Author: Dexter Filkins,
Times Staff Writer
Publication: The Los
Angeles Times
Date: August 14, 2000
Afghanistan: Although
the Islamic regime is harsh, there may be no other group capable of ruling.
MUSA QALEH, Afghanistan--Four
years after imposing one of the world's harshest Islamic regimes, the armed
movement known as the Taliban is beginning to lose its grip.
In villages across Afghanistan,
families that once offered up their sons to fight in the country's long
civil war are now refusing--and even battling to keep the clerics at bay.
In the cities, Afghans are resisting the harsh edicts enforced by whip-wielding
Taliban police. Within the movement itself, the Islamic zeal that
inspired Taliban troops to bring order to a fragmented land is giving way
to bribery and theft.
For the first time since
the movement swept to power in 1996, many Afghans are openly resisting
Taliban rule.
"Hundreds of people in
this village are against the Taliban," said Akhand, a 42-year-old farmer
in this arid village in the country's west. Like many Afghans, he
uses one name. "In the beginning we supported them, but now they
are defamed."
Last month, Akhand and
his neighbors fought a bloody two-day battle against Taliban troops when
they came to take the village's young men to fight in the civil war.
Taliban troops crushed the village's revolt--but only after they deployed
helicopters, rocket launchers and more than 600 soldiers.
The revolt in Musa Qaleh
is the most dramatic in a string of recent anti-Taliban actions, which
have included bombings, riots and demonstrations. Most have occurred
in the very regions where Afghans helped the Taliban take power four years
ago, far from the front lines of the civil war, which is being fought mainly
in the country's north.
The deteriorating position
of the Taliban poses a paradox for Western leaders: They have condemned
the orthodox Islamic regime for violating human rights and are considering
tightening economic sanctions, but many worry that no other group is capable
of taking control. The civil war is locked in stalemate, and other
resistance leaders are scattered in exile.
Western officials fear
that if the Taliban loses its hold, Afghanistan could lapse into the anarchy
of the early 1990s, when it fell prey to the murderous infighting of dozens
of armed groups.
"There is no alternative
to the Taliban," said a senior Western aid official, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity. "What we fear is a return to the rule of plundering
commanders."
In recent remarks before
Congress, Karl F. Inderfurth, the U.S. assistant secretary
of State for South Asia, declared that the Taliban had reached its "high-water
mark" and was beset by internal dissent. Inderfurth said he was encouraged
by recent diplomatic initiatives to end the war, but he offered no predictions
on when--or how--the Taliban might be replaced.
"Afghans are giving up
whatever hope they had for Taliban rule," Inderfurth said.
The Taliban's leaders,
hardened by years of war, claim firm control of 90% of the country.
They say they will soon capture the last sliver of Afghanistan's northeast
held by the rebels. Taliban leaders deny that most of the recent
anti-government incidents took place.
"Every day I bathe in
the river without my pistol," said Mullah Abdul Karim Akhund, the Taliban's
governor in Musa Qaleh. "What better proof is there that the people
love us?"
Yet, even the Taliban's
supreme leader seems to acknowledge the growing unpopularity of his movement.
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive, one-eyed founder of the Taliban, recently
blamed the Afghan people for the drought that has devastated the country.
"Some people in Afghanistan
are not thankful for the Islamic Emirate and the Islamic system and are
nurturing discontent, unnecessary prejudice and jealousy against it," Omar
said.
Such behavior, Omar said,
may anger Allah and "prompt his tortures."
In the Beginning, Conditions
Improved
The Taliban took over
the Afghan capital, Kabul, in 1996, and for a time it appeared likely to
quell the anarchy that had engulfed the country since the pullout of the
Soviet Union seven years earlier. With amazing speed, the Taliban
subdued the many armed groups that had turned Kabul into a labyrinth of
militia checkpoints and free-fire zones.
Driven by an Islamic
fervor imported from the Pakistani religious schools where many had studied,
the Taliban imposed a draconian brand of Islam. Among the edicts:
Women may not work, girls may not learn, men may not shave. Violators
are flogged, mutilated and killed in public ceremonies animated by readings
from the Koran.
In interviews across
the country, many Afghans say the trade-off was worth it--for a time.
For the price of putting up with the Taliban's harsh rule, they gained
security and hope for peace. But for many, the deal is now off.
With the country in ruins and the war dragging on, many Afghans have begun
to openly rebel against the Taliban's ironfisted ways.
Of all the factors behind
the discontent, the biggest is the civil war, now in its 11th year.
The conflict pits the Taliban against a force of mostly ethnic Tajiks led
by Ahmed Shah Masoud, a hero against the Soviets. A ballyhooed Taliban
offensive last summer ended in disaster, with thousands of white-turbaned
soldiers dying in the valleys north of Kabul.
With the Taliban offensive
against Masoud underway, many Afghans are refusing to fight. Reports
around the country tell of Taliban soldiers frantically searching for manpower,
pulling people from mosques and even holding up buses until young men step
forward.
'No One Wants to Fight
for the Taliban'
Abdullah Nuzai, 35, was
living in the village of Qalahbost in western Afghanistan when Taliban
soldiers asked the local mullah to help draft young men to go to the front
lines. The mullah posted a list of names on the wall of the mosque,
and Nuzai's name was on it.
Nuzai, who in four years
has lost three cousins in the fighting, decided that he wasn't going to
fight. So did others: The people in his village took to the streets,
Nuzai says, and killed three Taliban soldiers. Nuzai took a bus to
Kabul, where he now sells watermelons from a cart in the city's main bazaar.
"No one wants to fight
for the Taliban anymore," said Nuzai, who added that he fears for his life
if captured. "They tell us our opponents are atheists, but everyone
knows this is not a sacred fight."
Some parents are so desperate
to keep their sons out of battle that they are bribing the Taliban to stay
away. One is Moghul Karim, a 50-year-old widow from the village of
Ghowrband. When the Taliban tried to take her two sons, Mohammed
and Fardeen, she gave the soldiers everything she had. When they
kept coming back for more, she fled with her family to Kabul, where she
now lives in a blasted building with shattered windows.
"I sold my dishes, my
carpets, my earrings--I wept at their feet," the woman, who uses the name
Moghul, said as she sat on the floor in her empty house. "It was
the same for all the people in my village. Everybody pays the Taliban."
Still, Moghul didn't
get far enough away. Taliban officials in Kabul found her sons, and
they, too, demanded money. Now, Moghul forks over $100 a month--half
the money her family earns--to keep her boys out of battle. Like
many Afghans interviewed for this story, Moghul says she supported the
Taliban forces when they first seized power but now wishes that they would
go away.
"There is no work, they
have rebuilt nothing, the prices are so high," Moghul said. "I was
thinking they were good people. I was wrong. They have no goodness
in their hearts."
In Musa Qaleh, the battle
began when Taliban officials upped the village's quota for young men.
Most years, they took 12. This year, they demanded 24. When
the families refused, the Taliban shut off the irrigation to their fields.
Last month, when a squad of Taliban soldiers came to try again, the villagers
dusted off the guns they had used against the Soviets and went after the
Taliban.
A huge battle erupted,
with hundreds of Taliban troops arriving from as far as Kabul--250 miles
away. The revolt was crushed, with 12 villagers and more than a half
a dozen Taliban fighters dead. In the end, the Taliban left with
24 new soldiers.
"All they talk about
is jihad," said Abdul Samad, a 45-year-old farmer whose nephew was taken
away. "Next time, I am going to have to give them my son."
Frustration with the
Taliban is growing so intense that many Afghans are beginning to reject
the group's medieval edicts. Mothers risk arrest by sending their
daughters to underground schools. Satellite dishes are sold secretly
to those willing to risk the ban on television. Young men gather
around old cassette players, the volume turned down low.
Increasingly, women walk
the city streets alone, their head-to-toe burkas wafting open in the breeze,
their bare ankles and high-heeled shoes exposed. Two years ago, the
burkas were fastened shut, the women escorted, the ankles covered.
Even women wearing white socks were beaten for drawing attention to their
ankles.
Today, so many women
flout the rules that Taliban leaders insist that they never spoke of such
things.
"We have always allowed
women to walk the streets alone," Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed
Mutawakel snapped.
"The women are much more
open with their burkas," said Nafisa, a Kabul woman who asked that she
be identified by only her first name. "Still, I am very afraid of
the Taliban whip."
Lately, the protests
against the Taliban have begun to turn violent.
On most evenings at 6,
the Taliban's dreaded Vice and Virtue police interrupt the soccer match
at the Kabul Sports Stadium to force the spectators to pray. People
often complain that they have to pray without having completed their ablutions
and that the 6 p.m. Taliban edict is stricter than what Islam requires.
Still, the Vice and Virtue cops wade into the crowd and usually whip a
few spectators until the rest begin to pray. Sometimes, the police
go onto the field and drag off a soccer player for wearing shorts.
On July 1, the Taliban
cops got a shock. When they began to whip a group of people in the
stands, the crowd attacked them. The angry spectators, some shouting
obscenities, tore off the signature white turbans of the Taliban police,
beat the cops and chased them out of the stadium. The crowd cheered,
and the match resumed. The Taliban returned with guns and arrested
more than a dozen people.
"All the people were
hitting the Taliban," said Zalmai, a 24-year-old man who took part in the
riot. "People have enough to worry about without these idiots telling
us to pray."
The riot in the Kabul
Sports Stadium wasn't the first. In the Khost region of southern
Afghanistan, resentment boiled over in January, when Taliban officials
were accused of selling land to out-of-town cronies. A riot ensued,
and the local Taliban governor fled for his life.
The upheaval in January
came after riots last year, when several people died in clashes after the
Vice and Virtue police broke up an "egg-fighting" match--a sport played
by the locals.
The Taliban's opponents
have only just begun to exploit the recent unrest. A series of bombings
of government buildings in Kabul--including two at the Pakistani Embassy
last month--has dispelled the illusion of Taliban control.
The bombings might have
helped trigger a Taliban crackdown, which included the expulsion in July
of a U.S. aid worker on the grounds that she was a spy.
Crackdown May Suggest
Infighting
The crackdown, which
included prohibiting women from working for international agencies, also
suggests that the Taliban forces might have begun to fight among themselves.
The order was issued by Mohammed Turabi, the Taliban's Vice and Virtue
minister and a notorious hard-liner. In negotiations, Foreign Minister
Mutawakel, thought to be a moderate, promised U.N. officials that
the order would be rescinded. It was not.
"The biggest threat to
the Taliban is fighting among themselves," said a Western aid worker who
spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The one promise the Taliban
seemed to have kept--bringing security to the people--appears to be giving
way to greed and corruption. A crime wave has hit Kabul, and residents
blame the Taliban.
When Kabul's currency
market was robbed earlier this year of $250,000, the traders blamed the
Taliban guards who disappeared after the incident. Armed men have
robbed a number of trucks owned by foreign aid agencies--and recently carjacked
a truck driven by a U.N. official outside Kabul. Some relief
officials, too wary to speak publicly, suspect the Taliban.
"They are the only people
with guns," one aid official said.
Taliban officials deny
that any of their men are involved in such acts. But residents in
several Kabul neighborhoods blame Taliban soldiers for a series of recent
home robberies. At the Microyan Apartments, a sprawling complex built
during the Soviet era, residents say a gang of men carrying Kalashnikovs
and identifying themselves as Taliban officers recently looted nine flats.
"Everybody knew they
were Taliban, but we didn't dare complain," said Mohammed Wossiq, a resident.
"We were hoping the Taliban would bring security to the city. Now
they are committing the crimes, and no one is amputating their hands."
With the Taliban appearing
shakier than ever, many Afghans fear that the fragile peace they've mustered
over the past four years will soon give way to fighting again. Nobody
seems to know where the violence will take them.
Nafisa, the Kabul woman
who asked that her last name not be used, was fired from her job teaching
Persian when the Taliban took over four years ago. Widowed in a rocket
attack, she has successfully fended off Taliban requests to take her son
for military service, and she secretly teaches Persian to her young daughter
in her home.
Nafisa doesn't like the
Taliban, but she worries that the measure of peace that the regime has
brought is beginning to slip away.
"For so many years I
was under fire," Nafisa said. "Anything, anything is better than
that."
* * *
Filkins, The Times'
New Delhi Bureau chief, was detained and expelled from Afghanistan by Taliban
authorities while reporting this story. His film was seized and he
was accused of breaking the law. His translator, an Afghan national,
was beaten, arrested and jailed. He is believed to be in the custody
of the Taliban.
