w4rma:
Here's a little background reading on the Taliban to start you off. Again, the Reagan proclimation of 1983 couldn't mention the Taliban, since the Taliban wasn't formed untill the mid 1990's. The Reagan proclamation was referring to the group of genuine freedom fighters led by people like Ahmed Shah Masood, murdered by Al-Queda operatives on Sept. 15, 2001.
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Afghanistan Atlas Project
Where did the Taliban come from?
The first devotees came from the poverty-stricken refugee camps that sprung up along the Pakistani border during the Afghan-Soviet war. The young men of these camps learned a fierce and fundamental strain of Islam through the madrassas, Islamic schools that dotted the Afghan-Pakistani border. In September 1994, Mohammad Omar, then a mullah and today the leader of the Taliban, created the militia in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. From the start, its goal was to unite a divided and war-plagued Afghanistan under a strict and unyielding version of Sharia -- Islamic law as written in the Koran, the life of Mohammed and his followers, and Muslim scholars through the ages.
Initial victories
The Taliban's growing power in Kandahar attracted the attention of the Pakistani government, which hired the Taliban in November 1994 to protect convoys traveling between Pakistan and Central Asia. Taliban successes against local warlords attracted more followers and emboldened the Taliban to take control of Jalalabad, the eastern city bordering Pakistan on Sept. 11, 1996. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was occupied by the Taliban on Sept. 27, 1996.
Support
Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the mujahedeen -- Islamic warriors -- once united against the Soviets, divided along ethnic and regional lines.
During this civil war, the Taliban promised an end to the corruption and chaos plaguing much of the country. That young men followed, to the word, the teachings of mullahs was neither unusual nor radical within the context of Afghanistan's history. Since the Anglo-Afghanistan wars of the 19th century, religious leaders have played a major role in galvanizing opposition.
The Taliban gained the support of both disaffected mujahedeen as well more recent graduates from the madrassas. Ethnic allegiance also secured Taliban membership. Most of its members are Pashtun, the majority ethnic group that ruled Afghanistan for 2 1/2 centuries but lost power following the Soviet occupation. The Taliban's popularity and predominant military might gave it a tentative legitimacy to rule the country, and by June 1997 the militia controlled two-thirds of the country.
Building an Islamic State
After seizing control, the Taliban instituted strict enforcement of Sharia, Islamic religious law. Modern conveniences such as computers, televisions, movies and radios were banned under the pretext that they diverted minds from the tenets of Islam. Any depiction of living things, including photography, paintings and sculpture was banned. Men were required to wear beards at least a fist-length below the chin. Women and girls were banned from schools and the workplace and ordered to wear burqas, a one-piece gown with a built-in mesh screen from which to see and breathe. Enforcement for breaking Taliban law is meted out by the Department for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. Infractions such as improper beard lengths may merit a public beating. More serious crimes such as theft or blasphemy could result in an amputation or execution.
Global recognition
Despite armed resistance from warlords in the countryside, the Taliban has managed to gain control of 90 percent of the country. The assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood on Sept. 15, 2001, may help the Taliban take control of the far north, Afghanistan's last anti-Taliban stronghold. Nevertheless, the Taliban's dominance has earned it little outside recognition. U.N. sanctions were imposed in 1999 and increased in 2001 in hopes of forcing the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. Only two countries -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- officially recognize the Taliban. The United Arab Emirates withdrew its recognition some two weeks after the attacks.
Challenges
War and its aftermath have laid waste to Afghanistan. Cities lack potable water and sanitation facilities. According to the United Nations, there are between 9 million and 10 million land mines in the countryside. Meanwhile, drought has pushed parts of the nation into famine. So far, the Taliban has been unable to demonstrate feasible administrative, technological and governmental solutions to the problems.
The current situation threatens not only specific military action by U.S. led forces, but also the end of outside financial support.
The policy has boomeranged. The editor of the international Arabic paper Al-Hayat met Osama bin Laden six months ago and said that the aides and bodyguards who surrounded him, almost 200 people, were all Saudis. In an article in the current Spectator of London, Stephen Schwartz points out that every major terrorist attack against the West in recent years has been conducted by people who have embraced Wahhabism. "Bin Laden is a Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor... So are the Algerian terrorists... So are the Taliban-style guerrillas in Kashmir." It is clear that Saudi Arabia now exports two products around the globe-oil and religious fanaticism.
Egypt's problem is more familiar. It has turned into something resembling a police state, repressing political dissent with a brutality that Hafez Assad of Syria would have admired. It censors all information that enters the country. It jails intellectuals for even the slightest criticism of the regime. The result is a society that is utterly dysfunctional, a regime deeply unpopular and furtive opposition movements that are increasingly extreme.
We think of our allies in the Middle East as "moderates." And certainly compared with the barbarians of Al Qaeda , they are cautious, conservative rulers. But for decades now the governments in Riyadh and Cairo have resisted economic and political modernization with disastrous results. (And Saudi Arabia is the richest Arab country and Egypt the most populous, so they are watched closely in the Middle East.) There is another path. Those governments that have chosen to walk ever so slowly on it-being modern and tolerant and easing up on the police apparatus-are actually in better shape politically. There have been few terrorists from Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Qatar. None of these regimes are democracies-elections in the Middle East would simply bring more Talibans into power-but they have opened up a little political and civil space and tried to show that Islam is compatible with modernity.
It has been said that Africa is the basket case of today's global market, but in many ways the Arab world is in worse shape, with 65 percent of its population under 18, stagnant economies and a fetid political culture. By the thousands young men are increasingly taking comfort in radical religious and political doctrines that promise salvation through a struggle with the West. But the focus of their hatred is their own regimes. In fact, the Qaeda network began in the early 1990s as a series of disparate groups in Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that were seeking to topple their respective governments. When those efforts failed, they decided to attack what they saw as the power behind the thrones, the upholder of order in the Middle East: the United States of America. We are now searching for the roots of this conflict in Islam and in theories about the clash of civilizations. But the roots may lie much closer, in our association with dysfunctional Arab regimes that have spawned violent opposition.
http://www.unomaha.edu/afghanistan_atlas/talhist.html
