The Taliban Phenomenon - A New Survey.

Editor's Note: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, recognised by only three countries in the world, is heading on a collision course with the West, and many non-Muslim countries of the East. The UN Security Council, from which the first signals of such a pending collision usually emerge, has issued a series of resolutions over the past three years which have steadily undermined the ability of the Taliban to consolidate its presence within the country in socio-economic terms, although it controls about 90% of Afghanistan.

APS sources believe that the course of events in the coming years, if not months, would involve a gradual escalation both in terms of measures to isolate the Taliban until some form of direct intervention - whether under military or humanitarian guise - is rendered necessary. They say the situation has come about largely because of the Taliban's own policies, based on a combination of their rigid interpretation of Islam - an amalgamation of Wahhabi and Deobandi tenets - and the ancient Pashtun (also Pathan or Pakhtun) code of social behaviour known as Pashtunwali.

These policies have become unacceptable to a majority of the world's countries, to varying degrees and for various reasons. The vast majority of Islamic states - with the exception of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE which have recognised the Taliban government in Kabul - have been critical of the movement because of the negative image it brings to the religion. In the West, there is a combination of revulsion at the Taliban's social policies, a rejection of its anti-democratic attitude, and a recognition of the difficulty of doing energy business in the Central Asian region with an expansionist force at its gateway. In the non-Muslim East, from Japan to India, there are concerns similar to those in the West with the added anger at the Taliban for systematically destroying Afghanistan's Buddhist heritage.

To the Taliban leadership, all this has little meaning. The vast majority of the movement's leaders are uneducated and those who got even the most rudimentary education received them at the madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan during the years of the anti-Soviet Jihad (approximately 1980-89). The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, does not care for world opinion. Although there are reports of a "moderate" faction within the movement, the moderation is relative to the Taliban perspective.

In this context, it is important to note that, having brought most of Afghanistan's territory under his control, Mullah Omar is no longer fully prepared to listen to the demands of Pakistan which is also coming under international pressure as a result of its close association with the movement. It was a combination of domestic interests shared by the political, business and military leaderships in Pakistan during the Benazir Bhutto government of the early 1990s - combined with the wider strategic vision of some hardline Islamist officers of Islamabad's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - which resulted in the creation of the Taliban movement from among Talibs (students) of the madrassas of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan (see following pages). The irony today, some observers say, is that it is no longer clear whether the Taliban is following the Pakistani agenda or vice versa.

The survey will provide a perspective on the Taliban, taking the abovementioned factors into account. The survey will be in three parts as follows: Part 1 will consist of an overview of the current situation facing Afghanistan, and the background of the Taliban movement. Part 2 will focus on the export of the Taliban mindset, i.e. the gradual Talibanisation of opposition forces in neighbouring countries as the movement spreads across virtually all its frontiers with the exception of Iran; Part 3 will study the implications for the Middle East of the emergence of the Taliban movement and the spread of its extremist ideology, including the question of Arab "Afghanis". Part 4 will present the conclusions.