BOOK
REVIEW Two
faces of Islamism in AfPak An Enemy
We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda
Merger in Afghanistan by Alex
Strick Van Linschoten and Felix
Kuehn
Reviewed by Brian M
Downing
Peace talks between the US and the
Taliban are in the offing and the relationship
between the latter and al-Qaeda will figure highly
in them. Strick Van Linschoten and Kuehn argue
that the two Islamist groups have never had close
ties. This will strike longtime observers as a
straw argument but the book makes clear that the
misperception has shaped US policy over the years,
most portentously and tragically after the
September 11, 2001 attacks.
The title may
also cause some to wince as it seems to promise
preaching about Western foolhardiness. But An
Enemy We Created is an excellent study of the
Taliban and al-Qaeda - mainly the former. Based on
interviews with Taliban officials and on
documents captured after
their 2001 ouster, it traces each group's
intellectual origins, roles in the Soviet war, and
present embodiments. Along the way, it notes
considerable differences and even antagonisms
between the two groups and examines varying
opinions and changes within the Taliban.
The Taliban developed out of Deobandi
thought, which in turn came from mid-19th-century
Muslim opposition to Hindu ascendancy in and
British domination of the subcontinent. Their
concerns were essentially nationalist and they had
no agenda outside the region.
The origins
of al-Qaeda lie in Sayyid Qutb's (1906-66)
Islamist thought which gained a following after
the failure of Arab nationalism and Egypt's defeat
in the 1967 war with Israel. This form of Islamism
is international in outlook as it seeks to
transcend the failed and failing nation-states of
the Muslim world and restore Islamic unity.
The
Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89) brought the
Taliban and the Arab fighters who would become
al-Qaeda into the same cause, though owing to
differing locations, without significant contact.
The Taliban developed from mujahideen bands in
southern Afghanistan that were based on school
networks and loyalty to mullahs.
The
concerns of the Taliban bands rarely strayed
outside their villages and valleys; ridding them
of Russian troops was their only goal. The cause
of international jihad and a restored caliphate,
if word of it reached them, would have elicited no
interest. Unlike other mujahideen groups, the
Taliban bands became involved in settling disputes
and administering justice in their localities.
Today those skills are key to their growing
insurgency as their courts are often deemed fairer
than those of the Kabul government.
Arab
jihadis, on the other hand, saw themselves as part
of an international effort to help their brothers
and restore Islamic greatness. They did not arrive
in numbers until well into the war and served in
mujahideen bands in the east, unassociated with
the Taliban ones far to the south. The Arabs were
appreciated by the mujahideen but not especially
liked; their urban, middle-class ways did not sit
well with Pashtun rustics.
The Taliban rose
to power in the mid-1990s as the old fighting
bands reconstituted to fight warlordism and
banditry in the chaotic aftermath of the USSR's
1989 withdrawal. The Arab fighters, most of whom
had gone home or off to new causes, played almost
no role in this.
It was only after the
Taliban had formed a mobile army and laid siege to
Kabul in 1996 that they came into contact with
Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda leader convinced the
venerable mujahideen commander, Jalaluddin
Haqqani, to fight alongside the Taliban, which
soon led to Kabul's fall. Haqqani's forces were
indigenous Pashtuns; Arab fighters played no
role.
The Taliban and al-Qaeda had
important differences. It was hoped that bin Laden
would attract funds for economic development, but
he could not. When the Taliban head, Mullah Omar,
met with bin Laden in late 1996, he chided him for
his international jihad agenda; better to rebuild
the war-ravaged country, he thought.
Many
in the Taliban high council saw bin Laden and
al-Qaeda as of little military value and of no
value in reconstruction. They wanted international
aid and a band of jihadists plotting up bombings
around the world were to say the least unhelpful
in that regard. Rank and file al-Qaeda didn't like
the Taliban. They'd seen or heard of the Taliban's
harsh justice and were put off by warring against
respected mujahideen such as the famed Tajik
leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, though of course
al-Qaeda agents later killed him.
The
responses to al-Qaeda's 1998 bombings of US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are instructive.
Some in the Taliban council insisted that bin
Laden's recklessness was endangering their very
rule. Others pointed to the US cruise missile
reprisal, the insistence on handing over bin
Laden, and the human-rights campaign against them
as evidence of a Western conspiracy to extirpate
Islamist governments and control the
resource-laden region. Mullah Omar settled the
dispute by proclaiming Bin Laden a
well-intentioned yet impetuous brother but he
ordered bin Laden to be out of Afghanistan by
early 2000. He did not follow through on his
order.
The authors do not see convincing
evidence that Mullah Omar or other Taliban chiefs
knew in advance of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks. Mullah
Omar had more than once cautioned bin Laden
against planning attacks on the US from
Afghanistan and much of the evidence of
foreknowledge rests on coerced confessions.
The ensuing debates in Kabul and
Washington were filled with misconceptions. Many
Taliban saw the US demand to hand over bin Laden
as part a Western conspiracy. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) head George Tenet argued that the
refusal to give up bin Laden was proof the two
groups were as one and that as long as the mullahs
remained in power Afghanistan would be a haven for
terrorist groups.
The CIA's view won out,
of course, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda were
driven into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Each
went about its work there: the Taliban in building
an insurgency across the frontier, al-Qaeda in
launching attacks across the globe.
The
invasion of Iraq in early 2003 was critical to
both groups' revival. It underscored the belief
that the West was bent on controlling the region.
With Western resources and attention shifted to
Iraq, Afghanistan fell into warlordism and
banditry - conditions the Taliban well knew how to
rectify and exploit. Funds and recruits came
al-Qaeda's way and its forces grew in numbers and
lethality from the Maghreb to Southeast Asia.
These enterprises, the authors note, were largely
independent of one another.
The Taliban has
reasserted its control or at least its presence in
many parts of the south and east. In the course of
the war, an important fissure has opened inside
the Taliban, though not a promising one. The older
Taliban commanders, who fought the Russians and
ruled the country, are more flexible regarding the
issue of re-establishing control over the country.
Many are willing to confine their ambitions to
southern and eastern provinces and to a few
ministries in the Kabul government.
Younger ones, however, are more rigid and
dogmatic and they insist on re-establishing the
emirate over the entire country. Born and raised
amid conflict, they know nothing of peace and
compromise, only war and hardness. Paradoxically,
perhaps ominously, the US kill/capture and drone
programs are whittling down the older leaders and
helping to promote these young lions.
Some
readers will look at the Taliban/al-Qaeda ties
described by the authors and see them as more
substantive than the authors do. Such is the
ambiguity of evidence and interpretation regarding
guerrilla groups and foreign policy in general. A
less benign interpretation of the authors'
material may also come from looking at the many
intermediaries between the two groups, such as the
Haqqanis and the Islamist Movement of Uzbekistan,
both of which cooperated with al-Qaeda in fighting
the US and the Northern Alliance in 2001 and
continue as part of the insurgency along the AfPak
frontier today.
The authors make little
mention of a Pakistani intelligence (ISI) role
with either group since 2001, possibly because any
connections would be deeply clandestine.
Nonetheless, ISI is almost certainly supporting
the Taliban and various jihadi groups, and at
least parts of ISI extended hospitality during bin
Laden's lengthy stay in Abbottabad which ended so
abruptly and embarrassingly last May.
As
peace talks begin, many policy makers will wonder
if, despite clear differences between the two
groups, the Taliban would turn on al-Qaeda as part
of a settlement - undoubtedly a non-negotiable US
position and one that will be supported by all
regional powers except perhaps Pakistan. Or is
Mullah Omar's commitment to Muslim solidarity and
opposition to Western plots in the region as
resolute as it was 10 years ago, perhaps even
strengthened by US policies in the region since
9/11. These views are certainly deeply held by the
young lions opportunistically rising in the
movement's ranks.
Brian M Downing
is a political/military analyst and author of
The Military Revolution and Political Change
and/I>The Paths of Glory: War and Social
Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com.
Alex Strick
Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, An Enemy We
Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger
in Afghanistan, 1970-2010. (London: Hurst
Publications, 2012). Hardcover: 320 pages,
ISBN-10: 1849041547, $52.51
(Copyright
2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales,
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The
Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89) brought the
Taliban and the Arab fighters who would become
al-Qaeda into the same cause, though owing to
differing locations, without significant contact.
The Taliban developed from mujahideen bands in
southern Afghanistan that were based on school
networks and loyalty to mullahs. 
