The Canadian Army Journal

By 7 December 2001, the Taliban had departed their capital, and within a short
period, the government of Harmid Karzai was in power. It was soon after this point that
the Taliban evolved and became an insurgency against the legitimate government. It is
to the examination of this insurgency that we now turn: who are the men that make up
the Taliban, what do they believe, where do they get their support and what means do
they use to meet their goal of returning to power?
The Taliban
It is from Omar’s adherents that we get the name “Taliban.” Meaning “the students
of Islam,” 28 the movement was comprised of former Mujahidin and the young students of
Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan29 —the product of refugee camps resultant from the
Afghan-Soviet War. In order to comprehend the Taliban it is imperative that one
understand the manner in which they were generally reared in these camps. Journalist
Robert Fisk has described this upbringing as:
Their first sixteen years of life were passed in blind poverty, deprived of all
education and entertainment, imposing their own deadly punishments, their
mothers and sisters kept in subservience… their only diversion a detailed and
obsessive reading of the Koran…30 Ahmed Rashid, writing in what is probably the single best resource on the Taliban,
has described the end result of this rearing, in an oft-cited passage, as follows:
These boys were a world apart from the Mujaheddin [sic] whom I had got to
know during the 1980s—men who could recount their tribal and clan lineages,
remembered their abandoned farms and valleys with nostalgia and recounted
legends and stories from Afghan history. These boys were from a generation
who had never seen their country at peace—an Afghanistan not at war with
invaders and itself…They had no memories of the past, no plans for the future
while the present was everything. They were literally the orphans of the war,
the rootless and the restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with
little self-knowledge. They admired war because it was the only occupation
they could possibly adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam
which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only
prop they could hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning. 31
Although many were Afghans, it needs to be noted that this is not solely an Afghan
enterprise. Taliban forces include many “Pakistani [and] Arab militants” as well as
warriors from throughout south and central Asia and the entire Arab world. 32 Additionally,
there are Taliban soldiers from both North America and Australia (Omar Khadr who is
currently being held in Guantanomo Bay is in fact a Canadian).
Leadership is exercised by Mullah Omar and his lieutenants, with Omar adopting a
behind-the-scenes, nearly invisible role. This invisibility has served to take the majority
of the emphasis off of the individual and put it more on the movement itself. 33
Additionally, it offers protection and security for him and his lieutenants, making it that
much harder for coalition and Afghan forces to target him personally. That a minor
religious scholar would play such a dominant role in the conduct of the insurgency may
be considered a bit of a surprise, however, in order to understand the Taliban, it is
imperative that one acknowledge the centrality of religious beliefs to the movement itself.
Being educated in the madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan’s refugee camps,
the youth that would become the Taliban were exposed to what would politely be termed
“extremist” schools of Islamic jurisprudence—namely the “Deobandi” and
“Wahhabists.” 34 This was a deliberate process, on the part of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
which can be legitimately viewed as being a principle factor in the situation we face
today.
Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008
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