CONTAINING THE TALIBAN: PATH TO PEACE IN AFGHANISTAN

Year 2000, Volume: 5 Issue: 4, 0 - 0, 01.12.2000

İshtiaq Ahmad

Abstract

Taliban, the Islamic warriors of Afghanistan, live up to their words. "Taliban victory will set a model for other Muslim nations to follow," Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, the Taliban Foreign Minister, told me in an interview in Kandahar in February 1995. The Taliban had by then captured only onethird of Afghanistan and their victory in the rest of the country was far from certain. But what was increasingly visible was the expansionist ambitions of the Islamic student militia: "We will go and fight for our Muslim brethren elsewhere in the world, in Bosnia and Chechnya," said Maulvi Amir Khan Muttaqi, the former Information Minister, recently appointed as the Taliban Emissary for Peace

References

• 1 See Ishtiaq Ahmad, 'Leave Afghans Alone to Decide Their Future', Nation, 27 February 1995; and 'Peace Will Remain a Distant Dream in Afghanistan', Nation, 2 March 1995.
• 2 Ahmed Rashid, 'The Taliban: Exporting Extremism', Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999, pp. 24-28.
• 3 ibid. See also Philip Bowring, 'Central Asia Tries to Avoid a New Great Game', International Herald Tribune, 8 April 2000. For the US acquiescence of the Taliban, see Richard Mackenzie, 'The United States and the Taliban', in William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1998, pp. 90-100.
• 4 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, London: I B Tauris, 2000, pp. 196-204; and Ahmed, 'The Taliban: Exporting Extremism', op. cit., pp. 28-31.
• 5 Zahid Hussain, 'In the Shadow of Terrorism', Newsline, Karachi, February 2000, pp. 17-25.
• 6 See Anthony Hyman, 'Russia, Central Asia, and the Taliban', in William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1998, pp. 104-114. Also see Paul Newberg, 'Tragedy of a Region Rife with Intolerance', Nation, 28 November 1999.
• 7 One of the best books on Osama bin Laden and his alleged linkage with international terrorism is written by John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, London: Pluto Press, 1999. For the Saudi millionaire's love and hate relationship with Washington, see pp. 215-241.
• 9 News, Islamabad, 3 July 2000.
• 10 News, Islamabad, 5 July 2000.
• 11 Times of India, 2 October 2000.
• 13 News, 12 October 2000.
• 14 News, 27 September 2000.
• 15 Dawn, Karachi, 6 October 2000.
• 16 News, 16 August 2000.
• 17 See Nation, 17 September 2000 and News, 18 September 2000.
• 18 Washington Post, 30 September 2000.
• 19 Bronwen Maddox, 'High Stakes for Peace in Hindu Kush', The Times, 5 August 2000 and Dawn, 31 August 2000.
• 21 Rashid, 'The Taliban: Exporting Extremism', ibid., pp. 33-35.
• 23 Michael Fathers, 'Frozen in Time', Time, 29 May 2000; and Nation, 25 October 2000. The international press widely distributed the Reuters photo of the head-shaved Pakistani footballers. For an alternative perspective on the Taliban, see Peter Mardsen, The Taliban: War, Religion, and the New Order in Afghanistan, New York: Zed Books Ltd., 1999.
• 24 Rashid, Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, op. cit., pp. 63-66.
• 25 Umer Farooq, 'Two Parallel Processes for Afghan Peace', News, 8 June 2000.
• 26 See Ishtiaq Ahmad, 'Only Zahir Shah Can Unite Afghanistan', Nation, 21 September 1996.
• 27 Washington Post, 16 July 2000.
• 28 See Christian Science Monitor, 16 July 2000; and News, 19 July 2000.