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Ahmed Rashid

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia Paperback – March 1, 2001

by Ahmed Rashid (Author)

4.4 328 ratings

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Shrouding themselves and their aims in deepest secrecy, the leaders of the Taliban movement control Afghanistan with an inflexible, crushing fundamentalism. The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp focus in this enormously interesting and revealing book. It is the only authoritative account of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan available to English language readers.

Based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, Rashid offers unparalleled firsthand information. He explains how the growth of Taliban power has already created severe instability in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and five Central Asian republics. He describes the Taliban’s role as a major player in a new “Great Game”—a competition among Western countries and companies to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The author also discusses the controversial changes in American attitudes toward the Taliban—from early support to recent bombings of Osama Bin Laden’s hideaway and other Taliban-protected terrorist bases—and how they have influenced the stability of the region.

Print length

274 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Yale Nota Bene Books
Publication date

March 1, 2001
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0300089023
ISBN-13

978-0300089028
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the single best book available on the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan responsible for harboring the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region--he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's shadowy leaders. Taliban was written and published before the massacres of September 11, 2001, yet it is essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the aftermath of that black day. It includes details on how and why the Taliban came to power, the government's oppression of ordinary citizens (especially women), the heroin trade, oil intrigue, and--in a vitally relevant chapter--bin Laden's sinister rise to power. These pages contain stories of mass slaughter, beheadings, and the Taliban's crushing war against freedom: under Mullah Omar, it has banned everything from kite flying to singing and dancing at weddings. Rashid is for the most part an objective reporter, though his rage sometimes (and understandably) comes to the surface: "The Taliban were right, their interpretation of Islam was right, and everything else was wrong and an expression of human weakness and a lack of piety," he notes with sarcasm. He has produced a compelling portrait of modern evil. --John Miller

Review

“An excellent political and historical account of the movement’s rise to power.”—Katha Pollitt, Nation

(Katha Pollitt Nation)

“[R]ead this remarkable book and the bewildering complexity of Afghan politics and the deadly overspill of chaos, narcotics, and sectarian violence into the surrounding region will become clear.”—Patrick Seale, Sunday Times

(Patrick Seale Sunday Times)

“Rashid . . . provides the most reliable and absorbing account of the militant Central Asian movement that has given shelter to Osama bin Laden, addressing the Taliban’s complicated economic, diplomatic, sociological and military origins.”—Lorraine Adams, Washington Post Book World

(Lorraine Adams Washington Post Book World)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale Nota Bene Books; First Edition (March 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300089023
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300089028
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,912,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #16,989 in International & World Politics (Books)
- #17,046 in Asian History (Books)
- #51,195 in World History (Books)

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4.4 328 ratings

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Ahmed Rashid

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Ahmed Rashid is a journalist who has been covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia for more than twenty years. He is a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, Daily Telegraph, and The Nation, a leading newspaper in Pakistan. His #1 New York Times bestseller Taliban has been translated into more than twenty languages.

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Paul Sharpe

Gripping and Intelligent

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2010

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Ahmed Rashid's "Taliban" is a carefully constructed account of what was once one of the world's most mysterious terror organizations. Although nearly 10 years old, "Taliban" is still essential reading for anyone interested in the current conflict in Afghanistan, the growing Taliban insurgency in Pakistan and to understand the origin of the current forces that may one day destabilize the whole central Asian region. Rashid's remarkable book is a clear account of all aspects of the Taliban including their rise, their theological underpinnings, their drug finance, the interplay between the different tribal groups and the wider regional implications in Central Asia caused by the conflict between the Taliban and the other groups in Afghanistan.

The initial chapters of "Taliban" provide a comprehensive overview of the tribal structures present in Afghanistan and the historical context in which the Taliban became a powerfully militarized political force is thoroughly explored. "Taliban" also notes the involvement of the Pakistan intelligence agency in the rise of the Taliban and notes that the rise of an organization such as the Taliban could have been avoided if Afghanistan was not forgotten after the Soviet retreat. Rashid looks at all the main protagonists in the post-Soviet civil war and gives clear and horrifying accounts of the struggle for Kabul and numerous massacres that occurred during the ascendancy of the Taliban. He also provides enough color to understand the different ethnic groups that make up the population of Afghanistan (Pashtuns/non-Pashtuns) and carefully outlines their wider strategic influences and systems of support. He shows how the Pakistan intelligence services supported the Taliban to enable Pakistan to develop strategic depth in the region to protect them from their old enemy India.

One of the most powerful aspects of Rashid's account is the compassion he has for the Afghan people. His concern for the Afghan people and their circumstance is clear throughout the book. For example he argues that many of the Taliban fighters were dispossessed orphans raised in refugee camps in Pakistan and educated in Madrassa run by semi-literate teachers. Rashid writes: "Children were caught up in the war on a greater scale than in any other civil conflict in the world. All the warlords had used boy soldiers, some as young as 12 year old, and many were orphans with no hope of having a family, an education or a job except soldiering. The Taliban with their linkages to the Pakistan madrassas encouraged thousands of children to enlist and fight." This is not to say that Rashid agrees with the path chosen, merely that he understands what has driven these orphans into the arms of the Taliban and other militarized warlords.

Rashid also writes compassionately about the women of Afghanistan calling them the vanished gender. He has a deep sympathy for the women who worked hard to build a life with scarce resources in post-Soviet Afghanistan only to have it taken all away from them with the rise of the Taliban. Rashid writes that many women are widows and the sole breadwinners in their family. Not being able to work when the Taliban came to power meant that they were unable to provide for their families. He also documents anecdotal stories of women he knew in Afghanistan that had left to find work and opportunity elsewhere.

Overall Rashid's account is a very balanced view of the Taliban and the environment out of which they grew and should be recommended reading. Rashid has long covered Afghanistan long before the 911 attacks on the twin towers (indeed the first edition of this book was published before that fateful day) and has lived and walked among the Afghan people for a long time. Many others have since written accounts of the Taliban but I doubt they are as intimate or as knowledgeable as Rashid who clearly has a deep, intimate understanding of Afghanistan and the region at large.

I do agree with Rashid: the U.S. and western powers should not have abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. I agree that the resultant leadership vacuum led to the rise of the Taliban and that this could have been prevented by helping to redevelop the infrastructure and not leave Afghanistan to its own devices. However, I do believe that this is looking at global politics and international affairs in isolation and that at the time the Russians left Afghanistan Eastern Europe was falling apart and Yugoslavia was being divided, China was emerging from its "long march into the night" and massacred students in Tiananmen square, Africa had huge political changes (for example South Africa's war with Angola was coming to an end). There is no doubt that America could have done more in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, and it is easy, with hindsight, for people to argue that this was the most critical foreign policy issue facing the US at the time, but did it really appear that way at the time? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't but yes, the fact remains, the failure to aid the development of Afghanistan by developing infrastructure and an economy lead to the rise of the Taliban and the horrors that have been visited on that country and the world at large since then.

All in all an excellent and important read for anyone interested in Afghanistan, central Asia or the United States' decade long war in the region.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

A tragic story of failed leadership

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2004

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Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a new field of study, which jokingly could be called "Talibanology" has arisen. The events of 9/11 evidently made many wonder as to the nature of the individuals behind such incredibly evil acts. From the sales figures, books on Islamic history and the Koran apparently skyrocketed after 9/11, due to the need for such understanding. This book however was published before 9/11 (in 2000 to be exact), and therefore gives a perspective on the Taliban that omits the hyperbolae that frequently accompanies more recent studies. There are many surprises in the book for those readers, such as this reviewer, who are not acquainted with the history and beliefs of the Taliban, and who need a study that is unfiltered by the biases of the Western press.

As the author explains, the word "talib" stands for "student of Islam", with "taliban" being the plural. A talib is one who is seeking knowledge, and is to be distinguished from a "mullah" who is a teacher. Apparently the Taliban chose to call themselves by that name in order to separate themselves from the Mujaheddin, and who wanted to "cleanse society" instead of engaging in a power struggle. Their ideal society was to be modeled after that of the Prophet Mohammed, and this was to be done using strict adherence to Islamic guidelines as put forth in the Koran. One can't help but ponder the fate of the Taliban if they would have relaxed their standards and attempted to have some intersection with other belief systems. Perhaps such pragmatism would have won them greater respect from the international community and prevented their antagonism with the United States.

The reader learns of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia being the principal suppliers of funding, weapons, and fuel to the Taliban in the 1990's. Considering they are now American "allies", this is interesting, and it shows just how fast governments can turn on each other. One also learns that the Taliban were Sunni Muslims, instead of Shia Muslims, the latter identification being incorrectly reported by the Western press. The Sunni Muslims despise the Shias, and vice versa, but it seems that the objects of hatred by the Taliban went beyond factional differences in the Islamic religion, for the Taliban, as one also learns in the book, forced Hindus residing in Afghanistan to wear yellow badges for purposes of identification.

The suffering of the people of Afghanistan in the last twenty-five years was not due solely to the Soviet invasion but also to other foreign meddling in its affairs. It was the demand by the international community to end the cultivation of poppy that exacerbated the economic crisis during the civil wars in Afghanistan. The opium trade apparently is going on full steam currently though, annoying many in the American government but apparently encouraged by the CIA in the early years of the Taliban government.

Western and non-Western interest in Afghanistan did not just happen after 9/11 however. As the author documents with crystal clarity, energy interests were the primary motivation for so many countries having their eyes fixated on Afghanistan for so many years. The author discusses the competition between Unocal, an American energy conglomerate, and Bridas, an oil company based in Argentina, to build a gas pipeline across Afghanistan. He is very candid in his discussion of how economic interests were behind most of the major conflicts in this region, which is refreshing considering that such interests are usually masked under the guise of some moral or higher purpose. This is especially true for the current war in Iraq waged by the United States and Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Italy and Australia, which is being sold as part of a general "war on terror".

The story of the Taliban is of course a tragic one, since in retrospect they could have been more constructive in their dealings with the international community. They were certainly a tenacious group though, and the reader learns from the author that the Taliban leadership, due to the many conflicts they engaged in, were the "most disabled" in the world. With justification, one can easily blame religion for their demise, as it has caused more suffering throughout human history than any other system of beliefs. Hopefully the Afghan people, with their new government, however illegitimate it might be, will see the errors of the Taliban and approach life with a more reasoned and healthy attitude; one that is free of religious dogmatism and open to alternative ideas and viewpoints.

One person found this helpful

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Rukhsar Rassuli

Good

Reviewed in Germany on June 6, 2023

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That's what I wanted

F Henwood

Good analysis

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2015

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Ahmed Rashid observed and documented the rise of the Taliban before the rest of the world took much interest. His revised work is a record of their rise from the ashes of the Soviet adventure of Afghanistan, with the story being taken to 2009 in an additional chapter. Along the way, he clears up some common misconceptions – especially the claim that the movement is a mere puppet of the Americans, the Pakistanis, or both. The Americans and their allies undoubtedly contributed to the chaos and disorder that befell Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal and provided the conditions for the Taliban to arise; the Pakistanis sponsored them materially with weapons and money. But the Taliban were no one’s puppets, not the CIA’s, not the Pakistanis' ISI. Pakistani military intelligence has doubtlessly attempted to manipulate the movement for its own ends but the relationship between the two should best be described as the puppet master who finds himself in an endless and dangerous tussle with his would be puppet.

The movement has its roots in the children of the displaced Pashtun diaspora in Pakistan. The recruits, young men and boys without roots either in the Afghanistan or Pakistan, or the broader culture and history of Islam, and living without the company of girls and women, make ideal recruitment and cannon fodder. It also provides a potent combination of sanctity and brutality, offering an escape from anomie and deracination of the refugee camps. The Taliban are not a gang of bandits – they are morally motivated. There is nothing paradoxical in this. Like many groups, they define themselves in opposition to those who do not belong. Their violence, whether against symbols, such as Buddhist statues, or against other people whom they consider infidels, such as Shia Hazari, is, as far as they are concerned, high-minded and pious. They are making the world a better place. The road to hell is indeed paved with the most pious of intentions. This ideological zeal explains the movement’s misogyny for which they gained worldwide notoriety in 1990s: as Rashid explains, the purpose of the Taliban’s oppressive strictures on women in the 1990s was to appease the purist zeal of the rank-and-file. The pleasures of women might dilute the solidarity of the group. From our perspective, this is loathsome; from the Taliban’s, it is entirely rational.

The analysis of the roots of the Taliban seems persuasive though perhaps he plays down the indigenous, Afghan sources of the Taliban’s motivation, and exaggerates the roles of outside influences like Saudi Wahhabi evangelism. Commentators like Rashid often aver that movements like the Taliban have nothing to do with mainstream Islam. There seems to be a reluctance to accept that the Islamic faith is capable of producing such phenomena like the Taliban and some of the roots for their motivation may be traced to both the Afghan and broader Islamic mainstream. Taliban recruits are not brainwashed. They have no doubt been indoctrinated but it is only possible to become indoctrinated within a framework that is accepted and understood. Islam performs this function in the way (say) evangelical Protestantism could never do. This is not to say that every Muslim is a possible suicide bomber. It is to say that the claim that the motivation of the Taliban has nothing to do with conventional Islam is not a plausible one. The fact is, if the Taliban rank and file did not believe that their actions are sanctioned by god, then they would be unlikely to carry on making the sacrifices that they do. Tens of thousands of them have died and they died – and continue to die - because they believe.

Rashid brings the analysis up to date, to the end of the 2010s, showing how the Taliban has bounced back from the edge of defeat, in part by having a seeming endless source of recruits to replace heavy combat casualties but also adapting more sophisticated political and media strategies – 21st Century means to serve 8th Century ends. NATO leaving the country will not bring peace. The Taliban’s roots are Pashtun, which in itself inspires fear and loathing among Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups. Such groups are likely to seek military assistance from sympathetic countries like Russia, India or the Central Asian republics, none of which has any wish to see a triumphant Taliban. Meanwhile, Pakistan will vainly try to co-opt the Taliban as part of an unwinnable geopolitical game against India. Pakistan’s security elites’ fixation with matching India militarily means the real challenges of social and economic development inside Pakistan are ignored. The country’s nuclear bomb cannot stave off power cuts or deal with natural disasters. Rashid makes clear that the possible consequence of such folly is the Talibanisation of Pakistan itself. Though the future is not ours to see, the prospects for an end to Afghanistan’s miseries seem remote as ever.

6 people found this helpful

Ralph Blumenau

A path-breaking book republished

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2010

Verified Purchase

This is a reprint, ten years after its first appearance in 2000, of Ahmed Rashid's famous book. It had been published just before the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11, the atrocity carried out by Al-Queda whose leader, Osama bin Laden, was then living in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Suddenly the world wanted to know about the Taliban, and Rashid's hitherto obscure but thorough book shot up into the best-seller list throughout the world; it has been translated into at least 26 languages.

The Taliban appeared to have been defeated by NATO in 2001; but we know of the come-back it has made since: today NATO is locked in what seems to many an unwinnable fight against the resurgent Taliban, and a reprint now is therefore particularly appropriate. The current edition adds a chapter on what has happened since 1999; but the text of the other chapters has been left untouched, and it is a tribute to the original that, ten years on, it has needed no serious revision.

It is a very detailed book and needs close reading; but some themes stand out strongly:

1. The enormous complexity of the structure of Afghanistan, with its numerous ethnic groups. It may once have been, under the Durrani monarchy, welded together by force into a unitary state; but ever since it has been weakened by the Soviet occupation (1979 to 1989), the old ethnic rivalries have reasserted themselves with a vengeance; and even within ethnic groups, there were divisions between clans. What seems extraordinary to me is that this never produced any ethnic secessionist movements (which Rashid considers `fortunate', p.214). In addition there were new fissures: between secular, moderate and extreme religious movements, and between communists (themselves divided into rival groups) and anti-communists. Religious fissures had not been important before the Taliban arrived: Rashid says that, though the Afghans have always been the most devout of Muslims, they had, until then, been tolerant of all forms of Islam and indeed of other religions. In a dense chapter Rashid traces the Taliban's roots in and connections with the Deobandi sect in Pakistan.

2. The brutality of all parties to the conflict is horrendous. The war lords were lawless, corrupt and ruthless, as ready to form as to break and betray alliances. It was in fact their malign influence that originally won the Taliban a good deal of support, until their extremist dictatorship alienated even many of their initial supporters. Its imposition of the most savage form of the sharia and especially its dreadful treatment of women - is of course well known and is richly documented in this book. The Taliban was unwilling to cooperate or even to negotiate with any other group in Afghanistan, or even to widen its Pashtun base.

3. Outside powers - Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, the United States, Russia, the governments of the post-Soviet Islamic republics, by supporting and supplying different factions in the Afghan civil wars, bear much of the responsibility for the prolonged agony of Afghanistan. None of the factions were ever short of arms.

4. Initially the United States, strongly at odds with Iran, actually preferred the anti-Shia Taliban to the war-lords. It was the pressure of the feminist movement in the US, but above all the Taliban's refusal to hand over or expel Osama bin Laden and the gradual realization how anti-western it was that led to a reversal of US policy in 1997. That then set off the double game long played by Pakistani governments: publicly an ally of the United States but secretly unwilling and/or unable to stop the ISI (the Pakistani military intelligence service) from backing the Taliban. But already in this volume Rashid showed that the Pashtun Taliban was a potential danger to Pakistan, with own agenda of encouraging Pashtun nationalism and Taliban-style Islamic fanaticism in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federal Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA).

5. Like the warlords, the Taliban got huge funds from the drug trade: they levied a 20% tax on the income farmers get from the sale of opium. It also took an enormous rake-off from the transit of smuggled goods, with neither Pakistan nor Iran able to exercise custom controls on their border.

There are three intricate and difficult chapters about plans by two rival oil companies, one Argentinian and one American, to build oil pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and possibly even to India. The interests of all the states in the region were involved in this "New Great Game". The two oil companies negotiated with whoever might facilitate the transit through Afghanistan, be it the war lords and or the Taliban. As these chapters follow the narrative of the interminable fighting in Afghanistan, I felt that both oil companies were crazy even to consider investment in so unstable an area, and in fact nothing came either of these plans.

The powerful and prescient last chapter on `The Future of Afghanistan' of the original edition is followed by the new chapter of 29 pages which outlines the story from 2000 to 2009: the apparent defeat of the Taliban in 2001, its regrouping in the NWFP and FATA, the Talibanization of these areas, and its major resurgence in Afghanistan from 2005 onwards. This is all much more fully dealt with in the 400 pages of Rashid's 2008 book, Descent into Chaos - see my Amazon review.

28 people found this helpful

Il Principe Brutto

A sense of deja vu.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

There is plenty of information in the book, and it's organised in vertical slices, each one related to a single issue: pipelines, religion, smuggling mafias and so on. This is good, as each single aspect of the Afghan and Taliban story is presented on its own, and fully developed within a single, manageable unit. I think some chapters could even be read on their own.

On the other hand, each 'story' overlaps with the others, so there are scenes or particular events pop up many times, in different parts of the book (for example, the massacre of the Azaras in Mazar-e-Sharif). This gives a feeling of deja-vu (or deja-lu, to be precise).

Luckily, the author provides in an Appendix a very detailed Taliban timeline. I would suggest keeping a bookmark on it, and referring to those pages on a regular basis. In this way, as you go through the chapters, you will be able to place what you are reading in the right context, and see how it relates to what is described in other parts of the book.

2 people found this helpful

Bill MILLER

Required reading.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2022

Verified Purchase

Bought for my son. It was on a list of required books for RMAS Sandhurst.

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