Asia Times: Taliban done in by ego


	December 13, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Taliban done in by ego
Commentary by Mushahid Hussain

ISLAMABAD - The Taliban's collapse, after their initial stiff resistance in the first weeks of the bombing, is similar to the fate of the much-vaunted Iraqi military machine during the Gulf War in 1991.

There was a fear projected of American military might facing Iraq, as the Taliban were to do 10 years later, as if the United States was facing a "dangerous enemy" which was presented almost as an equal.

Interestingly, the Taliban left power the way they captured it: without a fight. After their peaceful conquest of Kandahar in November 1994, they captured major strongholds in Afghanistan one by one in fairly rapid succession through peaceful surrenders, culminating in the fall of the capital Kabul in September 1996.

The surrenders were arrived at through negotiations resulting in commanders switching sides, basically to be on what they then realized was the "winning side". Many of the commanders who switched sides were later given a share in power as allies and partners of the Taliban. This was more in the nature of an Afghan-style tribal compromise similar to the recent capture of Kandahar, which took place through negotiations between the head of the new Afghan administration Hamid Karzai and Mullah Omar's emissaries. Both of those leaders belong to the same hometown.

Initially, Karzai had stated that an amnesty would be given to the surrendering Taliban, including Mullah Omar who "would be allowed to live a life in dignity in his village". Karzai's compromise with Mullah Omar was quickly vetoed by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who told a press briefing at the Pentagon on December 6 that "Mullah Omar will have to be tried". He also threatened to support other Afghan groups that would pursue this policy should Karzai stick to his amnesty, and Karzai quickly retracted saying the "time for Mullah Omar's amnesty is past since he has not renounced terrorism".

This context is important in understanding a key element: the nature of interaction and compromise in Afghan tribal society. Here, foes turn into friends overnight in a "forgive and forget" spirit and this relates to the way the Taliban exited from power, which has been remarkably similar to their manner of entry into power.

What was the nature of the Taliban? They were essentially a movement, an amorphous, loosely aligned amalgam of dedicated zealots fired by a missionary enthusiasm to reform and recast Afghan society in their own primitive vision of what they perceived as an "ideal" society, their inspiration being more tribal than religious.

They were never an organized military or political force - their troops, for instance, never even wore or even had uniforms, and their command structure, if at all, was never a hierarchical chain of command befitting a regular army. Hence, it almost amusing to hear Pentagon briefings talk of Taliban "command and control posts", "Taliban military assets", or say that "the United States has established complete air supremacy", as if the United States was fighting an enemy of near-equal military level.

As part of a psychological build-up before the war, the United States felt the need to conjure up and create a larger-than-life image of the Taliban as a "fighting force" before it went into Afghanistan to liquidate this rag-tag army that never totaled more than 50,000 bearded, turbaned mostly young volunteers dressed in the Afghan baggy trousers and long flowing shirts, usually sporting trademark Kalashnikov rifles on their shoulders.

How did they manage to capture power so easily in 1994?

Their timing and their targets were important. They came in the context of the worst form of warlordism in Afghanistan, with each commander having his own little fiefdom with his modus operandi smacking of a contemporary form of banditry - robbing and looting people, kidnapping women and children, extracting bribes in the name of "toll taxes" from travelers.

The Afghan nation, after 15 years of internecine warfare, first with the Soviet Union's Red Army and then with the infighting of the mujahideen commanders, yearned for peace and a semblance of an honest, orderly system. The Taliban targeted these corrupt commanders, using "revolutionary justice", usually a firing squad in public, against violators who ranged from murderers, extortionists and rapists.

In contemporary Third World history, the Taliban's closest counterpart as an analogy would be the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who, under Pol Pot, ruled that war-ravaged country from 1975-79 before being overthrown in a Vietnamese invasion. They too tried to recast Cambodia in their version of a unique Marxist utopia, cleaning out cities of all the population, killing intellectuals and professionals, and transforming Cambodia into one large, well-ordered concentration camp.

The Taliban were never as organized, methodical or even as brutal as the Khmer Rouge, but there are similarities in their respective quest to refashion their war-torn countries into "model" Muslim and Marxist states respectively, with consequences for the people which were equally disastrous and damaging.

Both were initially backed by the United States for different reasons: the Taliban as a counterweight to Iran and the Khmer Rouge as a faction opposed to Soviet-backed Vietnam. Both fell after foreign intervention removed their regimes.

What were the factors that finally forced the Taliban's removal?

First, the massive American bombing which in its punishing severity matched that of Iraq in 1991 or Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s. That sapped the will of the Taliban to resist because as the Americans themselves said, "we have run out of targets to bomb", and continuing the war meant more damage to the people, since the distinction between the Taliban and the civilian population had become somewhat blurred.

Second, the absence of any outside support sealed the Taliban's fate. Pakistan had already pulled the plug, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the other two countries still recognizing the Taliban, also withdrew support and recognition - leaving the Taliban pretty much like lambs hunted by lions in landlocked Afghanistan.

Third, since the opposition to the Taliban in the shape of the Northern Alliance already existed, it was easy for the United States to beef up their adversaries, who also enjoyed backing from Russia, Iran, India, Turkey, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan plus support from indigenous non-Pashtun Afghans.

In the end, the Taliban became a victim of their own self-image and worldview: they overestimated their own strength and support among the Afghan people and underestimated that of their adversaries.

(Inter Press Service)