and she hated it there. As paupers, her family washed dishes in restaurants and swept streets, scrounging for food and, according to her songs, enduring the taunts and snickers of Iranians. These are the lyrics of her song "Our Neighbors:"

 “In the country of strange our child was abused Our educated ones became street workers… We were kings and queens in our own land But here, we are waiters and dish washers.”

            Some of Sosan’s works have a patriotic appeal, which also explains her popularity. Like other rappers, Sosan is angry, and her art laments the despair of the Afghan diaspora. But many of her verses shine with hope for Afghanistan’s tomorrow.

Sosan has her internet video fans, but she also has detractors, including family members. Her uncle no longer speaks to her family because he considers Sosan flirty and frisky. But her father is her biggest fan and left his civil service job to serve as her bodyguard, chauffeur, and secretary.

            There are those in the West who admire her sassy creativity, even if they cannot understand the lyrics, which are in Dari. Sosan’s words plead for Afghan girls and women to be treated with equality and dignity. She also condemns narcotics as a national tragedy. Accompanying her songs on a website are pictures of the young ingénue in rap poses and Western grabs. Blog commentary on popular Western sites, such as the Huffington Post, wishes her the best but fears the worst. One comment from Ramshackle, a blogger, anticipates, “There will be a sad and predictable update to this story.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Dancing in the Streets

            When the Taliban fled the Northern Alliance’s march on Kabul in mid-November 2001, uncontained joy poured into the streets. Young men, who had been forbidden under the Taliban from laughing, dancing, or talking to unrelated girls and women, kicked in the doors of the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue and trashed it. Routed in defeat, the rapacious Taliban plundered shops and absconded with whatever they could, fleeing into exile. Some of those who couldn’t escape lay dead in the streets, as their once-cowering countrymen spat on their corpses.

            Quickly, entrepreneurs tried to meet the demand for once-forbidden items. TVs, cassettes, and videotapes poured in from Iran and India, and those secreted during the Taliban era were restocked for rental. One shopkeeper had hidden over 500 video cassettes. After half a decade, the boarded-up cinemas of Kabul sprang to life again, as lines formed around blocks. Guards searched moviegoers for weapons. Young men admitted to the theater were compelled to hand over “brass knuckles, switchblades, radios,” and leave their AK-47s at the door.

            Then there was Titanic. No movie approached the status of this long-banned, nationally revered film. Titanic became a subculture. Creative vendors, long shackled by mullahs in the marketplace, sold a wide variety of Titanic-themed products. Titanic insect repellents and perfumes to attract lovers were piled on merchants’ tables in Kabul’s central market for all to buy. The lethality of “Titanic Mosquito Killer” could not be verified, nor could the alluring power of “Titanic Making Love Ecstasy Perfume Body Spray,” which would certainly have roiled the mullahs.

            In Kandahar, merchants could, once again, offer song birds for sale. Earlier, their caged chirpings were declared un-Islamic by the Taliban.  Turbans, one of the many despised emblems of the Taliban rule, were discarded into the trash. In an interview, Diane Sawyer revealed to Kate Winslet that her portrayal of the movie’s heroine, Kate, helped Afghan women endure the darkest hours of Taliban times.  A young Afghan said, “Films were banned under the Taliban. But now we can watch brilliant films like this whenever we want.”

            Post-adolescent men shorn their beards and rejoiced and, like the younger generation, sang long-forbidden songs. Women and girls could walk the streets of the nation’s capital without fear of being pummeled with leather whips. Some women continued to wear the burka, just as many men kept their full, if trimmed, beards. But for the first time in 5 years, they had a choice.  Sufi Muslims, despised by the Taliban, emerged from the shadows and celebrated their Islamic sect through song and dance and laughter.

            When Northern Alliance forces poured into the city, they were greeted with roses, and cheery children climbed onto the armored vehicles. Gone were the Taliban’s rubber truncheons and their yawn-inducing, puritanical sermons. Songs once deemed outré by the Taliban now blast from cars and stores in Kandahar. Lyrics sang, “I’m waiting for you here, alone. Please come to me. Let’s run away and get married.” Women could indulge their femininity. An American woman, Debbie Rodriguez, established a beauty school in Kabul. A young Afghan woman said, “I can come here regularly now to make myself beautiful. Before, it was illegal.”

            Men played chess again, a game they had long cherished. The threat of arrest had passed, but many of the old chess sets were gone, some buried as hidden treasure and lost forever in the soil. Though it was winter, kites still soared across the skies of Afghanistan. In late fall 2001 and early 2002, the pall of national depression had lifted, and many Afghans once again had hope.

            The full extent of Afghanistan’s Generation X’s cultural isolation from the West became clear in December 2001, when an MTV-affiliated journalist posed “man-in-the-street” questions to Afghan youth. Most questions focused on popular culture, and few of the still-shell-shocked Afghan tweens, teens, and twenty-somethings could identify any of the Spice Girls or Backstreet Boys. Nonetheless, one teenage girl, wearing a Titanic head scarf, plaintively asked the roaming former MTV video jockey whether it was true that Leonardo DiCaprio died on September 11, 2001. When assured that he was very much alive, the girl was visibly relieved.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

An al Qaeda Strategist Analyzes the Early fight

            Soon after the initial American victories and the Taliban defeats, al Qaeda leaders began to write lessons from the war.  One student and practitioner of war was Said al-Adel (see profile 22), a former Egyptian special forces officer and later an al-Qaeda military operations commander. Al-Adel wrote a series of articles on lessons learned in Afghanistan for his Islamist compatriots in Iraq.  Through these articles, he evaluated the war in Afghanistan and offered suggestions about how Muslims could defeat Americans.

            According to al-Adel, the Taliban were very inventive in provisioning and billeting soldiers and their families. Hot meals were provided to fighting men, often during long battles. Administrative affairs were decentralized, and each staging ground for battle had a mobile kitchen. Al-Adel and others were impressed by the ability to keep Taliban fighters clothed, fed, and sometimes upbeat during battle.

            In Kandahar, the Taliban used a zone defense to fend off American attacks. They reformulated the pre-September 2001 defensive tactics to concentrate on protecting sectors. They created three sectors:  Airport and Camp Operations Sector, City Operations Sector, and Emergency Force Sector. The Emergency Force, unlike the Airport and Camp units, was mobile. It was well equipped with modern trucks to deploy rapidly in the greater Kandahar area. It had anti-armor, anti-aircraft, and howitzers, and contained the best fighters.  These zone defenses delayed but could not possibly prevent the conquest by the fortified Northern Alliance fighters, who were supported by US air power.

            For offensive operations, the Taliban would divide into groups of 10, which would work independently during the day and more closely coordinate in night operations. They preferred operating in units of 10 men to avoid concentrating forces en mass, which would give the Coalition Forces opportunity to attack with air forces.

            Veteran Taliban would lead these groups of 10 men and engage Coalition Forces in ambushes and direct fire fights. Less-experienced Taliban forces would serve in secondary positions to gain experience and ready themselves as a reserve force. Taliban used sewers as avenues of approach.  The Taliban could also quickly evacuate women and children from parts of a city to nearby villages in anticipation of hostilities. Non-combatants could be sheltered or removed from the combat zone when fighting began. When Taliban soldiers were injured, they were often transported to hospitals or field units in Pakistan. Casualties were generally not left in Afghan hospitals. This impressed non-Taliban military observers.

            Maintaining effective communications was a constant challenge for the Taliban because of the advanced U.S. electronic capabilities and the Taliban’s relatively primitive systems. Even here, the Taliban showed inventiveness by sending multiple couriers and using different routes during battle. These lessons would impact future operations.

The Fighting Finishes- Temporarily

            Unlike other wars, there were few named battles in the Coalition’s destruction of the Taliban in 2001. There were several quasi-suicidal attacks similar to Japanese banzai attacks of the dying days of the War in the Pacific. Fighters, presumed to be Chechens, became suicide bombers, strapping explosives to their bodies and pretending to surrender before blowing themselves up when captured by Northern Alliance soldiers.[1]  By most accounts, the Taliban and their allies fought bravely. In Kunduz, a key city that straddles the only main road to Kabul and the south, American B-52 and F-18 bombers were called in to support the Northern Alliance after the Northern Alliance pleaded for air support. North of Kunduz, Chechen and Arab fighters staged a last stand in the village of Dasht-e-Archi, near Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan. The Taliban lost the engagements but impressed their opponents with their steady determination. The Taliban were not through fighting.

            For the first time in 5 years, the warlords of the Afghan north celebrated strategic victory.  General Mohammed Qasim Fahim, the middle-aged leader of the Northern Alliance, succeeded the recently murdered and still-treasured Ahmed Shah Masood. Like Masood, Fahim was a Tajik and built his reputation battling the Soviets.

            General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an eccentric, often garrulous, and large man, had vast experience as a soldier and politician. An Uzbek Muslim, not at all wedded to the puritanical demands of Sharia, Dostum enjoyed whiskey. He left school at 14 and developed political acumen and street cunning during his rise to power among Uzbeks and other northern Afghans. In the civil war of the 1990s, he remained holed up in a stronghold, called the Fort of War, and ran territory in Northern Afghanistan as a personal fiefdom. The former communist became a capitalist when it became clear the Soviet-leaning government in Kabul was moribund.

            By Afghan standards, Dostum has a liberal outlook, which is partially explained by his street-wise pragmatism and bargaining with secular leaders in the pre-Taliban, relatively progressive circles. Under Dostum’s quasi-dictatorial, if idiosyncratic, rule in the north, girls and women attended school and worked.  However, Dostum was hardly a gentle heart. He would be accused of imprisoning Taliban in shipping containers, in which they slowly died of suffocation and heat exhaustion in 2001.

            General Ismail Khan, the "Lion of Herat," a Tajik, was supported by the Iranians. Though known for his corruption, he, like Dostum, was far less misogynistic than the Taliban and gave women some opportunities, though limited. He developed administrative experience as governor in Herat after the Russians left.   Khan’s relations with the United States were troubling for many years because of his often- opaque connections to Iran. The Bush administration accused him of allowing Iran to infiltrate weapons, supplies, and operatives into Herat Province. Administration spokesmen claimed that Iranian intelligence and military advisors were active in Herat, to which Khan responded in 2002, “I've got plenty of military experience. I don't need foreign advisers.” There were other Northern Alliance leaders who would assume different positions of influence.

Profile 7: Zardad and Shah: The Pashtun Master and his Human Dog

            Non-Taliban warlords could be every bit as bestial as the Taliban. One such case was that of small-time warlord and his prisoner-accomplice. Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, who was motivated by greed and viciousness, not religion or ethnicity, maintained his private house of horrors in a small area outside of Kabul, called Sarobi.  Between 1992 and 1996, Zardad controlled a small militia who patrolled roads near Sarobi, on which travelers would pass to visit Kabul or other areas. Zardad would arrest travelers, including international aid workers, and imprison them in his self-made prison. He would beat them until they yielded their money and valuables. Even then, he would often shoot or mutilate some.

            As a boy, Zardad gained skill killing and torturing victims. He joined the Mujahedeen when he was 17 and rose to command 2,000 men against the Soviets. He explained his involvement in the anti-Soviet Jihad, “Of course we killed many people, but we never harmed the civilian population.”

            But civilians who trespassed in Zardad’s zone of operations in the mid-1990s could certainly be harmed in unimaginably monstrous ways. Zardad liked to hurt people. Among his many tortures was his use of a captive “man-dog,” Abdullah Shah, who attacked prisoners like a wild dog, biting off and swallowing their testicles and chewing and gnawing their flesh.  There are different accounts about the relationship between Zardad and Shah. Some witnesses said that Zardad kept Shah, literally, in chains, which Zardad would remove in front of a captive. He would then sick Shah on the hapless and certainly confused prey and watch the spirited performance. Shah was then, once again, enchained and returned to his living pit through a hole in the floor. Others observed a more collegial relationship.  It was less of a master-dog relationship than one of a morbid partnership.

            Zardad escaped the Taliban’s advance toward Kabul in 1998 and fled to London, where he worked delivering pizza. There are no reports that he tried to harm or bite anyone. But the 41-year-old Pashtun was arrested and tried in the Old Bailey under international war crimes laws in 2005 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.  His old partner, Mr. Shah, did not fare as well. In Kabul, he was the first person to receive a death sentence since the fall of the Taliban. Shah’s trial was secretly filmed by Afghan documentarians who made the movie, “Zardad’s Dog.”  In 2002, for the enormity of his crimes of killing 20 people including his wife, whom he burnt alive, he was shot in the back of the head in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison, with the approval of Hamid Karzai.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

To Build a Police Force

“I “Need 20 good police officers and could use 100. Good people, not any hashish smokers. And I need sleeping bags, mattresses, and a generator for power.” Lt. Col. Amanuddin, Afghan police supervisor, early 2008

Many conferees in Bonn understood the importance of a strong national police. So did counterinsurgency strategists. In the early 20th century, General John Pershing built a constabulary force in the Philippines, and British Major General Richard L. Clutterbuck, a senior member of the Malayan government from 1956–58, noted that police put communists at a strategic disadvantage. Strong policing helped establish zones of security. As the French counterinsurgency theoretician David Galula pointed out, police helped identify insurgents and their supporters. Today’s US Army counterinsurgency field manual states that the police, not the military, are the front-line soldiers in a counterinsurgency.

This applies to Afghanistan, where the police are often the only government representatives present. In these cases, the police are not only responsible for security but also address community grievances and facilitate dispute resolution. They interact with the population daily, forging ongoing relationships with key members of the community. Through these daily interactions and relationships, police develop intimate knowledge of the physical and human terrain.

In February of 2002, Coalition representatives met in Berlin to discuss details of the ANP support mission. This was based on a German fact-finding mission in January 2002, which calculated that an initial ANP force of 62,000 was needed to provide basic security.  In August 2002, the Germans officially instituted a three-year training plan for officers and a one-year plan for non-commissioned officers. As the largest donor for ANP training, the United States assisted the German-led efforts.  In 2003, the United States increased its police to replace the German effort.

            The Department of Defense provided equipment and infrastructure assistance through the Office of Military Cooperation Afghanistan (OMC-A).  OMC-A funded the construction of the Central Training Center for Police in Kabul in May of 2003, followed by the construction of seven Regional Training Centers (RTCs) across the country. By January 2005, Germany and State/INL had trained 35,000 police forces; however, corruption, desertion, and drug abuse remained serious problems, and larger reform efforts were needed.  In July 2005, CSTC-A took general responsibility for training the ANP.

            The new units will help counter the Taliban's new, more aggressive tactics, Bouchard said. "They are a rapid-response group that would help put down a national crisis or insurgent activity," he said. The units will be more heavily armed and armored than traditional police units. "A lot of the equipment is going to look similar to what our Marines are currently using in Iraq, if the plan goes through," Bouchard said. "Those are on order, and we're expecting that equipment to arrive by the end of the calendar year."

            Officials are looking to supply the Afghans with mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles that Marines are using in Iraq. The heavily armored wheeled vehicles have a V-shaped bottom to deflect explosions. The first three civil order battalions have stood up, Bouchard said. However, most of the units' members have completed their basic training only in the last two months, so it will take time before the units are effective against the Taliban…

            There were some successes by 2011, particularly by those trained by the British. In a series of raids in Helmand, Afghan police apprehended suspected explosive manufacturers, uncovered and destroyed large hauls of Soviet-made munitions, and raided a significant bomb-making facility. This showed some improvement in professionalism over earlier years and suggested improved civil-police relations. The police operated on the tips from local villagers.

            US training efforts for police have also produced some accomplishments. Coalition Forces are hopeful that village defense forces, in many ways a vast and militarized neighborhood watch program, will fill the security vacuum left when US forces begin to leave in earnest. Americans have credited local police units and Interior Ministry Forces with more effective patrolling.

            However, there is overwhelming consensus that the overall ANP training program was largely a failure.  The poor quality of the police was, and remains, a large problem for the public administration and security sectors of human development.  The police force was rampant with tribalism and favoritism.   

            First, the shortage of police mentors has been a key impediment to U.S. efforts to conduct training and evaluation and verify that police are on duty. Second, the ANP continues to face difficulties with equipment shortages and quality issues. Third, the ANP faces a difficult working environment, including a weak Afghan judicial sector and consistent problems with police pay, corruption, and attacks by insurgents.

To Build a Civil Service

            The quality of the civil service is central to Afghanistan's development. In 2001, the victors in Bonn quickly discovered many problems in the hollow civil service, including a lack of capacity, weak communications between Kabul and outlying provinces, and an ineffective police force. Under the Taliban, public administrators were poorly and infrequently paid; unprofessional, in that they were directed by theocrats; and marginally trained in public administration skills. They were also cowed by the mullahs who controlled important decision-making and could end their careers and even their lives very quickly. It was not surprising that post-Taliban donors to Afghanistan remarked on the lack of experience, talent, ambition, and general competence in the civil service. 

            In April 2002, the World Bank extended its first loan since 1979 to create the Transitional Support Strategy (TSS) and to fund its first operation, the Emergency Public Administration Project. It sought to make the civil service more attractive by combating corruption and nepotism and rewarding merit.

            Coalition Forces need Afghans to perform administrative and managerial work. Long a recipient of relatively modest levels of foreign aid, Afghanistan had not developed the capacity to process billions of dollars in aid. Nonetheless, after the Taliban were scattered, the country became awash in developmental funding, which was managed by NGOs and the burgeoning Afghan civil service. The vacuum of competent public administration and the lack of effective safeguards in the distribution of aid money led to vast, sometimes wild, unaccounted-for spending. This gave the Taliban rhetorical ammunition to discredit the new government.  For this reason, foreign donors determined to develop a pool of competent administrators as a top priority in their development schemes.

            An effective Afghan civil service would spur all other development sectors and increase stability. In larger cities, civil servants would issue construction permits; maintain basic infrastructure, including roads, power stations, water facilities, sanitation, and communications; and perform other civil service duties. This, in turn, would improve health, education, communications, the rule of law, and security. According to the plan, the government's credibility would be boosted if vital services improved, and citizens would become greater stakeholders in reconstruction and development issues. This would weaken the Taliban's attractiveness.

            A strong local civil service is also very important in Afghanistan because the central government often has very little control outside of Kabul. The lack of properly maintained roads and weak communications gave village and regional administrators autonomy that still continues.

            To Build Communications

            Economists in Bonn concluded that improvements in communication would spur growth across all development sectors. Economies can grow when costs, expenses, and demand levels are communicated broadly. Civil servants in Kabul need to communicate with counterparts in the provinces for administrative purposes, and the education and health sectors depend on harnessing the internet to modernize. Increased security requires soldiers to communicate at all levels, particularly for close-support combat operations and the rule of law.

            The security sector, the bedrock of counterinsurgency efforts, will improve only if soldiers can communicate at all levels, particularly in close-support combat operations. Strong communications allow villagers to contact the ANA, police forces, or ISAF operators. For this reason, the insurgents have placed a high premium on destroying radio towers and have stepped up their use of radio technology to communicate their political agenda.

In a country that is isolated, illiterate, and unstable, the side that can better communicate its agenda and coordinate civil and military operations has a distinct advantage. Radio communications are particularly important because of the extraordinarily high level of illiteracy. In some areas, the female illiteracy rate rises to 99%. Radio is the only way the government can communicate its democratization programs, advise farmers on agricultural issues, advise families on health issues, and warn of security threats. There are approximately 40 radio stations broadcasting that reach 37% of the population.

            Counterinsurgency develops the communications infrastructure – transmission towers, radio stations, expertise in operation and repair, buildings, and service centers. Counterinsurgency communications specialists provide training to local and national-level broadcasters and telecommunications personnel.

            Communication ability is a prerequisite for effective anti-Taliban information operations.   For example, the US Army participates in radio broadcasts. At one station in Paktika Province, a radio broadcasts programs for 13 hours a day to local villages.  The show includes human development: agriculture and personal finance, health, education, security-related issues, and religious issues.  Other examples are.  Peace Message Radio, which is USAID-funded and is listened to by 80% of radio listeners in the province of Khost.  These secular shows provide an alternative to the Taliban’s unwavering drumbeat of Islamic programming.  

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

In the United States, some Americans, still smarting from the September attacks on the homeland, could now lampoon those who hosted their Afghanistan-based enemy. Not all the jokes were clever, and many smacked of a conqueror’s hubris.  Jokes such as, “That’s as fast as a Taliban switching sides,” showed a sardonic delight in the crumbling status of the Taliban. Despite the Christmas holiday warmth, the American public was not spared gelid humor.  “What is the difference between Osama Bin Laden and the cave dwellers of Mesa Verde in Colorado?  The cave dwellers survived.” But many al-Qaeda members survived, and US forces were determined to hunt them down and kill them.

            Some snags, disappointments, and reverses were expected, given the sturdiness of the Taliban enemy. Many U.S. special operators found exactly what they anticipated in Taliban and al Qaeda fighters -men and boys fanatically dedicated to their cause and comrades. In early December, an American major said, “I thought Kandahar would fall in about a week, and it hasn't. I lost a lot of beers on that." But the momentum was irreversibly with the United States and its allies. One U.S. gunship pilot and part-time graphic artist, Captain Alex "Sketch" Fulford, conceded that the Taliban “still had teeth” but retorted that Americans “have pliers."

            U.S. troops were particularly eager to capture or kill bin Laden, who slipped from their grip into Pakistan. But they did find his computers, hard drives, and diaries, as well as myriad documents confirming the Omar bin Laden relationship.  Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander General Tommy Franks vowed prophetically, "The world is not a large enough place for him to hide."

            There were other reasons for American confidence.  When it became clear that the Taliban were being thrashed, many Afghans switched allegiance to the victorious Americans and Northern Alliance leaders. General Franks took delight in the village elders’ keenness to lead their tribal councils, or shuras, towards peaceful terms with U.S. forces. More than a few Taliban leaders flipped sides by late 2001.  Often, there is no shame among Afghans in switching sides, as long as it doesn’t happen too frequently. In other countries, what would be considered treasonous is, in Afghanistan, seen as political chess. One Taliban commander stated in January 2002, “This is a normal thing in Afghanistan, because everyone loves their lives and wants to stay alive. We switch sides all the time.”  This is hamsaya.

            Profile 6 Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi: God and Taliban at Yale

                The late 2001 sudden diaspora of the Taliban forced its leadership into distant places. Most sought refuge in Pakistan; some straggled to Iran; others were cuffed and crated to Guantanamo. One enrolled at Yale.  Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban spokesman and ambassador at large, though with only 4 years of standardized education, was given special student status at Yale. At 27, he was much older than the average Yale freshman.   This special student was special indeed.

            Hashemi grew up in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He attended school until he was 13, and most of his English instruction came from an American charity group. In the wake of the Soviet defeat, he hitched his star to the Taliban in 1995.  And, his fortunes soared. He became a spokesman and general diplomat for the Taliban government at an age when Ivy League men are usually chasing coeds. But like his meteoric ascent, his failing fortunes mirrored those of other Taliban leaders. In 2002 he was broke and unemployed with few prospects.

            But he knew something of the United States, which he had visited a year earlier. As a roving ambassador, in March 2001, he spoke to students at the University of Southern California.   In the shadow of Tommy Trojan, Hashemi cast Afghanistan as a victim and denied the destruction of the Buddhas.  They had been worn by rain. Also, Afghanistan was tolerant of other religions.  The Taliban didn’t hate or harm women. The only thing the Taliban hated was the old king of Afghanistan, whom he deprecated as “a rotten old, knucklehead.”  Afghans were hungry and poor, and it was largely the fault of Western policy and the current sanctions.

            But not all in the audience were charmed.  A woman approached him slowly, tore off her burka, and shouted solidarity with Afghan women and scorn for the Taliban. Bridling himself, the diplomat responded, "I'm really sorry for your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you."

            Hashemi made important connections as an ambassador. One proved to be his booster and got him into Yale after the Taliban were crushed. A famous political science professor, John Gaddis, wrote, "I think it's great. It seems to me that's exactly what we ought to be doing. I'm happy he is here." Even some ardent Yale feminists offered support, though cautiously and convolutedly. A co-ed explained, "As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another. American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends." 

            But many Yale alumni were not so supportive. A gay Yalie was not keen on bunking with a dorm mate who “not only discriminated against gays, but actually stoned them to death.”  U.S. Army Captain Flagg Youngblood protested, “That my alma mater would embrace an ambassador from one of America’s declared and defeated enemies and in the same breath keep ROTC and military recruiters off campus shows where Yale’s allegiance falls. Yale’s actions show that they consider the U.S. military more evil than the Taliban.

            David Bookstabber added to the brouhaha by instigating a campaign to mail plastic fingernails to Yale’s administration. The fingernails were symbolic of the Taliban’s practice of yanking out the fingernails of women who wore nail polish in the time of the Taliban.  An administrator in the law school's development office barked incredulously at Mr. Bookstabber, "What is wrong with you? Are you retarded?" In response to the “Nail Yale” hullabaloo, the dean of admissions at explained that if Yale didn’t admit the Taliban, he would have “enrolled at Harvard.” 

            Hashemi did not make the final cut for regular admissions.  Whether or not the plastic-nail, mail-in protests were effective, or if Hashemi didn’t pass the Ivy League academic muster, the candidate was not accepted to George Bush’s alma mater.  Some chuckled that he was “Talibanned.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Two weeks after the attack on the US heartland, the United States deployed a small team, called Jawbreaker, under the direction of Gary Schroen, to rebuild the capabilities of the Northern Alliance. They succeeded. Schroen, a seasoned operative with vast experience in South Asia and who knew many of the leading Alliance personalities, bypassed the Pakistanis and established bases for American special operations forces. From these bases, he and his men guided the Alliance with advanced technology.  In 2012, Schroen would claim, "CIA station chief Cofer Black told me, 'find Bin Laden, kill him and cut off his head, put it on dry ice and ship it back to me, and I'm going to take it down to show the President'.  

            The celebrated U.S. Green Berets, lauded in military folklore and popular culture, were deployed to Afghanistan.  Some had trained in Pakistan and knew the languages, culture, and terrain. They studied the mujahedeen’s tactics on the Soviets in detail. They were ready.

            Opposing U.S. forces were the Taliban, whose precise numbers and military capabilities were not clearly known. Many estimates were about 50,000 troops and foreign volunteers. Many Taliban were armed with AK assault rifles, some of which were locally fabricated, and some heavier individual weapons, such as rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

             The basic Taliban fighting unit consisted of 8-10 men who were transported in the back of pickup trucks.  Of the estimated 50,000 Taliban force, about 8,000-12,000 were foreign. In September and October 2001, most units were ad hoc and poorly organized.  However, they were augmented by elements from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Pakistan’s Islamist organizations. The Taliban had about 650 armored vehicles, mostly Soviet-era scout cars and armored personnel carriers. Their air force consisted of a few old Soviet fighters, used almost exclusively as bombers. There were about 10 transport planes of dubious reliability and quality.

            The Fighting Starts

            When Mullah Omar would not surrender bin Laden, the United States initiated hostilities.  Initially, elite teams of U.S. and British soldiers were deployed to target key Taliban command and control centers.  Small teams of 4-to-12 men were infiltrated to pinpoint command posts, supply depots, training headquarters for air- and sea-launched munitions that began to devastate Taliban positions in early October 2001.  Targets included air defenses, military communications sites, and training camps inside Afghanistan. 

            American and British military and political leaders debated which set of tactics would be more suitable to ferret-out and destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They determined that American and British forces should have a light ground presence and should support indigenous anti-Taliban forces, particularly from the Northern Alliance. These Afghan soldiers were rugged, eager, and well positioned to kill Taliban. Uzbekistan became a main forward based for allied forces. Tajikistan and Kazakhstan were supportive. In addition to ground fighting, U.S. bombers pulverized Taliban targets from the air.

The devastating effects became cinematic, as thermo-baric plasma bombs ignited the air in tunnels and cave complexes.  The Taliban had shown ingenuity building quarters in caves with brick or cement floors and steel doors. Some of these quarters were powered by generators and had a perimeter of anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers. Many were equipped with computers and modern communications. But this offered little protection against the blast power of U.S. advanced munitions, such as the 5,000-pound ``bunker-buster” or “big blue” the 15,000 pound relic of the Vietnam era. Also called the “daisy cutter,” the BLU-82 killed anything within a radius of 600 yards.

.           In what was described as a “blowtorch effect,” many Taliban who, like their Afghan forbearers, took refuge in tunnels and caves, were cremated alive.  When channeled to underground tunnels, blast pressure and heat crushed and incinerated almost anything inside. From a distance, video coverage captured small mountains collapsing under the blast of these and other U.S. munitions. The vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, said, “As you would expect, they make a heck of a bang when they go off, and their intent is to kill people.”

            It was hard for Taliban and al Qaeda to escape the allied juggernaut, though bin Laden and some of his compatriots famously and sometimes inexplicably did so.  U.S. aerial surveillance craft prevented large deployments of Taliban from taking effective shelter, which was often a death sentence. Some of the munitions were guided, and others were unguided. This war initiated the widespread use of Global Hawk unmanned spy planes and Predator-launched drone warfare. Another advantage for the United States was the ability to deploy and resupply hundreds of assault troops by helicopter onto a mountain target.

            Not all the warfare was gory, and there were moments for the human touch in battle. After U.S. Army Rangers stormed the compounds of the in-flight Taliban, they left American mementos.  In mid-October, soldiers left the famous photograph of American firefighters hoisting the U.S. flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The Rangers also left some American graffiti on the walls of a Kandahar building, which read, “Freedom Endures.”  

            Across Asia, Europeans were largely sympathetic to Washington’s efforts. Britain and the Netherlands ranked as the European countries with the highest levels of support.  Queen Elizabeth II expressed "disbelief and total shock" at the September attacks at St Paul's Cathedral. Polls revealed that half of all Europeans championed what President Bush called the “War on Terrorism.” Parisians, often very reluctant to praise American foreign policy, were very responsive to President Bush’s decision to fight. About two-thirds of the French backed the American war on the Taliban in October 2001.  Many European intellectuals recognized the attacks as a threat to the core tenets of international order and law. For there to be peace in the world, there needs to be war on the Taliban. 

            As the Taliban became a global news story, European journalists sought new angles to cover the war. Over the course of the insurgency, several would be abducted, and some would be killed. British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, infiltrated herself in the Taliban’s lair in late September 2001 and was caught immediately.  In Taliban captivity, she became a sensation on Fleet Street and, after she was released 10 days later, took a new job for Al Jazeera.  She then became a Muslim.

            But others saw her, as well as some other headline-grabbing journalists, as narcissistic and irresponsible.  During the ordeal, her 9-year-old daughter, Daisy, begged for her mother’s life on television.  After the mother was released, a pouting Daisy confided on an open microphone, “I wish you were a normal mummy…No one else's mummy has been caught by the Taliban.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE TALIBAN IN DEFEAT

            Chapter three was a brief portrait of Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001. Chapter four will cover the Taliban after their expulsion from Afghanistan, when the group was revived, armed, and once again lethal.

             The US Prepares to Attack

            The Taliban expected the United States to retaliate for hosting bin Laden, but they were optimistic about their prospects. As mujahedin, many of the Taliban’s senior leaders had engaged Soviet armor and artillery in the 1980s, and some would storm through Afghan cities as Taliban leaders in the 1990s. In autumn 2001, the Taliban were emboldened by religious zeal and nationalist hubris and challenged the United States to deploy to Afghanistan. US Special Forces would soon oblige. Al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, disparaged the fighting qualities of American men. He airily asserted, “The American soldier is not fit for combat. The Hollywood promotion will not succeed on the real battlefield.” Other Muslims shared this disdain because the United States had left Somalia and Lebanon in defeat. Islamist élan had defeated Washington and could do so again.

            Jingoism, religious fervor, and the prestige associated with battle drew young Afghan and Pakistani men to swell the ranks of the Taliban, literally by the busload. Trickle, then pour, through the open borders, Pakistani volunteers came to Afghanistan to fight America in a holy war. Caravans of buses, cars, motorcycles, and harlequin-colored jingle trucks ferried aspiring fighters from the Pakistani town of Quetta and the Chaman crossing to points north into Afghanistan. Much of “Pashtunistan” held solidarity with the insurgents as America prepared to invade Afghanistan in 2001.

            In Pakistan, public opinion, particularly among the clergy and intelligentsia, was loudly opposed to US military action against Afghanistan. The streets of Pakistan’s cities teemed with placard-wielding protesters railing against American intervention. Many screamed for battle. An al Qaeda leader clarified, “The mujahedeen gathered from all countries…to fight this new global Crusader alliance and their hypocritical lackeys, mercenaries, and highway bandits…The proud Afghan people fights for its (sic) faith.” 

            Some were clamoring for battle, but not all Afghans had an appetite for war. Many were drained and war-weary, and they remembered well the devastating effects of the Soviet and civil wars. Middle-aged men and women recalled the privations they endured as youngsters and, a generation later, now feared for the safety of their own children. Some were mystified as they should brace for an American invasion in response to attacks perpetrated by unwanted Arab guests who had long overstayed their welcome.

            Furthermore, some Afghans detested the Arabs they knew. The Arab-speaking cadre who came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets often did not learn the local customs or language, made little effort to socialize, and seemed overweening and patronizing toward indigenous Afghans. 

            As in Afghanistan, there was divided opinion in America about hastening to war. Muslim and left-oriented university student groups deprecated what they considered President Bush’s chauvinism. At a venue long associated with utopian pacifism and multiculturalism, more than 2,500 demonstrators on the University of California-Berkeley campus cautioned against a military response. As an example, one student pleaded, "You don't want the hand of the United States killing innocent civilians. Send them food rather than bombs.” Afghans would get both.

            There were echoes of the 1960s in the media, intellectual circles, and academia, as many opinion-makers counseled against war. But there was little smash-mouthed, anti-Americanism of the earlier, radical era. The rhetoric was more dispassionate. Gary Sick, who advised President Carter on the National Security Council, recommended stringent sanctions to force the Taliban’s hand, and Steven Zunes warned that military attacks would enrage and embolden Muslims around the world. Richard Falk of Princeton put the onus on the Bush administration to comply with the Taliban’s demands to provide evidence that bin Laden was culpable for the attack. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took out magazine ads decrying US military action in Afghanistan.

            Critics in Congress voiced early concerns. Representative Cynthia A. McKinney accused the U.S. media of disseminating only “white noise.” She said in late October 2001, “I don't think anybody is supporting the Taliban, except maybe some elements of the State Department and the CIA” while, in her view, the military was contaminating the nation’s moral hygiene with its push to war. She also accused the Bush administration of having received advance warning of the September attack and intentionally failing to act.

            But most Americans were resigned to, and many were eagerly anticipating, meting out punishment against those culpable for attacking America. And they were convinced that this would be a just war. When the fighting started, the United States did send food, as well as clothing, medicine, and basic provisions, to the Afghan non-combatants. But the US Air Force also dropped bombs to kill the Taliban who would not surrender.

            At this time, President Bush pledged to eradicate the terrorist networks in Afghanistan and elsewhere. He famously declared, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." He underscored that these demands were not negotiable and that individuals and groups that collaborated with al Qaeda were subject to attack.

            As this was happening, the Pentagon organized for war. Veteran B-52 bombers, a workhorse in the Southeast Asian war, were prepped for action in Afghanistan. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen were readied, as war planners looked to history for lessons on how to fight in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was determined not to repeat the mistakes of other invaders of Afghanistan. He pledged to use the full spectrum of military power, but it was unclear whom the United States would be fighting. Not all of bin Laden's forces and training camps were co-located with Afghanistan’s military rulers. The United States needed more intelligence.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening

Sanctions and Hostilities

            Imposing sanctions on the Taliban was an intermediate response between rhetoric and war.  International organizations and individual states applied financial and military sanctions of Afghanistan. Many governments restricted travel by Taliban officials and downgraded their diplomatic missions abroad.

            Either through miscalculation or with the unexplained intention of being provocative, the Taliban unchained bin Laden, allowing him to be interviewed by Western journalists.  Once again, he claimed the right to use large-scale weapons against Western targets. After he did so in September 2001, he became the most-wanted man in the world by American authorities.

            American leaders demanded his extradition, but the Taliban balked, offering rococo explanations of Islamic mandates and Afghan customs. Gratuitously, the Taliban’s foreign minister boasted that the Taliban would never deport bin Laden. “We will not hand him to an infidel nation.”  True to their word, the Taliban never did yield him, continuing to cavil and balk. But US authorities were determined to kill or capture him.

            President Bush and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld swore to destroy the Taliban unless they surrendered bin Laden immediately.  In stormy discussions, US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin bluntly expressed to Pakistani President Musharraf “that the September 11 attacks had ended the debate about the Taliban, who were now considered an enemy of the US.” Secretary of State Colin Powell cautioned the Taliban end their torpor and “think properly.” Pakistan was cooperating with the United States, and the Central Asian states were offering Washington staging grounds. The Iranians were quiet on the issue. Only Iraq “didn’t find what happened to us a tragedy.”  President Bush offered to spare the Taliban from war if they extradited bin Laden. They declined, scuppering the talks.

Chapter Summary

            The Taliban took advantage of a late 20th century power vacuum in Afghanistan to expand their areas of influence quickly. The Taliban have four, basic, defining characteristics. They are Salafists, which refers to their illiberal view of Islam; they are Pashtuns, which refers to their ethnicity and social code; they are isolated, which helps to explain their philosophy, ethnic supremacy, and xenophobia; and totalitarian, they intend to monitor all aspects of human behavior.

            Taliban’s domestic policies from 1996-2001 would likely be replicated should Omar seize power again.  The rule of the Taliban threw the Afghanistan into a miasma of mullah-imposed viciousness.  The few economic and social gains of the 1970s, which were sincerely pursued by a relatively progressive head of state, were eliminated. The status of women declined; there was economic entropy; the civil service was stripped of all elements of professionalism; fewer Afghans could move or communicate; standards in education and health plummeted.  Much of life was dreary, and Afghans were dispirited.  Nonetheless, most of the country was secure, and the mass killings ended with the cessation of the civil war. 

            The attacks of September 2001 galvanized America, but the Taliban continued to be nonchalant under American threats.  An obliging host, Mullah Omar refused to surrender Osama bin Laden. In consequence, President Bush prepared America for war.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

               If there is any human development sector in which the Taliban’s tenure was not an unmitigated catastrophe, it is the security sector. The Taliban’s victory ended the civil war in 1996. In this sense, they increased security in Afghanistan. The mass, unregulated killings were stopped. But this came at a cost of fear-induced social paralysis. The Taliban offered only the eerie and sullen calm of effective autocracy.  

            Despite the misery and forced conformity, the Taliban made the streets safer. Ironically, in the early days of their rule, the Taliban promised stability, reform, and economic recovery. In wildly optimistic accounts of the Taliban’s early days in Kandahar, the Taliban’s bellwether, some Western journalists described the Taliban as moderate reformers. This seems shocking in retrospect, but the Taliban restored a sense of order. Fun was outlawed in Afghanistan, yet crime was low.

            The Taliban’s rule of law was marked by a wide range of draconian measures that permeated all aspects of daily life. They criminalized any activity that led men to neglect religious study. The legal system segregated women, banning them from schools and most workplaces and effectively imprisoning them at home. Taliban authorities targeted men suspected of trimming their beards, and men who had difficulty growing the required 4 inches of facial hair sometimes wore false beards to avoid harassment. Those accused or convicted of crimes were at the mercy of Islamic courts. Amnesty International reported that 1,000 people were arrested within a month of the takeover, and that many disappeared. 

            Particularly notorious were the legally sanctioned and internationally broadcast public revenge killings and amputations. As in Saudi Arabia, Afghan Sharia courts administered Koran-mandated single and double amputations, often in public. At the Kabul Sports Stadium, sedated criminals, usually punished for stealing small amounts, had their right hands amputated by Taliban physicians before the main attraction, the shooting of more serious offenders. Women were often whipped vigorously before the crowd. One woman was flogged 100 times for being with a man to whom she was not related. Women in the stadium wept as she was lashed. After the killing and torture, a soccer game, often modified with Islamic rules, would be played. As one Afghan said in 1998, “In America, you have television and movies- the cinema. Here, we can only have this.”

Profile 4: Zarmina’s Hammer

            “Zarmina should never have been killed. She had a hard life. She was not educated. She wasn’t aware of Islamic law. All she knew was that her husband beat her.” Rana Sayeed, an Afghan policewoman and detective

            Some pictures of Afghan women have become iconic: the 1984 National Geographic photo of Gula, the ragged girl with haunting green eyes; Time’s cover photo of Bibi Aisha, whose husband slashed her face and cut off her nose; and the killing of Zarmina, the woman without a face.

Unlike Gula and Bibi Aisha, Zarmina’s face was obscured from the world by her burqa, which she wore to her death. Accused of killing her husband, the mother of seven children was transported in the back of a Toyota pickup, dragged to Kabul’s Olympic Stadium, forced to kneel between the goal posts of the soccer field, and shot in the head by a Taliban member.

            Raised in northern Kabul and described as pretty and feisty, Zarmina was wed at 16 to Khwazak, a Pashtun policeman and part-time proprietor of a small general store. Khwazak’s personality began to sour as the Taliban solidified power. “He had been a mild man, but slowly he became a monster.” Some neighbors speculated that the trauma of the killings, rapes, and bombings warped his mind and turned him into a brute. Others saw his descent into cruelty as consistent with his solidarity with the Taliban.

            Khwazak regularly beat Zarmina and their children. He became a policeman for the Taliban and harassed and tormented girls and women. His moods were unpredictable, and neither Zarmina nor her children could anticipate what would send him into a ruthless rage. Zarmina decided to kill Khwazak. She may have drugged him by lacing his food with opiates, then clubbed him with a 10-lb mason’s hammer. It may have been an elder daughter who delivered the lethal blow and then staged a scene of a burglary that turned violent.

            The Taliban police were suspicious immediately, and Zarmina and her two youngest children were imprisoned for 3 years. Zarmina confessed to the murder, claiming she acted alone. She was kept alive in prison by the compassion of fellow inmates, who gave her bits of food and a blanket. Zarmina’s elder children were placed in the custody of her Taliban brother-in-law, who told Zarmina, 2 months before she was executed, that he had sold her two elder daughters into prostitution. According to an investigator, the brother-in-law told Zarmina the price he received for each of her daughters. It is not unusual to sell unwanted girls and women. Prices typically range from $530.00 to $3,200 for more nubile and attractive models.

            On November 15, 1999, the Taliban told Zarmina that she would be killed in 2 days. The Toyota, in which Zarmina was captive, circled the soccer field twice, which was caught on video and posted on YouTube. She was forced to kneel between goal posts, and Zarmina prepared herself.  But men and women in the stadium began to jump, and shout, and begged the Taliban to show Zarmina mercy. “Let her live,” many cried. This startled but did not deter the Taliban. Bracing herself, Zarmina raised both arms and pleaded for somebody to hold them, to help her steady herself. The Taliban then shot her in the head.

            Her body lay unclaimed for weeks because no one wanted it. Her mother avowed, “She brought shame. She deserved what she got. She is not even a memory to me.” She is buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, and several of her children were living as beggars in 2002. The whereabouts of her other children are unknown. A policewoman who investigated Zarmina’s death in 2002 sighed, "At last Zarmina's story can be told. It is the story of one woman. But it is also the story of Afghan women under the Taliban…brutes who turned our country into a zoo and our women into dogs.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Towards War

The Taliban, Foreign Relations, and the United States 1996-2001

            The Taliban’s domestic plans floundered and most failed, and their foreign relations were no more successful. They had warm relations with elements of Pakistan and the Pakistani intelligence. But they did not enjoy close relations with other neighbors. The governments of Iran and Afghanistan were often at odds and sometimes came near blows during the Taliban’s reign. Part of this is explained by sectarian differences – the Taliban are Sunni and the Iranians are Shia. But the frosty diplomatic relations cannot be understood by religious division alone. 

            The 1998 killing of Iranian diplomats was followed by the Taliban’s accusation that Iran was funding its enemies.  Early in the Taliban’s rule, the mullahs made enemies with principals in Teheran.  Iranian leaders criticized the destruction of the Buddhist statues as barbaric.  Several times, Iran and the Taliban came close to war.   The Taliban army threatened to deploy medium-range missiles, which may not have been serviceable, to any Iranian attack.  The Taliban also accused Iran of harboring Shia enemies.

            After the September 2001 attacks, Afghanistan’s foreign relations suffered a significant blow when its two Arab links severed diplomatic relations. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cut their relations shortly after the attack.  Pakistan, the only other nation recognizing the Taliban government, withdrew all staff from its Kabul embassy.  After Pakistan cut its relations in November 2001, Afghanistan became completely diplomatically isolated.

            Well before September 2001, the Taliban had a significant image problem that could not be easily prettied-up. It would be challenging to create a government whose political philosophy, state craft, and social mores were more antithetical to US values than those of the Taliban. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke for many elites with her full-throated attack of the Taliban's treatment of women and children as ``despicable.''  This was important in Democratic Party-led Washington, where women’s issues were loudly trumpeted.

             Hollywood stars, led by Meryl Streep, Geena Davis, and Sidney Poitier joined the Feminist Majority to lobby the White House and the State Department to torque-up sanctions on the Taliban cut off aid to countries that recognized and traded with them. They also entreated Washington to increase humanitarian assistance to Afghan women refugees. In a “Dear Abby” column, Mavis Leno claimed partial victory by quoting a woman in Kabul who whispered, “Let me call you the angels of mercy. Your love is our hope.”  

            Ms. Leno scored successes. The Department of State admitted more Afghan refugee women to the United States. American conservatives and liberals saluted the pro-woman, anti-Taliban agenda of Ms. Leno. She was applauded by the popular television host Bill O’Reilly as being a “patriot.” Nonetheless, there is no evidence that the Taliban were concerned with, or even took note, of Hollywood’s efforts.  

            Washington’s smart set saw Taliban leaders as primitive, patriarchal, heartless, and vulgar. To the extent to which he was known, Mullah Omar was loathed by political leaders and opinion makers in the nation’s capital. First Lady Hillary Clinton denounced the servitude in which all Afghan females subsisted. Any positive image of the Afghan fighting spirit against the Soviets was largely forgotten.  Washington’s embrace of the zealous and self-sacrificial anti-Soviet Afghan mujahedeen of the 1980s had long waned by the mid-1990s.

            Western media became incredulous as the Taliban revived the darkest imagery of the Nazi era. Statesmen and journalists registered disgust and alarm at the Taliban’s plans to force all Hindus in the country to wear identity tags. In turn, the Taliban were openly contemptuous of the United States. A reclusive Omar did not show interest in warming relations with the United States, and his only verified direct contact with US officials took place in August 1998, 2 days after President Clinton ordered a missile strike to blast bin Laden’s training camps.  In response to the attack and fear of more strikes, Omar tried to assure State Department officials that bin Laden was leashed. But Omar refused to extradite him.

            The Taliban explained that mandates of Afghan culture, particularly the requirement to give guests protection, or melmastia, precluded yielding bin Laden, who was their honored guest. The Taliban leadership claimed that they could not relinquish him to the United States without weakening the Taliban’s global prestige.

      However, the US State Department was not swayed by this argument. Senior leaders proffered evidence that bin Laden was directly tied to many terrorist activities and plots.  Diplomatic cables revealed bin Laden’s imprimatur in other high-profile plots, including a plan to blow up US airliners in the Pacific. In response, the Taliban underscored they “have always and always will condemn terrorism, including hijacking."

      Though the August 20, 1998, missile strikes quieted, if only temporarily, Mullah Omar, it had no such effect on his most infamous guest.  Ever loquacious, Bin Laden continued to inveigh against Americans, Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims. He became particularly vocal after the missile strike, and reiterated his fatwa (religious ruling), urging Muslims to kill American, British, and Israeli citizens, and he also reserved the right to use weapons of mass destruction.

      According to declassified State Department cables, Mullah Omar hoped to open a dialog with State Department officials in August 1998.  In October 1999, the Taliban suggested a trial by a panel of Islamic scholars by the Organization of Islamic Conference or the United Nations.  The White House was not persuaded.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

A New Dark Age -Life under the Taliban 

The Economy Declines

            The Taliban’s conquest of Kabul ushered in a new, if reactionary, era in Afghanistan. By almost all measures of living standards, the quality of life for Afghans, already poor, deteriorated. It is unlikely that any influential Taliban leader had a sophisticated understanding of contemporary market-based economic theories. Several modern Islamic countries, particularly Malaysia and Turkey, have enjoyed sustained economic development in recent years without significant petroleum exports. Yet the Afghan economy withered because the Taliban did not promote sustained economic growth. They subordinated economic growth to cloying religiosity across all of Afghanistan.

By any credible economic standard, Afghanistan was a failed state. Failed states have several defining characteristics, including the inability to control the state’s physical territory; to provide basic social services, such as electricity, potable water, emergency services, and police services; to collect adequate tax revenue or combat corruption; to sustain adequate levels of economic growth, employment, and job creation; to mitigate the effects of social and sexual discrimination and group-based inequality; and to prevent the erosion of the environment. Afghanistan, during the Taliban’s rule, failed on all counts.

In 1998 and 1999, agricultural production increased; livestock herds rose sharply, taking advantage of unused grazing lands; and horticulture improved with the expansion of orchards and vineyards. But this economic uptick was misleading. The recovery was concentrated in areas of the country conquered relatively early by the Taliban. Economic growth occurred because the peace prompted Afghans to invest. When investment stopped, the economy began to crater.

            The Taliban impoverished more than the lives of their Afghan citizens from 1996-2001. The effects of their botched programs seeped into the larger South and Central Asian neighborhood. The consequences of the failed Afghan state's political, economic, and social instability had spillover effects on neighboring countries. Among those effects were vast problems with refugees, public health, and sanitation. 

            In governance, the Taliban preferred a small government to an expansive administration. This neglect of large-scale infrastructure development soon degraded the quality of public services. Deterioration in basic social services – public administration, health, communications, and education – took root and was exacerbated by the Taliban's inchoate policies, which largely excluded women from work and girls from employment and education. The already shambolic Afghan civil service largely collapsed under Taliban rule. While a primary goal of most civil services is to provide essential services, the Taliban’s priority was to prevent moral corruption. Religious police sometimes beat those who did not conform to the Taliban’s norms. This led to a hemorrhage of educated talent from many public bureaucracies.

               Communications and education that did not promote the expansion of Islam were neglected or prohibited. In a country with very limited print, radio, and electronic communications, it became very difficult for men and women to communicate at all, except within the immediate family. Women could not leave the home without a male guardian. The Taliban heavily regulated content on the radio and television. The only European pop singer regularly broadcast was the Greek-Anglo crooner-turned-Salafist Yusuf Islam, better known as Cat Stevens. Other Western pop and movie stars were declared menacing to Afghan values. The movie Titanic and its song were banned, as was the then-fashionable Leonardo DiCaprio floppy haircut, which was declared foppish and sacrilegious. By January 2001, the Taliban imprisoned 22 barbers for offering this hairstyle, citing the puzzling reasoning that the long bangs impede the ability to bow and pray.

               The country’s health care, already poor, began to decay. As in all other sectors of human development, girls and women suffered disproportionately under the Taliban’s restraints. The Taliban drastically limited access to medical services. The State Department's 1998 Human Rights Report described “the Taliban's devastating disregard for the physical and psychological health of women and girls.” Women and girls who were starving were not allowed to beg. The deprivations of girls and women were publicized in the United States by celebrities. First Lady Hilary Clinton publicly protested.

            The melancholy and despondency endured by Afghans during the Taliban era were revealed in a 2002 study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It found, unsurprisingly, that approximately 70% of Afghans showed signs of clinical depression and anxiety. Rates were even higher among women and the disabled. After the Taliban were ejected, the collective mental health of the Afghan people, particularly women, improved, though unevenly and not everywhere.

            As with the Afghan people, the economy of Afghanistan was brought to its knees by the Taliban’s farrago of religious edicts. Despite opportunities for foreign investment in the post-civil war peace, few investors, domestic or foreign, were eager to risk capital that could be easily expropriated at the whim of a mullah. Commercial transactions that did not conform to the Taliban’s standards of virtue could be nullified by civil servants on the basis that they promoted vice and evil. International lending agencies were kept at bay, as were many non-governmental organizations.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Chapter Three: The Taliban in Power

            Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization.” Ayman al-Zawahiri

            Chapter Two traced the Taliban’s ascent to power. It examined the ideological bond between a preening bin Laden and a reclusive Mullah Omar, as well as the general template for insurgencies. It offered a three-stage model for insurgencies and analyzed the Taliban’s rise to power within that framework. Chapter Three will discuss the Taliban’s agenda and policies during their rule from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban Builds its Base

            During its rise to power, the Taliban relied on boys and young men to fill its periodically depleted ranks. Recruits were largely drawn from slums near refugee camps in Afghanistan and adjacent areas in Pakistan. They were often chronically unemployed, with low levels of education and limited skills. Many were drifters or dead-enders, or were very young, alone, and searching for parental figures. Some were religious zealots seeking a community. Religious schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to serve as sources from which the Taliban’s leadership drew foot soldiers.

The Taliban is determined to erase any hint of humanity from their boys. Boys and young men were indoctrinated and hardened to ensure they would kill their enemies without mercy or hesitation. A brutal example was captured on video, showing a pre-adolescent boy slit the throat of a blindfolded man. The victim was accused of being an American spy. As the child hoisted the severed head in the air, he cried, “God is great!" Boys who resisted this hardening were whipped or sometimes killed. Those suspected of disloyalty were hanged with dollar bills shoved in their mouths. This indoctrination continued during the Taliban’s exile. The Taliban tapped into the boys’ innate aggression and unrelieved sexual frustration. Celestial harems of nubile virgins, or houris, await Muslim men who fall in battle for Islam.

            Beyond their malice, the Taliban were totalitarian. Bin Laden and the Arabs, along with other international fighters, fused the Islamism of Qutb and Azzam with the Deobandi philosophy of Afghan elites. All human activity was to be channeled toward replicating the time of their Prophet. In this spirit, music, dancing, kite flying, and chess were banned. Soccer matches were permitted, but spectators could only legally cheer "Allahu Akbar” to rally their teams. The games themselves had sadistic elements reminiscent of Caligula’s Rome, as those convicted of crimes were publicly whipped, clubbed, and killed. Limbs were amputated while Taliban leaders exhorted the audience to shout approval. The cruelty was vast, frequent, cavalier, and often morbid. As a result, morale plummeted among the educated and relatively secular, and those who could flee often did so.

            Taliban agents monitored how people behaved and thought; how they raised their children; how they spoke to their spouses; how they engaged in civil society; and how they practiced religion. Fear was pervasive. There was a shared communal responsibility to expose those who did not conform to political and economic orthodoxy and to eliminate any contagion of deviationism. Villagers would notify the secret police of neighbors’ transgressions. Often, the accused would be hauled to prison.

            Life was difficult for Muslims in Afghanistan and even more so for the relatively few non-Muslims.  The Taliban demanded that non-Muslims subordinate themselves to Muslims. Life was particularly onerous for Hindus, who, during the Taliban’s tenure, were required to carry badges identifying themselves as non-Muslims.

             Back to the Prophet

            Mullah Omar’s spokesman explained, "We want to recreate the time of the Prophet." It would have been more accurate to say that the Taliban intended to regress to an era in Arabia that they imagined. The life and customs of Mohammad’s world have long been obscured by hagiography, legend, and literary embellishments. There are no extant, accurate accounts of the life of Mohammed. But the Taliban believe that living in the world of the first-generation Muslims requires purging elements of modern society that are contrary to the Koran.

            The worldview of the Taliban was also shaped by the interplay of isolation and poverty. The Taliban were cloistered from modernity and wanted to keep Afghanistan safe from globalization. To further tighten this insulation, Mullah Omar tried to ban the Internet, a task made easier by the country’s primitive communication systems. What few international organizations remained in Afghanistan were heavily monitored, censored, and muzzled.

            In July 1998, the Taliban gave Afghan families 15 days to rid themselves of television sets, videocassette recorders, and satellite dishes. For many Afghans, the decision was irrelevant because there was no television available. Many villages also had no access to electricity. The electrical grids in much of the country had long ceased to function. Afghans didn’t need electricity to sing folk songs. But the Taliban banned them too. Unless the songs promoted Islam, they were not to be sung. An enforced silence would give more Muslims more time to pray.

            Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

The Taliban and the General Template of Insurgency

Omar would lead his insurgency to victory. He would face many of the same strategic challenges, leading the insurgency in exile after 2001. An insurgency is a type of small war that varies in intensity, duration, and levels of success and failure. Insurgencies seek to undermine a government’s legitimacy and impose their political agenda on the country. There are many definitions of insurgency, but most good ones include at least four elements:

• It is an organized movement with leadership, command, and control. A food riot or mob attack does not qualify as an insurgency.
• It aims to destroy the current government and replace it with a new, usually fundamentally different government. Insurgents are not reformers who intend to modify existing political conditions, such as the civil rights marchers in the US during the 1960s.
• It is a protracted struggle. There are a few week- or month-long insurgencies.
• Tactics are directed at weakening the government’s control and legitimacy. For this reason, propaganda is used extensively. Doctrine defines insurgency as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.” This definition certainly applies to the insurgency in Afghanistan.

            A US Army analysis of 20th-century insurgencies identified prerequisites for success. First, the population needed to be vulnerable to either the insurgents' coercion or their soft power. If the insurgents effectively intimidated villages, as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, the villagers' will could be worn down. Sometimes, insurgents could successfully tap into common dissatisfaction with the government and widespread resentment of living conditions. In Afghanistan, there was certainly a vulnerable population segment. Because Afghanistan was only nominally a unitary state in the early 1990s, the Taliban could bully many villagers, and they did so. But they also controlled criminal syndicates and brigands.   

            Second, competent insurgent leadership was needed, and Omar was certainly capable. A third prerequisite was a lack of government control over substantial portions of the country.  The greater the government's control, the lower the chance of insurgent triumph.  Afghanistan was largely in disarray in the early 1990s.  From 1992-1996, the frailties of the Rabanni government were exploited by the Taliban’s propaganda element.

            The Taliban and the General Template of Insurgency

            The insurgency followed a well-established historical pattern. Insurgencies evolve from a small nucleus into a recognized and persistent threat to the government. Most insurgencies, including the current one in Afghanistan, follow a general chronological template. Mao, long considered the most successful practitioner of modern insurgency, developed his three-phase model in the 1930s. US intelligence produced a template very similar to Mao’s that integrates elements of guerrilla and conventional warfare. There are three phases:

            In the first phase, leadership emerges. Secret cells are created, supplies are gathered, and propaganda is produced, but direct conflict is generally avoided. This is a building phase that often focuses on developing, not destroying, infrastructure. Mao also articulated a set of principles to avoid alienating potential comrades. Violence is generally shunned, and killings are highly selective and rare. Insurgents speak in a vocabulary and cadence that win the confidence of villagers.

In their first surge to power in the mid-1990s, the Taliban won the confidence of local Afghans. They came to attention when they intervened to protect a young woman who had been sexually assaulted. They built legitimacy among clerics, who in turn legitimized the Taliban. Clerics praised the Taliban in their sermons. Clerical support is essential to justify violence. 

            In this first phase of the Afghan insurgency, as in the second, Arabs came en masse to swell the Taliban’s ranks. By the time the Taliban consolidated power, Arab Jihadis were noticeable in key cities. Arabs, particularly those affiliated with al Qaeda, brought enthusiasm, financing, and technical expertise. But there is no evidence that any major Taliban victory was determined exclusively by Arab fighters. The Taliban demonstrated military acumen and uncanny intelligence capabilities that persist to this day. They cultivated a vast network of informants and sympathizers and bought off enemies with money supplied by foreign powers. They also learned from mistakes and innovated.

            The Taliban, perhaps as well as any Afghan political cohort, understood the significance of the mullah in South Asian culture. Becoming a mullah offers Afghan social mobility; the individual is no longer constrained to his father's occupation. Mullahs can travel freely across Afghanistan and are treated respectfully and hospitably by village commoners and grandees. They can also establish their own madrassas. In Afghan culture, only a mullah can declare jihad with any credibility.

Omar understood that building ties with mullahs would enable the Taliban to enter the second phase of their insurgency. In this phase, insurgents take military action to dislodge the government. This can include attacks, assassinations, sabotage, or subversive activities. This is the “organizational phase,” in which the group builds its infrastructure, recruits and trains cadre, and acquires supplies. The Taliban pursued this from 1994-1996, fighting rival groups of different ethnicities, sometimes in pitched battle. They also settled scores with rival ethnicities and clans. 

            The third and final phase of insurgent warfare is conventional warfare. In the final phase of the war in Vietnam, armor, artillery, and massive infantry power conquered Saigon. If the transition is properly timed, the government has been sufficiently weakened to succumb to an onslaught of insurgent forces. Many insurgencies never reach this stage. The Taliban reached this point during their final drive to Kabul in 1996.

            Many killings across all three evolutionary stages were driven by military necessity.  Some of the Taliban’s brutality, however, stemmed from revenge or gratuitous sadism. For example, in 1998 in Mazar-I-Sharif, after wreaking bloody vengeance on civilians, the Taliban rounded up 11 Iranian diplomats and shot them dead.  In Mazar, the Taliban’s mass suffocations, executions, and torture stunned UN observers, who estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 people were slaughtered.

            The Taliban continued to harass men and displace women and children after 1996. As late as 1999, the Taliban swept across the Shomali Plains north of Kabul, arresting, killing, and driving women and children onto buses bound for remote destinations. There, they would suffer, and some would die from privation. The United Nations estimated that up to 20,000 women and children were evicted from their homes and forcibly relocated.

            Killing was common, and many Afghans did not see the Taliban as liberators. After the Taliban concluded the third phase of the insurgency, they blocked aid to starving villagers caught in a war they could not escape, hoping only to survive. One example occurred in Hazarajat, in the mountainous regions of central Afghanistan, in 1998, when 1.5 million began to starve after the Taliban blocked supply routes. Afghans died of starvation, measles, and other diseases brought on by weakened immune systems. Blockades are common in war, but this one was directed at the Hazaras, whom the Taliban loathes for religious and racial reasons. 

The Taliban’s ascent to power followed a standard insurgency pattern. The first phase is building and organizing. The second phase begins with violent attacks; the third is one of maneuver and pitched battle. Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden shared a Salafist view of Islam and held contempt for the West. The prickly Omar revealed a soft-spoken charisma, while bin Laden exhibited more sizzle and braggadocio. The Taliban took power through a standard three-stage insurgency. They promised to create a self-contained Islamic state. They certainly tried to do just that under a suffocating theocracy, which is the subject of the third chapter.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

By September 2000, the Taliban controlled 95% of the country and were fighting mainly against the Tajik Ahmed Shah Massoud, Prime Minister Rabbani's former defense minister, who defended parts of the north. This was the remaining part of the country not controlled by the Taliban.

Profile Omar 3 "Commander of the Faithful” Consolidates his Power

From the beginning, Mullah Omar demonstrated political acumen and military savvy. His political charisma resonated with his Pashtun constituency, and he drew and held people even in the most difficult times. Omar developed a powerful hold on his followers, and his magnetism served as glue when the Taliban’s fortunes were dire. He gave Kandahar’s poor a sense of value and belonging in a great Muslim family. Initially, Omar lived frugally in a mud-brick home. One journalist described him as a “simple man unaccustomed to the perks of power." When the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, Omar remained in his Kandahar cocoon, along with a small coterie of Taliban leaders. He established a skeletal bureaucracy in Kabul.

Born in the mid-to-late 1950s, Omar endured an impoverished childhood and learned early on self-reliance and leadership. As a young man, he showed an aptitude for religious study. After studying in a madrassa in Pakistan, he opened his own religious school and then fought in the anti-Soviet Jihad from 1989 to 1992. On the battlefield and in the mosques, he delivered dulcet sermons that resonated with the more pious. In the anti-Soviet fight, he lost an eye but gained tactical military skills and religious standing, which he would exploit several years later.

Omar made little attempt to converse with non-believers in almost any circumstances. Even among his closest congregants and political operatives, Omar was a recluse. He held extended conversations with no more than a handful of Westerners. His taciturn behavior is still seen as humble by many Afghans, which boosts his image. His knowledge of the Koran, much of which was self-taught, fighting skills, soft-spoken self-confidence, and aptitude for bringing peace and rule of law cemented his power. This autodidact became legendary when, in 1996, he donned a cloak reputed to have belonged to Mohammed and pronounced himself "commander of the faithful." His followers in the audience began to swoon, weep, and faint.

Most men who could have deserted Omar during the Taliban’s nadir in 2002 did not, despite grueling living conditions. Nor were there any known, well-coordinated conspiracies to unseat Omar. Under Omar’s leadership, the Taliban recruited, rebuilt, and quickly re-engaged Coalition Forces in battle. His charisma also had a mesmerizing, twisted quality. Omar persuaded many Taliban to commit vicious crimes, including mass murder, throwing acid in girls’ faces, summary executions, and amputations for trivial offenses. Afghans are seen as tough people, but they do not have a reputation for being sadistic. The Taliban committed unbounded cruelty far beyond Afghan tradition. Nothing like that had happened in the memory of modern Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, Mullah Omar attracted both Afghans and non-Afghans. It was not by coincidence that bin Laden was given refuge in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia expelled bin Laden in 1991 and revoked his citizenship in 1994. He declared war on the West in 1998. In Afghanistan, bin Laden, who was wanted by U.S. authorities, continued his screeds against Americans, and Mullah Omar continued to offer him refuge.

The Afghanistan of the Taliban was a natural refuge for bin Laden. Bin Laden and Mullah Omar shared charismatic traits that resonated with segments of the Islamic world. Both leaders presented their messages and agendas as authentically Muslim, though from different Sunni legal schools. Both were ascetic and contemptuous of modern comforts. Bin Laden left the wealth and fortune to which he was heir to toil among the Afghan poor. This cultivated an image of a stoic Muslim hero committed to austere self-discipline, which garnered international prestige. Mullah Omar espoused a more local, Pashtun-focused vision of Islam.

Today, years after Omar was pushed into exile, he holds the enduring loyalty of his still-smitten constituents. The devotion continues despite his absence. Few Taliban have seen him since he scurried on the back of a motorcycle from Kandahar in late 2001. Even when he was in power, he rarely made public appearances and ventured to Kabul only once from his home in Kandahar.

There were two primary differences that distinguished Omar’s and bin Laden’s style of charisma. First, there was bin Laden’s fillip. Bin Laden, despite his protestations to the contrary, reveled in celebrity status until the last few years of his life. He held court in his tent encampments, where he self-reverentially lectured Arab and some Western journalists about the impending wrath of his sword. Bin Laden was very comfortable in front of a camera. During the anti-Soviet Jihad, he commissioned a 50-minute video displaying him in manly pursuits, such as bareback riding on horses and firing weapons. Omar remains shy and retiring, preferring to be closeted with his staff.

Finally, their charisma appealed to distinctly different audiences. Bin Laden’s audience was global, as were his ambitions, while Mullah Omar’s remains markedly provincial and Afghan. Their leadership styles were dissimilar, but they shared a common goal of global Islamic supremacy. They were also united in their hatred of the United States.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening. listening.

The Taliban Builds Roots

            Afghanistan’s government was never strong and was usually tenuous during the reign of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who held office from June 1992 until 1996. He never had a durable base, lacked charisma, was not a Pashtun, and proved incapable of uniting Afghanistan. Another civil war was underway, and 1 year later the forces of Mullah Omar entered the fighting.

            The reclusive leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, led the Taliban to gain control of one-third of the country within 2 years, two-thirds within 3 years, and nine-tenths within 5 years. In the summer of 1994, Omar pushed his small band of seminary students into the general Afghan fracas. He killed local warlords in Afghanistan’s south who were connected to the rape of a girl. During the next several years, he expanded his power base to control 90% of the country.

            The Taliban’s leader was young by the standards of a society that venerated age, associating it with wisdom, political acumen, and survival skills. Unlike some of his rivals with university training, the canny Mullah Omar was largely self-educated. He rarely traveled outside Kandahar. In keeping with Islamic tradition, he took several wives, some accounts say three, and fathered 13 children. He joined the jihad against the Soviet invasion of 1979 and lost one eye in an artillery battle.

            The fall of the Afghan capital, Kabul, to the Taliban militia in September 1996 marked a distinct break from the politics of the preceding decades. Both the communist regime and the Soviet-aligned government tried to modernize the country within the confines of Afghan culture and the country’s resources. But the Taliban had no such ambition. Instead, Taliban leaders were content to have their countrymen subsist on the margins of absolute poverty. While the Taliban’s victory ended a protracted civil war, it did not halt all the violence. The Taliban began to mete out their cruelty immediately after they took control in September 1996.  They proclaimed Afghanistan to be the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the law of the land to be Sharia. A first target of the Taliban was former communist President Najibullah, whom the Taliban murdered and whose corpse, along with that of his brother, was horrifically displayed as a war trophy (see profile five).      

            In keeping with revenge, or badal, the Taliban settled tribal scores when they seized power. For example, in the spring of 1997, the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif was contested between the Taliban and non-Pashtun, Uzbek and Hazara civilians. When the Taliban controlled the city, they killed many Uzbeks and Hazaras. Later, when the Taliban lost control of the city, the ethnic groups they had persecuted took revenge on the now-weakened Taliban. This reversal of fortune continued as towns and villages changed hands, and former victims became victimizers.

            On their way to Kabul, the Taliban butchered Hazaras in well-planned, ruthless attacks. In 1998, Human Rights Watch’s Asia division wrote, “We are talking about the systematic execution of perhaps 2,000 civilians.” Hazaras are often identifiable by a distinct Mongoloid appearance and live in concentrated areas. According to verified reports, the Taliban would go house to house, dragging out men, women, and children, and shooting them in killing pits or along the roads. Survivors reported, “The Taliban shot at anything that moved.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Chapter Two: Enter the Taliban

            Chapter One explored the geographic, cultural, religious, and ideological underpinnings of the Taliban. Chapter Two focuses on the Taliban’s origins, victory, tenure, temporary destruction, and rejuvenation.

            The Setting

            The Taliban’s ascent to power follows an ancient Afghan tradition of clan-tangled struggles for supremacy. In this perennial drama, ethnic and political factions vie to seize control of Kabul and eliminate rivals.

            The Taliban trace their origins to the mujahedeen of the Afghan-Soviet war. In the 1980s, Afghanistan was inhospitable to ruling communist leaders and their sympathizers. Some Afghans supported the Communist Party, which promised to modernize and, to some extent, communize the country. The Soviets found partners among Kabul’s small, well-educated elites, who saw themselves as stakeholders in Afghanistan’s development.

            But Marxism-Leninism never resonated with Afghans. Soviet atheism and communist contempt for religion, no matter how well disguised for an Afghan audience, became tropes of the anti-Soviet insurgency. Socialist, state-oriented planning panicked many Afghans, who saw the Soviet-led agenda as an attack on Islam. As a result, civil war erupted, the Soviets intervened, and the United States began supplying the mujahedeen. The Saudis, too, provided aid to the mujahedeen.

            Pakistani leaders played a strong role in training, equipping, provisioning, guiding, and leading mujahedeen. The relationships forged during this period would be rekindled. A leading and flashy figure is the former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul (see profile 24), who worked closely with several major mujahedeen fighters who today are battling U.S. troops and trying to topple the Afghan government. Some of Gul’s former cohorts are insurgent leaders today. They include Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is not an associate of the Taliban, and Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is connected to the Taliban.

            The war against the Soviets was over, but there was no peace. In the 1990s, Afghanistan remained a magnet for jihadists and zealots worldwide. It attracted Islamist ideologues, romantics, adventurers, and those trying to escape the routine and despair in the Middle East’s failed states. Religious zealots who wanted to uproot corruption, secularism, and cronyism in the Middle East could not do so in the Middle Eastern states in which they lived. In many of the region’s authoritarian states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the domestic intelligence and security services were very strong.

            Islamic states, particularly Arab countries, began to take the threat posed by the Brotherhood seriously in the 1990s. In Arab countries, security and intelligence personnel purged the civil service, the military, and, to the extent possible, seminaries of Islamists. There was an unwritten understanding that Islamism would be tolerated as long as it did not target existing local governments, such as the Saudi monarchy. For this reason, in the second half of the 1990s, many malcontents and Islamic dogmatists, often opulently funded by wealthy Arabs, moved to Afghanistan and Western states. Liberal constitutions in Europe protected many doctrinaire Muslim preachers, and Afghanistan was a wide-open country.

            Foreign fighters in Afghanistan came from many countries, including Chechnya, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan, as well as the Arab Middle East. Some stayed in Afghanistan, took local wives, built families, and became known as “Arab Afghans.” By 2001, over 2,000 Arab combatants, many of whom were apparently affiliated with and financed by bin Laden, were actively supporting the Taliban. Pakistanis living near the Afghan border had strong sympathies for the Taliban.

            From the Taliban’s earliest days, neighboring Pakistan played a major role in Taliban affairs. The Jama`a Islami party of Pakistan provided material and logistical support to the Taliban in the early 1990s. Wealthy Saudis financed a vast network of madrassas, or religious schools, largely in Pakistan. These madrassas indoctrinated young people with a martial spirit. With Saudi largess, the number of madrassas grew from 245 in 1947 to 6,741 in 2007.

            The Taliban were developed, to some extent nurtured, by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), sometimes referred to as ISID. Afghanistan and Pakistan share a long border, and Pakistan views Afghanistan’s security concerns as its own. Between 1997 and 1998, Pakistan provided the Taliban with an estimated $30 million. Bonds between Pakistani officials and the Taliban grew very strong. Some observers of the Pakistani scene said that ISI officers had become "more Taliban than the Taliban." The ISI introduced Osama Bin Laden to the Taliban.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

The Mind of the Taliban

            The Taliban’s mindset is an amalgam of ethnic, geographic, historical, and religious elements. The Taliban’s religious principles are framed by three fundamentals: Salafism, Deobandism, and Sharia. These elements overlap and intertwine. All three are expressions of puritanical and political Islam, which resurfaced in the late 20th century and today tests the grit of the Arab Spring throughout the Middle East.

            Salafism is an Islamic revivalist philosophy intended to purify Islam of Western and modern contaminants. To the extent the Taliban offered a coherent political philosophy during its 1996-2001 rule, it was based on a reactionary, fossilized, and absolutist belief system centered on the world of Mohammed. Salafists strive to recreate the world they imagine their prophet lived in. This requires expurgating elements of modern society that, in the Taliban’s view, are superfluous, degenerate, or, in any way, contrary to the immutable teachings of the Koran.

Not all features of modernity are discarded. To spread their ideology, Salafists use state-of-the-art technology. In this spirit, the Taliban moved early to erase all non-Islamic influences in Afghanistan. They targeted Afghanistan’s internationally recognized art treasures and, with modern artillery, blasted the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan from the hills in which they were carved. Though the world was stunned by the Taliban’s demolition of the statues, few Salafists openly objected. "We are not against culture, but we don't believe in these things (the statues). They are against Islam," Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed breezily declared.

Certainly, not all Muslims supported the Taliban’s position. Muslims ruled Afghanistan for over 1,300 years and did not destroy the Buddhas until the Taliban. There were other instances of premeditated destruction. Uncertain that Afghanistan was sufficiently purged of non-Islamic cultural impurities, senior mullahs ordered a spree of destruction throughout Kabul’s museum in March 2001. A group of cudgel-wielding Taliban shattered antique limestone statues that had been excavated across the country, carefully restored, and acclaimed as universal artistic treasures. The vandals were led by the Taliban’s Minister of Culture.

            The Taliban’s outlook is also shaped by the Deobandi movement, a particular South Asian Salafist philosophy. Deobandi refers to both an Islamic seminary and an Islamic philosophy that extends far beyond the town of Deoband in northern India. It is one of Sunni Islam’s more influential schools in South and Central Asia and continues to issue edicts, or fatwas, based on Muslim law. It is an extreme, highly legalistic view of Islam that governs most of a Muslim’s daily activities. Rules include what type of pet a Muslim can own, when and where he is allowed to fly a kite, how often he should bathe, what type of clothes he should wear, and myriad other daily activities. Life’s conduct can be divided into two basic categories - permitted or prohibited. This Taliban theocracy fuses orthodox strains of Islam, Wahabbism from Saudi Arabia, and the Deobandi philosophy, which is taught in Pakistan and lavishly funded by Saudis.

            Deobandism also has paramilitary elements. The school in Deoband mandated military training to groom its seminary students to be warriors of Islam.  The seminary, Darul Uloom, or House of Knowledge, has been dubbed “Jihad University.” Deobandi thinking was born of nationalistic and religiously reactionary fervor following the Sepoy revolt in the mid-19th century, which is often called the Indian Mutiny. It rejected the Indian Civil Service and the adoption of European tastes, mannerisms, and secularism among the Indian elite.   It remains decidedly opposed to all elements of modernity, western life and thought, and democratic norms. 

            The ideological foundation of the Taliban was built of Deobandi Islam. The architect and avatar was Mullah Omar. Although he had not finished his studies, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was afforded an honorary degree by the seminary because, as one luminary noted, "he left to do jihad and to create a pristine Islamic government.”

            The Deobandi philosophy is unique, but in many ways fits into the agenda of today’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has strong Salafist underpinnings. Bin Laden was very attracted to Islamism, or political Islam, and promoted the teachings of its leaders. The term Islamism refers to a modern variant of Islam, which was developed and spread by the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Ikwan. From a nucleus of disaffected Egyptians led by a Sufi schoolteacher in the late 1920s, the Brotherhood sought to supplant secular society with Islamic rule.  The Brotherhood became a global, dynamic, and expansionist force by the end of the 20th century.  The Brotherhood, which would inspire the leaders and core cadre of al Qaeda worldwide, fused philosophical elements from other 20th-century authoritarian movements. It thrives in the 21st Century and challenges emerging democratic elements in the Arab Middle East.

            The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, whose writings heavily influenced bin Laden, was the Brotherhood's preeminent intellectual. As Qutb explained, it was insufficient for individuals to reform themselves. Islamic mandates ordained that an Islamic heaven be created on earth. Only a completely “good” state, by which he meant a Sharia state, could produce good men. He was executed in 1966 but is still celebrated throughout the Islamic world. Much like bin Laden, the often-quoted Qutb saw Islam as incompatible with modern pluralism. As a middle-aged exchange student in Colorado in the late 1940s, Qutb, soft-spoken and diffident, came to see the new American superpower as Islam’s greatest enemy.

            In his extensive writings, Qutb appropriated terminology from the two radical socialist and utopian philosophies- National Socialism and communism - but rejected their atheism.  He held solidarity with Hitler’s homicidal anti-Semitism. After the war, his main enemy became a soulless and capitalist America. He derided American churches as brothels, jazz music as primitive, and American women as vixens.  His portrayal of American culture as vacuous, aggressive, and bigoted would resonate with Muslims, as well as leftists, and would become a recurring trope in the propaganda of both.

            This model of American aggression and degeneracy became more common in the 1950s among Islamists and European intellectuals. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Islamist Arab nationalists made common cause with international leftists. Despite their strikingly opposing views on religion, women, and general politics, Islamists and leftists were strongly united in their hatred of the United States and Israel. Bin Laden, with his theatrical flights, would militarize this sentiment and bring it to Afghanistan. 

            Bin Laden introduced the Brotherhood's ideas to the Taliban.  Had he a rival in imparting Islamist ideologies in Afghanistan, it would have been Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian ideologue and strategist who died young.  Azzam was born near Jenin in 1941 and graduated from the Sharia College at Damascus University in 1966, when Palestinian nationalism was becoming a potent force.  After the 1967 War, Azzam became active in several Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and the West Bank and embraced Salafism.  He had a sharp mind and earned graduate degrees from Al Azhar University.  In 1979, he joined the first wave of Arab, anti-Soviet Jihadis in Afghanistan.  In Peshawar, Pakistan, he made his mark as an inspiring Islamist recruiter and rhapsodist.  The paladin’s famous dictum was, “One hour of jihad in Allah's path is better than 60 years of praying.”  He and his two sons were killed in a massive car bombing in Peshawar in 1989.  His assassins are not publicly known today.

            Both Azzam and bin Laden were members of the Islamic Brotherhood. Bin Laden’s connection to the Islamic Brotherhood became clearer in September 2012, when his successor and longtime associate Ayman Al-Zawahiri recalled a quote from bin Laden, "I was banished from my own organization. I used to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, but they banished me." According to Zawahiri, bin Laden was too much of a maverick for the Brotherhood, whose leaders told the Saudi, "You’re banished." Bin Laden pithily responded, "Fine."

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

The People

            “A Pashtun is never at peace, except when he is at war." An old Pashtun saying

            Living at the crossroads of ancient empires and migrating nations, the Afghans are living testimony to a racially diverse gene pool and the fusion of myriad ethnicities.  Over the centuries, one ethnic group, the Pashtuns, came to dominate.   Today, they are the largest ethnic group, constituting approximately 42 percent of all Afghans.

            The Taliban are overwhelmingly Pashtun, and this ethnic group holds regional prestige and power. The area where Pashtun is the dominant ethnicity extends into much of Pakistan and is called the Pashtun Belt. Pashtuns are a tapestry of major clans, minor clans, and sub-clans of varying prestige and influence. Deeply conservative, Pashtunwali, the Pashtun social code, is a fusion of religious and clan supremacy. When they held power, the Taliban imposed their Pashtun social codes on all those they conquered. The Taliban alienated many non-Pashtun Afghans while in power because many of the Taliban’s laws and customs were based on Pashtunwali. If some Pashtun recruits were attracted to the Taliban by bonds of tribal affinity, non-Pashtuns seethed with resentment, which would have repercussions in the following years.

Though the sub-tribes have regional and clan differences, Pashtuns share a common social code. Pashtunwali is practiced in a fiercely independent tribal region that straddles Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even by Afghan standards, this region is remote, barren, and inaccessible. The area is porous, and its resident clans often make their living by smuggling. But Pashtunwali extends well beyond the Pashtun belt; it is observed throughout all territory controlled by Pashtuns. 

            Pashtunwali rests on five principles: honor, revenge, hospitality, absolution, and protection. Honor, or nang, requires each Pashtun male to protect the family's honor. Even small offenses, slights, and what Westerners would consider trivial, offhand comments must be resolved. Stemming from the first principle, nang, a Pashtun must exact revenge, or badal, if his family is shamed. Hospitality, or melmastia, the third principle, is a Pashtun trait that has been acknowledged by many non-Pashtuns as well as Pashtuns. A fourth principle is forgiveness, or nanwatay.

            If a Pashtun wants to end a feud with a fellow Pashtun, he can approach his rival and ask forgiveness. It is an alternative to revenge.  The fifth Pashtun principle is allegiance with a stronger force, or hamsaya. This happens when a group or individuals give allegiance or switch sides to a stronger clan or subclan. In the current conflict, it became widely used as the Taliban were in retreat in 2001 and, once again, when they began to show muscle. As the United States prepares to withdraw most of its forces in 2014, the principle of hamsay could help determine the course of the insurgency.

            The tribal system in Afghanistan has been compared, if very loosely, to the clans of ancient Scotland or to the Hatfields and McCoys of American folklore.  While exaggerated, this historical analog holds some truth. Many Afghans will take their primary identity from their tribal affiliation and only secondarily see themselves as Afghan nationals. There are five dominant Afghan tribes.

            The Durrani tribal confederation, concentrated mostly in southeastern Afghanistan, has disproportionately produced Afghan leaders since Ahmad Shah Durrani, considered the founder of modern Afghanistan, established a monarchy in 1747. The historic Pashtun rivals of the Durranis are the Ghilzai tribal group, concentrated mostly in eastern Afghanistan. Some of the major Taliban leaders today are Ghilzais.

             The hoary rivalry between Pashtun bloodlines continues in 21st-century Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the current president of Afghanistan, is a Durrani, and Mullah Omar, the long-serving leader of the Taliban, is a Ghilzai. The Karlanris, or "hill tribes," are the third-largest group of Pashtuns. Although geographically separated, two major groups make up the Sarbani. The last major tribal group is the Ghurghusht, who live in and around Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Provinces. Sometimes the sub-tribes coexist peacefully, and sometimes they do not.

            Two-thirds of the Pashtuns are Durrani or Ghilzai, and these two sub-tribes sparred and tangled on many issues over many centuries.  The Taliban continued to be led by Ghilzais, but by 2008-2009 Durrani commanders had been given stronger leadership roles and positions of trust and responsibility.

            Florid Cruelty “….That Screams Will Frighten Even Crows from Their Nests”

            “Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible, and if the person survives, he will never again have a night’s sleep.” Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, Former Taliban torturer

            The Taliban are not uniquely cruel. Compared to two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century – the German National Socialists and Soviet communists - the Taliban committed fewer murders and never refined genocide to an industrial science. However, much like the feared Gestapo of the Nazis and the KGB of the Soviets, the Taliban’s secret police tortured and murdered enthusiastically and creatively. Prisoners were nailed to the wall and crucified; killed slowly by hanging upside down; and starved to death, while occasionally forced to crawl and grabble for bread crumbs, to the amusement of guards.  One of the Taliban torturers explained, with some pangs of regret, "Maybe the worst thing I saw was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream."

            Taliban torture continues to make the daily news.  For nearly 18 years, 1994-2013, there has been a carnival-like atmosphere to public executions and amputations.  In Taliban-controlled territory, whippings, beatings, shootings, face slashings, and occasional crucifixions take place in public squares.  Even the dead are not spared desecration. The Taliban photograph their enemy dead as grim trophies. A village elder explained that when the Taliban killed a British soldier in July 2011, they, the Taliban, “kicked the body and threw it in the canal…then they (other Taliban) pulled him out of the canal and started trampling on him, stabbing him and even shot him (the corpse).”

            This cruelty came to light in full after the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001. Books such as The Kite Runner, widely praised by critics, brought the full depravity of the Taliban to Western audiences. A 2003 movie, “Clouds,” a romantic drama, was filled with scenes of murder and amputations and intended to expose the Taliban’s savagery and the misery of their era. A critically acclaimed movie, “Osama,” highlighted the despair of beggars in the Taliban’s Afghanistan and the plight of girls in the Sharia state. Private screenings were held for then-first lady Laura Bush and senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kay Bailey Hutchison. “Escape from the Taliban” was an Indian-made movie that, like “Osama,” uncovered the depraved treatment of women. Another movie, also critically admired, was “Kandahar,” filmed in Iran in 2002 and serving as a general indictment of the Taliban’s rule. 

             In the brief artistic spring of winter 2001, Afghan artists were optimistic. New plays were performed in the bombed-out theater of Kabul. The city’s creative scene had promise. The theater’s lead actor explained, “My dream is to have a proper theater with seats, a roof, and a stage…Maybe even a curtain.”

Profile 2:  Marjan and Donatello

            The Taliban’s cruelty was not only directed at people; animals suffered too. The Taliban outlawed dog and pigeon fighting, popular male pastimes, because they were considered un-Islamic and involved gambling. The Taliban do not like pets, but many Afghans enjoy them, particularly singing birds. Before the Taliban, Kabul residents delighted in visiting their zoo, which once housed 400 species of animals and an aquarium. Built in 1967, it became a point of civic pride. But zoos do not have a place in the Taliban’s Salafist realm.

            The Taliban would beat and torture the zoo’s animals, despite the pleas of the skeletal, largely unpaid staff for mercy. A particular target was a bear, Donatello, whose nose the Taliban cut off and whose festering wounds they poked for fun. One of the zookeepers explained, “She is a poor little animal. She hasn't hurt anyone, and yet, when the Taliban were here, they used to come in just to torment the animals.” 

            Marjan, the lion, was the zoo’s prize, where he had lived for 23 years. Like the human residents of Kabul, Marjan had a hard life and lived in cramped quarters. But he was cared for and fed regularly until the Taliban came, because the zoo’s staff loved him. When a bumptious Taliban member jumped into the lion’s cage to display his masculinity, Marjan bit off one of his legs. The following day, the recently amputated man’s brother threw a hand grenade at Marjan, blinding him in one eye.

            Marjan died in January 2002, and many Afghans grieved their loss. “This old, busted-up lion, with one eye, his jaw hanging down, was the symbol of the country. Old, ailing but proud, like Afghanistan,” said Johnalsh of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, who was caring for Marjan in Kabul. Marjan died at a moment when international aid was beginning to restore the zoo and improve the lives of its animals. Donatello was nursed to health and given Marjan’s pen, which was roomier. The animals at Kabul’s zoo were better accommodated and fed healthier food. They were treated with love again, and the Taliban were long gone.

            Summary

            The Afghan moniker “graveyard of empires” is well earned. Western and eastern empires have invaded the country, only to meet often stiff, sometimes insurmountable resistance. Among the invaders were the Greeks, Mongols, Arabs, British, and Soviets.  Most Afghans saw Soviet developmental efforts as cosmetics to pretty-up atheistic collectivism.  The emergence of the Taliban could not have occurred without the collision of modernity with traditional Afghan society and the power vacuum left after the Soviet War. Some of the Afghans and the Arabs who fought jihad against the Soviets would emerge as leaders in the Taliban, and one Arab, Osama bin Laden, would become the most wanted man in the world.

            The fountainheads of the Taliban identity are Pashtun culture and Deobandi Islam. The Pashtuns are and have been the dominant tribe in Afghanistan. Pashtunwali is a code of conduct particular to the Pashtuns, and it characterizes many elements of the Taliban leadership and ranks. The cultural elements among Pashtuns include honor, revenge, hospitality, requesting forgiveness, and serving a stronger tribe. The Deobandi School also made an imprint on the Taliban.

Islamism is a political variant of Islam that enshrines the most puritanical and primitive elements of the religion with modern political means of governance. The haughty Bin Laden and the dour Mullah Omar did not share identical views of Islam but held common goals. Both wanted to establish totalitarian, Islamist states.  Whether or not Islamism, or modern political Islam, is fascist is debatable. Its unrelenting hostility towards liberalism is not. 

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Historians refer to the war in Afghanistan as the Soviets’ Vietnam. If the analogy is inexact, it underscores the angst within both the Soviet armed forces and civil-military relations. Things went poorly for the Soviets from the beginning, and drug problems were widespread. Some Soviets traded clothes, cigarettes, fur caps, even their weapons for hashish and heroin. Abroad, anger at the Soviet Army’s killing of Muslims in Afghanistan also fueled Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Asian republics and in Chechnya.

            Much like Americans in Vietnam a decade earlier, not all “Afghanistanis,” often transliterated “Afghanistanys,” the Soviet troops who fought in Afghanistan, could leave their battles behind. Years later, many exhibited signs of emotional distress associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms included alcohol and chemical dependency and high suicide rates.

            Belatedly, the Soviet Army recognized the inadequacy of its preparations. Soviet forces were ill-equipped for guerrilla warfare and, initially, poorly trained. Although the Soviets deployed advanced armored vehicles and attack aircraft, both rotary- and fixed-wing, they became highly vulnerable to US-supplied ground-to-air missiles. Almost anything that flew was subject to attack. The journalist Edward Girardet recounts the perhaps apocryphal exchange between two mujahedin in the war's final days. One notes that he has not seen any Siberian cranes flying over Kabul that year, which is unusual. “Have we even killed all the cranes?” replies the other.

            In February 1989, the Soviets left. The last Soviet soldier to depart after the 9-year intervention was Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, who rode the final armored personnel carrier out of the country, clutching a bouquet of flowers. Years later, he would confess, without dreamy nostalgia, “I wasn’t looking back.” But US military planners, years later, would look back on the Soviet experience and scrutinize all the major battles, hoping to learn from their successes and failures.

            Before they left, the Soviets handed over vast caches of weapons and ammunition to Najibullah’s still-Soviet-friendly government forces. Moscow continued to provide material support for 2 years after the Soviets’ departure, but their withdrawal left the Kabul government to fend for itself. A civil war followed, and the communist government stepped down in April 1992. Differences among the mujahedeen parties quickly surfaced, and each faction had a leader or warlord with aspirations for national power.

            There was a global view that the Soviets had been defeated in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union collapsed only a few years later. The mujahedeen celebrated and savored their achievements as a victory. Some Afghans were grateful to the United States for funding, logistical support, training, and the lethally effective Stinger missiles, while others were not. Some Mujahedeen and al Qaeda hoped to defeat the world’s only remaining superpower, their former benefactor, the United States. Washington would be their next target.

            Western leaders would examine Soviet successes and failures. The use of overwhelming force and relatively sophisticated weapons was not necessarily sufficient to defeat the enemy. Another lesson both the Americans and Soviets learned was the importance of domestic considerations and the necessity of popular resolve to fight a protracted, distant war.

Profile 1:  Nekmuhammad – Afghanistani        

            Gennady Tsevam fought as an enlisted soldier in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. A Ukrainian national, he was drafted at 18, trained in Russia and Soviet Uzbekistan, and then deployed to Kunduz to fight the Mujahedeen. He didn’t last long. His first night on sentry duty would be his last with his Red Army comrades. His outpost was attacked, and he was whisked away in a cloth sack as a prisoner of the Taliban. Unlike other Soviet soldiers who were tortured and killed, Tsevam was given the choice of becoming a Muslim or having his throat slit. He chose the former, became Nekmuhammad, took a wife, and fathered three children.

            When the Soviets left Afghanistan, he stayed behind with his wife and family. He may have faced the same dilemma as other Soviet captives. How would he be greeted back home? Would the authorities and his Ukrainian family be sympathetic? There might be prison. So he stayed in Afghanistan and worked odd jobs. After the Taliban were forced from the country, Nekmuhammad took a job as a driver for NGOs. In 2004, he was working for an Italian firm as a driver. Later, he moved his family to Konduz.

            But life was very difficult for him in Afghanistan, and he still suffered from a leg wound. His children were social outcasts because their father was a “shuravi,” or Soviet soldier. Other children would not play with them. By 2003, both his parents had died in Ukraine. They had not seen him since the day they saw him off at the Donetsk enlistment office 20 years earlier.

            By the turn of the millennium, Nekmuhammad’s world had changed many times. The Soviet Union had been gone for years, and Ukraine had become an independent state. He had a brother in Ukraine. But Nekmuhammad confessed, ''I am frightened that if I go and cannot come back, then who will feed my family and look after them?'' So Nekmuhammad would talk to his brother on the phone, and his children would notice their father’s slow tears as he spoke, his voice cracking with emotion in a strange-sounding language they did not understand.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

The Soviets Invade – The “Afghanistanis”

            The tranquility of the 1970s was shattered in December 1979. The Soviet Union tried to shore up a moribund, secular Afghan government by deploying troops. What was intended as a quick intervention quickly stalled. Over nearly 10 years of occupation, Soviet forces and their Afghan communist allies reportedly killed 1.3 million Afghans, shattered infrastructure in urban and rural areas, and forced 5.5 million Afghans to flee to refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. The turmoil in Afghanistan escalated into an insurgency and then a civil war. Finally, it took elements of a world war for the United States to enter the fray.

            The Soviets’ muddle in Afghanistan afforded Washington an opportunity to inflict a slow–bleeding wound on Moscow. At a relatively low cost and without deploying any US combat forces, the United States supplied the mujahedin with lethal ground-to-air Stinger missiles in November 1986, which Soviet aircraft were not adequately protected against. At the same time, Soviet dissidents circulated disparaging war-related news. Informal information networks among parents who had lost their sons expanded. This war, compounded by the long-declining standard of living, ushered in the last days of the Soviet Union. 

            As the war progressed, more international players joined the fighting. Iranian support went largely to the Hazaras, who are Shia. The Saudis supported, in contrast, a Wahhabi network and a rival warlord, the brooding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is still an active player. The Saudis also sponsored Wahhabi-guided madrassas to expand their influence in the country.

            The Soviet experience in Afghanistan illustrates the failure of military pacification efforts. Stephen Pomper, a military analyst, notes that the Soviets recognized early in the conflict that they would have to train local forces and secure and maintain their sympathies, similar to the US turn-of-the-20th-century counterinsurgency efforts in the Philippines, or they would have to field an army of over 600,000 men. This would have required a significant diversion of troops from Europe, a proposition unacceptable after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, or a vast increase in military personnel and expenditures.

            Like the opponents they faced, the Soviets could be ruthless. A RAND Corporation study cited the devastation caused by napalm and fragmentation bombs and the widespread use of antipersonnel mines, which maimed and killed indiscriminately. The study compared Soviet pacification tactics to those of the Nazis, a historic analogy that stirred American sympathy for the Afghans. Their use of booby-trapped toys and the execution of civilian hostages horrified many Americans. A 1986 Amnesty International study concurred, charging that Afghan prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured, sometimes to death, in extreme cold or heat. Some described electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, and others witnessed the slaughter of fellow prisoners.

            The Soviets tried to soften their image but failed. Soviet operators were, at best, marginally capable and unimaginative, and ill-equipped to persuade a highly devoted, religious, and tribal society. The propaganda was largely directed at an Afghan population that could not process its largely secular messages. The Soviet-generated themes focused on class struggle and dialectical materialism but were heard by Afghans as muddled twaddle. The quality of the transmission equipment was also poor. Finally, Soviet hubris assumed that military superiority could trump the Afghans’ primitive tactics. They were wrong.

            The Soviets refined their tactics as they expanded operations and tried to use honey. Moscow hoped to engage Afghans in international prestige projects, such as sending an Afghan into space aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Hovering in the stratosphere, Afghan cosmonauts would conduct scientific research. Few Afghans were impressed. On the ground, Moscow offered 15,000 Afghans free education in the Soviet Union and brought 50 professors from the Soviet Union and East Germany to the American-built Kabul University. It didn’t work. Frustrated Soviet workers grumbled, “It’s all the Middle Ages… We just sink money in.” This disenchantment was reciprocated by an Afghan who retorted that all the Russians had done was create a “filthy, bloody mess of our country.”

            Afghans agonized. In the spirit of the Mongols, the Soviet armies laid waste to vast stretches of Afghanistan. The war ravaged the economy, throwing millions of Afghans, already living on the margins of human existence, into despair. Corruption, always a problem in Afghanistan, thrived during the war years of the 1980s. In the 1980s, households postponed long-term economic planning because of uncertainty about the future. Above all, most Afghans tried to survive, a task that was often difficult.

            If the Soviet information operations were fruitless, the Taliban effectively terrorized their Soviet enemy. Soviet prisoners were tortured and mutilated, and their corpses were photographed. This had a chilling, demoralizing effect on the Soviets, many of whom became afraid to engage the enemy. These morbid propaganda effects would be replicated by the Taliban years later and directed against Americans.

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

          In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Afghanistan’s strategic importance to the West declined. The dominant European empires faded or dissolved after the First World War. A militarily fatigued Europe turned inward. Britain’s global power waned in the 20th century, and Tsarist Russia was reconstituted as the Soviet Union. As a result, neither country focused on Afghanistan. By the middle of the 20th century, Britain, still the dominant, though tired, Western power in South Asia, was pessimistic about Afghanistan’s ability to govern itself. British diplomats seriously considered partitioning the state between Pakistan and Iran.

            The great powers had little incentive to modernize Afghanistan, which suited Afghan leaders. National and tribal leaders were content to remain neutral in international ideological and geopolitical struggles. Afghanistan refused to enter into a formal pact with the United States in the 1950s, during Washington’s unprecedented period of alliance-building in South Asia. Instead, Afghanistan turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic aid and established a relationship based largely on barter. This barter economy did little to end Afghanistan’s isolation or promote sustained human development.

Afghan Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan, commonly known as Daoud, served from 1953 to 1963 and again in the mid- to late 1970s. He was not ideologically wedded to any political or economic theory. He was a reformer who sought to court Washington and Moscow to integrate Afghanistan into the regional economies of southern and central Asia. 

            Daoud gradually sought to end Afghanistan’s isolation by courting international financing for development projects. He had some success. However, foreign aid slowed in the 1970s, partly because of Afghanistan’s declining geostrategic importance to the West and the Soviet Union. Afghanistan remained neutral. A treaty of friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union was promulgated in December 1978, bringing more Soviet aid and advisors to Kabul. The United States had provided aid to Afghanistan since the 1950s, but most programs ended after the April 1978 coup.

     Standards of living began to rise in the 1960s and early 1970s. There was political stability and a belle époque in Afghanistan under King Mohammad Zaher Shah. He was a well-liked, tough, but not dynamic, king. In a coup, King Shah was gently deposed by his cousin, Mohammed Daoud, and Shad went into exile. He would return, if only briefly, after the Taliban were defeated in 2001.

Elements of Constitutional Law

Afghanistan was never a Jeffersonian democracy, but Afghans enjoyed many human rights, most of which the Taliban later revoked. The Afghan 1923 constitution abolished slavery and protected religions other than Islam, while still asserting that Afghanistan was an Islamic state. It offered some measures of political freedom, including the right to own private property. However, the constitution cannot be considered liberal by contemporary Western standards. It asserted the supremacy of Sharia, or Islamic law.

            Of enduring consequence in the 1923 Constitution is the Loya Jirga. The Jirga, a Pashtun tradition, is a loose assembly of village elders whose judgments and decisions influence national-level policy. For centuries, it was the most important conflict-resolution mechanism with democratic traits. The 1923 Constitution gave it unprecedented status, shifting power to the local level. The Jirga would reemerge as an important component of Afghan law and policymaking in the post-Taliban era.

            In 1964, Afghanistan adopted a new constitution that strengthened the role of the Shura (parliament) and established a bicameral legislature. Its references to “basic principles” of democratic rule were ambiguous, its tolerance of religions other than Hanafi-Sunni Islam was questionable, and its civil and criminal protections for women were weak. Nonetheless, elements of universal human rights were gradually adopted. This progress ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

            The promise of social change unsettled the deeply religious. Not all the young were drawn to the West’s promises. By the 1950s, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had scholars at Kabul University’s Faculty of Islamic Studies. By the late 1960s, the Muslim Youth Organization of Afghanistan had become a university student organization, including Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. They became a bulwark against Western liberalism, and several would become national leaders 20 years later.   

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

"You can occupy it, you can put troops there and keep bombing, but you cannot win." Soviet Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev, who was decorated for bravery during the Soviet 1979-89 war

The Land

            Afghanistan is a remote and rugged land, protected from modernity by a “mud curtain” of geographic and cultural isolation. As tough as the people of Afghanistan are, the country’s terrain is tough. It is roughly the size of Texas and comprises over 250,000 square miles of diverse geography and climatic zones. Despite its relatively large size, only 12 percent of the land is arable. Vast tracts in southern and western Afghanistan are desert and share geographic traits with the Southern Californian or New Mexican high desert. Other parts of Afghanistan are mountainous, and earthquakes are frequent there.

            As historical accounts of invading armies attest, Afghanistan is well-suited to insurgent warfare. The harsh terrain offers a strong tactical advantage to insurgents, who, with their intimate knowledge of the terrain, can command the forbidding mountains and valleys. The deep gorges and valleys, craggy defiles, and the primitive road network, generally aligned with watersheds, are ideal for ambushes and hit-and-run tactics. In the 19th century, the terrain wore down even the strongest British ponies, and in the 20th century, the dirt and rocky roads, mountain rockslides, and generally primitive infrastructure took a toll on sturdily built Soviet and later American all-terrain vehicles. The myriad crevices that hid Afghan partisans in the 19th century gave sanctuary to late-20th-century mujahedin and, now, to their sons. Stinger-clutching mujahedin instilled an often-paralyzing fear in the Soviet Army.

            The famed Khyber Pass is draped in ancient, martial folklore. Through its canyons passed the supply trains of Alexander’s armies, which fought for their lives in 327 BCE. Centuries later, the marauding armies of Genghis Khan and, later, the Mughal warriors marched through this 33-mile pass in the Hindu Kush mountain range. Beyond the Khyber Pass, Afghanistan’s heartland and hinterland were battlegrounds of the Afghan Wars. In these wars, British soldiers were at the mercy of Afghan marksmen, who, with their jezails, used the rugged terrain as shields and sanctuary. In the last century, as today, the well-hidden caves and heavily forested northern mountains provided shelter for both Afghan insurgents and the soldiers who pursued them. As with Alexander’s armies, the armies of the British, the Soviets, and Americans would see their transport vehicles bogged down, their soldiers ambushed, and their morale challenged.

            For many non-Afghans who have trespassed in northern and northeastern Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, or “killer of Hindus,” has lived up to its name. It is among the highest mountain ranges in the world, and Mount Nowshak, at 24,557 feet, approaches the climbers’ death zone. It is 10,000 feet higher than the continental U.S.’s highest peak, Mt. Whitney. The bone-chilling cold of Afghanistan’s mountains, particularly at higher elevations, has served as an ally to Afghan insurgents, just as “General Winter” ground down German forces in Moscow and Stalingrad. In sum, Afghanistan’s landscape is Spartan. These factors combine to test the mettle, endurance, and military skills of both Afghan and non-Afghan pro-government forces.

A Brief History

            The first Europeans to arrive en masse in Afghanistan were the armies of Alexander the Great. His tenure was brief, but he left a Hellenistic influence that endured for centuries. His troops also left a genetic legacy among the Afghan people, some of whom retain European racial features. Buddhism took root in the mid-sixth century BCE and flourished alongside other religions, including Zoroastrianism. In 698 CE, Islam arrived in Afghanistan to stay, despite repeated challenges. Under successive caliphates, Afghans converted in large numbers to Sunni Islam, which became the dominant religion. Afghanistan was nearly decimated by the Mongols, who struck like lightning in the 13th century. Not all of Afghanistan’s cities were destroyed, but many were devastated and never revived. Most towns west of the Helmand River moldered.

            In a fragmented Central Asia, Timur, or Tamerlane, shaped a vast empire in the early 15th Century. From his base in Samarkand, he also became a patron of the Islamic arts. In the next century, Babur captured Kabul from the Mongols and founded the Mughal Empire in India.  The Mughals ruled until 1707. 

            In the 19th century, European leaders vied for supremacy and empire in Central and South Asia. Afghanistan was torn between the ambitions of two expanding empires, the British and the Russians, in the “Great Game.” In this struggle, the Afghans proved themselves fierce fighters. In January 1842, Britain’s Kabul garrison was forced to withdraw to its hard-pressed fort in Jalalabad. The retreating British-Indian units, some 16,000 soldiers and camp followers, were ambushed by Afghans, and only a few, including a wounded doctor, survived to reach Jalalabad. This death march crystallized in the European imagination. In art, Lady Butler’s portrayal of the near-dead Dr. William Brydon, slouching in his saddle as he approached Jalalabad, became iconic. It brought to canvas the enervation and then the annihilation of a once-proud British army.

            In response, the British built an "Army of Retribution" in India, smashed through the Khyber Pass, recaptured Kabul, and set the ancient Great Bazaar ablaze. But more British defeats were to come. In July 1880, a British brigade under Brigadier George Burrows was overrun by forces led by the formidable Ayub Khan. This time, however, there was no public call for vengeance, and Parliament decided that retribution would not be worth the estimated cost. Britain was content for Afghanistan to serve as a buffer state during the Anglo-Russian rivalry. In literature, Rudyard Kipling brought the Great Game to life in his novel “Kim.”

Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.