Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
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.
