Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001)

The Taliban and its rule arose from the chaos after the Soviet–Afghan War. It began as an Islamic and Pashtun politico-religious movement composed of madrasa students in southern Afghanistan. Overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns, the Taliban blended Pashtunwali tribal code with elements of Salafist teaching to form an anti-Western and anti-modern Islamist ideology with which it ruled.[7] It began to receive support from neighbouring Pakistan as well as from Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. A small Taliban militia first emerged near Kandahar in the spring and summer of 1994, committing vigilante acts against minor warlords, with a fund of 250,000 USD from local businessmen.[8] They soon began to receive backing from local Durrani Pashtun leaders.[9]

The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October–November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men.[10] Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a few weeks later they freed "a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia" from another group of warlords attempting to extort money.[11] In the next three months this hitherto "unknown force" took control of twelve of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the "heavily armed population" giving up their weapons.[12] The Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. However, reactions and resistance would vary and increase among non-Pashtun people.[13]

The Taliban considered many of Afghanistan's other ethnic communities as foreign. Pashtun people are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and comprised the vast majority of the Taliban movement. As the Taliban expanded from their southern and south-eastern strongholds, they encountered more resistance; their brand of Deobandism, incorporated with the Pashtunwali tribal code, was viewed as foreign by the other ethnic groups of Afghanistan.[14] The Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif illustrated this ethnic tension.[15]

A German map showing the political status of Afghanistan in the fall of 1996, just after the Taliban conquered Kabul

Spreading from Kandahar, the Taliban eventually captured Kabul in 1996. By the end of 2000, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country, aside from the opposition (Northern Alliance) strongholds found primarily in the northeast corner of Badakhshan Province. Areas under the Taliban's direct control were mainly Afghanistan's major cities and highways. Tribal khans and warlords had de facto direct control over various small towns, villages, and rural areas.[16] The Taliban sought to establish law and order and to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, along with the religious edicts of Mullah Mohammed Omar, upon the entire country of Afghanistan.[17]

During the five-year history of the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban regime interpreted the Sharia in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the religious edicts of Mullah Omar.[17] The Taliban forbade pork and alcohol, many types of consumer technology such as most music,[17] television,[17] and film,[17] as well as most forms of art such as paintings or photography,[17] male and female participation in sport,[17] including football and chess;[17] recreational activities such as kite-flying and keeping pigeons or other pets were also forbidden, and the birds were killed according to the Taliban's ruling.[17] Movie theaters were closed and repurposed as mosques.[17] Celebration of the Western and Iranian New Year was forbidden.[17] Taking photographs and displaying pictures or portraits was forbidden, as it was considered by the Taliban as a form of idolatry.[17] Women were banned from working,[17] girls were forbidden to attend schools or universities,[17] were requested to observe purdah (physical separation of the sexes) and awrah (concealing the body with clothing), and to be accompanied outside their households by male relatives; those who violated these restrictions were punished.[17] Men were forbidden to shave their beards and required to let them grow and keep them long according to the Taliban's liking, and to wear turbans outside their households.[17][18] Communists were systematically executed. Prayer was made compulsory and those who did not respect the religious obligation after the azaan were arrested.[17] Gambling was banned,[17] and thieves were punished by amputating their hands or feet.[17] In 2000, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar officially banned opium cultivation and drug trafficking in Afghanistan;[17][19][20] the Taliban succeeded in nearly eradicating the majority of the opium production (99%) by 2001.[19][20][21] Under the Taliban governance of Afghanistan, both drug users and dealers were severely prosecuted.[17] The Afghan custom of bacha bazi, a form of pederastic sexual slavery and pedophilia traditionally practiced in various provinces of Afghanistan, was also forbidden under the six-year reign of the Taliban regime.[22]

Cabinet ministers and deputies were mullahs with a "madrasah education". Several of them, such as the Minister of Health and Governor of the State bank, were primarily military commanders who were ready to leave their administrative posts to fight when needed. Military reverses that trapped them behind lines or led to their deaths increased the chaos in the national administration.[23] At the national level, "all senior Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara bureaucrats" were replaced "with Pashtuns, whether qualified or not". Consequently, the ministries "by and large ceased to function".[24]

Rashid described the Taliban government as "a secret society run by Kandaharis ... mysterious, secretive, and dictatorial".[25] They did not hold elections, as their spokesman explained:

The Sharia does not allow politics or political parties. That is why we give no salaries to officials or soldiers, just food, clothes, shoes, and weapons. We want to live a life like the Prophet lived 1400 years ago, and jihad is our right. We want to recreate the time of the Prophet, and we are only carrying out what the Afghan people have wanted for the past 14 years.[26]

They modeled their decision-making process on the Pashtun tribal council (jirga), together with what they believed to be the early Islamic model. Discussion was followed by a building of a consensus by the "believers".[27] Before capturing Kabul, there was talk of stepping aside once a government of "good Muslims" took power, and law and order were restored.

As the Taliban's power grew, decisions were made by Mullah Omar without consulting the jirga and without consulting other parts of the country. One such instance is the rejection of Loya Jirga decision about expulsion of Osama bin Laden. Mullah Omar visited the capital, Kabul, only twice while in power. Instead of an election, their leader's legitimacy came from an oath of allegiance ("Bay'ah"), in imitation of the Prophet and the first four Caliphs. On 4 April 1996, Mullah Omar had "the Cloak of Muhammad" taken from its shrine, Kirka Sharif, for the first time in 60 years. Wrapping himself in the relic, he appeared on the roof of a building in the center of Kandahar while hundreds of Pashtun mullahs below shouted "Amir al-Mu'minin!" (Commander of the Faithful), in a pledge of support. Taliban spokesman Mullah Wakil explained:

Decisions are based on the advice of the Amir-ul Momineen. For us consultation is not necessary. We believe that this is in line with the Sharia. We abide by the Amir's view even if he alone takes this view. There will not be a head of state. Instead there will be an Amir al-Mu'minin. Mullah Omar will be the highest authority, and the government will not be able to implement any decision to which he does not agree. General elections are incompatible with Sharia and therefore we reject them.[28]

The Taliban were very reluctant to share power, and since their ranks were overwhelmingly Pashtun they ruled as overlords over the 60% of Afghans from other ethnic groups. In local government, such as Kabul city council[25] or Herat,[29] Taliban loyalists, not locals, dominated, even when the Pashto-speaking Taliban could not communicate with the roughly half of the population who spoke Dari or other non-Pashtun tongues.[29] Critics complained that this "lack of local representation in urban administration made the Taliban appear as an occupying force".[24]

The rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan came to an end in 2001 following the United States invasion. In May and June 2003, senior Taliban officials proclaimed the Taliban regrouped and ready for guerrilla war to expel US forces from Afghanistan.[30][31] In late 2004, the then hidden Taliban leader Mohammed Omar announced an insurgency against "America and its puppets" (i.e. transitional Afghan government forces) to "regain the sovereignty of our country".[32] Following a long insurgency, the Taliban once again took control of Afghanistan in 2021.[33]

A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on 26 August 2001. The footage was filmed by RAWA.

During the Taliban's period of rule, brutal repression of women was widespread in the Emirate.[37][38] Abuses were frequently and violently enforced by the religious police.[39] For example, the Taliban issued edicts forbidding women from being educated, forcing girls to leave schools and colleges.[40][41] Women leaving their houses were required to be accompanied by a male relative and were obligated to wear the burqa, a traditional dress covering the entire body except for a small slit out of which to see.[40][41] Those accused of disobeying were publicly beaten. In one instance, a young woman named Sohaila was charged with adultery after walking with a man who was not a relative; she was publicly flogged in Ghazi Stadium, receiving 100 lashes.[42] Female employment was restricted to the medical sector, where male medical personnel were prohibited from treating women and girls.[40] This extensive ban on the employment of women further resulted in the widespread closure of primary schools, as almost all teachers prior to the Taliban's rise had been women, further restricting access to education not only to girls but also to boys. Restrictions became especially severe after the Taliban took control of the capital. In February 1998, for instance, religious police forced all women off the streets of Kabul and issued new regulations ordering people to blacken their windows so that women would not be visible from outside.[43]

During the Taliban rule of 1996–2001, they banned many recreational activities and games, such as football, kite flying, and chess. General entertainment such as televisions, cinemas, music with instrumental accompaniments, VCRs and satellite dishes were also banned.[44] Also included in the list of banned items were "musical instruments and accessories" and all visual representation of living creatures.[45]

It was reported that when Afghan children were caught kiting, a highly popular activity, they were beaten.[46] When Khaled Hosseini learned through a 1999 news report that the Taliban had banned kite flying,[47] a restriction he found particularly cruel, the news "struck a personal chord" for him, as he had grown up with the sport while living in Afghanistan. Hosseini was motivated to write a 25-page short story about two boys who fly kites in Kabul that he later developed into his first novel, The Kite Runner.[47]

Between 1996 and 2001, only three widely recognized countries; Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) declared the Islamic Emirate to be the rightful government of Afghanistan.[53] The Islamic Emirate would also receive recognition from the partially recognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria;[54] though Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov would later describe the Islamic Emirate as an "illegitimate" government.[55] The Taliban government additionally received support from Turkmenistan, though the country did not provide the Emirate with formal recognition.[56][48]

The Taliban government was not recognized by the United Nations, which instead continued to recognize the Islamic State of Afghanistan as being the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Following the declaration of a "War on Terror" by the United States after the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda in 2001, international opposition to the Taliban regime running the Islamic Emirate drastically increased, and the only remaining diplomatic recognition by Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates was rescinded under growing pressure.

On 15 October 1999, the UN Security Council established a sanctions regime to cover individuals and entities associated with Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and/or the Taliban.[57] Since the US Invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the sanctions were applied to individuals and organizations in all parts of the world; also targeting former members of the Taliban government.

On 27 January 2010, a United Nations sanctions committee removed five former senior Taliban officials from this list, in a move favoured by Afghan president Karzai. The decision means the five will no longer be subject to an international travel ban, assets freeze and arms embargo. The five men, all high-ranking members of the Taliban government:

• Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, former foreign minister.
• Fazal Mohammad, former deputy minister of commerce.
• Shams-us-Safa Aminzai, former Taliban foreign affairs press officer.
• Mohammad Musa Hottak, former deputy minister of planning.
• Abdul Hakim Munib, former deputy minister of frontier affairs.

All had been added to the list in January or February 2001.[58]

Destruction of Buddhas, 21 March 2001

In 1999, the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar issued a decree protecting the Buddha statues at Bamiyan, two 6th-century monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan.

But in March 2001, the statues were destroyed by the Taliban following a decree issued by Mullah Omar. Mullah Omar explained why he ordered the statues to be destroyed in an interview:

I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings – the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddha's destruction.[59]

Then Taliban ambassador-at-large Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi also said that the destruction of the statues was carried out by the Head Council of Scholars after a Swedish monuments expert proposed to restore the statues' heads. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghan head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues".[60]

This prompted an international outcry from nations such as Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Nepal, Iran, Qatar, and Russia. Even Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both of which were among only three nations to recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, voiced their opposition. The Arab branch of UNESCO, a cultural and educational agency of the United Nations, labelled the destruction as "savage".[61]

According to the testimony of Guantanamo captives before their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the Taliban, in addition to conscripting men to serve as soldiers, also conscripted men to staff its civil service – both done at gunpoint.[68][69][70]

According to a report from Oxford University the Taliban made widespread use of the conscription of children in 1997, 1998 and 1999.[71]

• Coll, Steve (3 March 2005). Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-0-14-193579-9.
• Rashid, Ahmed (2000). Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08340-8.