The Taliban - Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group - Podcast

Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
The Mind of the Taliban
            The Taliban’s mindset is an amalgam of ethnic, geographic, historical, and religious elements. The Taliban’s religious principles are framed by three fundamentals: Salafism, Deobandism, and Sharia. These elements overlap and intertwine. All three are expressions of puritanical and political Islam, which resurfaced in the late 20th century and today tests the grit of the Arab Spring throughout the Middle East.
            Salafism is an Islamic revivalist philosophy intended to purify Islam of Western and modern contaminants. To the extent the Taliban offered a coherent political philosophy during its 1996-2001 rule, it was based on a reactionary, fossilized, and absolutist belief system centered on the world of Mohammed. Salafists strive to recreate the world they imagine their prophet lived in. This requires expurgating elements of modern society that, in the Taliban’s view, are superfluous, degenerate, or, in any way, contrary to the immutable teachings of the Koran.
Not all features of modernity are discarded. To spread their ideology, Salafists use state-of-the-art technology. In this spirit, the Taliban moved early to erase all non-Islamic influences in Afghanistan. They targeted Afghanistan’s internationally recognized art treasures and, with modern artillery, blasted the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan from the hills in which they were carved. Though the world was stunned by the Taliban’s demolition of the statues, few Salafists openly objected. "We are not against culture, but we don't believe in these things (the statues). They are against Islam," Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed breezily declared.
Certainly, not all Muslims supported the Taliban’s position. Muslims ruled Afghanistan for over 1,300 years and did not destroy the Buddhas until the Taliban. There were other instances of premeditated destruction. Uncertain that Afghanistan was sufficiently purged of non-Islamic cultural impurities, senior mullahs ordered a spree of destruction throughout Kabul’s museum in March 2001. A group of cudgel-wielding Taliban shattered antique limestone statues that had been excavated across the country, carefully restored, and acclaimed as universal artistic treasures. The vandals were led by the Taliban’s Minister of Culture.
            The Taliban’s outlook is also shaped by the Deobandi movement, a particular South Asian Salafist philosophy. Deobandi refers to both an Islamic seminary and an Islamic philosophy that extends far beyond the town of Deoband in northern India. It is one of Sunni Islam’s more influential schools in South and Central Asia and continues to issue edicts, or fatwas, based on Muslim law. It is an extreme, highly legalistic view of Islam that governs most of a Muslim’s daily activities. Rules include what type of pet a Muslim can own, when and where he is allowed to fly a kite, how often he should bathe, what type of clothes he should wear, and myriad other daily activities. Life’s conduct can be divided into two basic categories - permitted or prohibited. This Taliban theocracy fuses orthodox strains of Islam, Wahabbism from Saudi Arabia, and the Deobandi philosophy, which is taught in Pakistan and lavishly funded by Saudis.
            Deobandism also has paramilitary elements. The school in Deoband mandated military training to groom its seminary students to be warriors of Islam.  The seminary, Darul Uloom, or House of Knowledge, has been dubbed “Jihad University.” Deobandi thinking was born of nationalistic and religiously reactionary fervor following the Sepoy revolt in the mid-19th century, which is often called the Indian Mutiny. It rejected the Indian Civil Service and the adoption of European tastes, mannerisms, and secularism among the Indian elite.   It remains decidedly opposed to all elements of modernity, western life and thought, and democratic norms. 
            The ideological foundation of the Taliban was built of Deobandi Islam. The architect and avatar was Mullah Omar. Although he had not finished his studies, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was afforded an honorary degree by the seminary because, as one luminary noted, "he left to do jihad and to create a pristine Islamic government.”
            The Deobandi philosophy is unique, but in many ways fits into the agenda of today’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has strong Salafist underpinnings. Bin Laden was very attracted to Islamism, or political Islam, and promoted the teachings of its leaders. The term Islamism refers to a modern variant of Islam, which was developed and spread by the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Ikwan. From a nucleus of disaffected Egyptians led by a Sufi schoolteacher in the late 1920s, the Brotherhood sought to supplant secular society with Islamic rule.  The Brotherhood became a global, dynamic, and expansionist force by the end of the 20th century.  The Brotherhood, which would inspire the leaders and core cadre of al Qaeda worldwide, fused philosophical elements from other 20th-century authoritarian movements. It thrives in the 21st Century and challenges emerging democratic elements in the Arab Middle East.
 
            The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, whose writings heavily influenced bin Laden, was the Brotherhood's preeminent intellectual. As Qutb explained, it was insufficient for individuals to reform themselves. Islamic mandates ordained that an Islamic heaven be created on earth. Only a completely “good” state, by which he meant a Sharia state, could produce good men. He was executed in 1966 but is still celebrated throughout the Islamic world. Much like bin Laden, the often-quoted Qutb saw Islam as incompatible with modern pluralism. As a middle-aged exchange student in Colorado in the late 1940s, Qutb, soft-spoken and diffident, came to see the new American superpower as Islam’s greatest enemy.
            In his extensive writings, Qutb appropriated terminology from the two radical socialist and utopian philosophies- National Socialism and communism - but rejected their atheism.  He held solidarity with Hitler’s homicidal anti-Semitism. After the war, his main enemy became a soulless and capitalist America. He derided American churches as brothels, jazz music as primitive, and American women as vixens.  His portrayal of American culture as vacuous, aggressive, and bigoted would resonate with Muslims, as well as leftists, and would become a recurring trope in the propaganda of both.
            This model of American aggression and degeneracy became more common in the 1950s among Islamists and European intellectuals. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Islamist Arab nationalists made common cause with international leftists. Despite their strikingly opposing views on religion, women, and general politics, Islamists and leftists were strongly united in their hatred of the United States and Israel. Bin Laden, with his theatrical flights, would militarize this sentiment and bring it to Afghanistan. 
            Bin Laden introduced the Brotherhood's ideas to the Taliban.  Had he a rival in imparting Islamist ideologies in Afghanistan, it would have been Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian ideologue and strategist who died young.  Azzam was born near Jenin in 1941 and graduated from the Sharia College at Damascus University in 1966, when Palestinian nationalism was becoming a potent force.  After the 1967 War, Azzam became active in several Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and the West Bank and embraced Salafism.  He had a sharp mind and earned graduate degrees from Al Azhar University.  In 1979, he joined the first wave of Arab, anti-Soviet Jihadis in Afghanistan.  In Peshawar, Pakistan, he made his mark as an inspiring Islamist recruiter and rhapsodist.  The paladin’s famous dictum was, “One hour of jihad in Allah's path is better than 60 years of praying.”  He and his two sons were killed in a massive car bombing in Peshawar in 1989.  His assassins are not publicly known today.
            Both Azzam and bin Laden were members of the Islamic Brotherhood. Bin Laden’s connection to the Islamic Brotherhood became clearer in September 2012, when his successor and longtime associate Ayman Al-Zawahiri recalled a quote from bin Laden, "I was banished from my own organization. I used to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, but they banished me." According to Zawahiri, bin Laden was too much of a maverick for the Brotherhood, whose leaders told the Saudi, "You’re banished." Bin Laden pithily responded, "Fine."
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 

Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
 
The People
            “A Pashtun is never at peace, except when he is at war." An old Pashtun saying
            Living at the crossroads of ancient empires and migrating nations, the Afghans are living testimony to a racially diverse gene pool and the fusion of myriad ethnicities.  Over the centuries, one ethnic group, the Pashtuns, came to dominate.   Today, they are the largest ethnic group, constituting approximately 42 percent of all Afghans.
            The Taliban are overwhelmingly Pashtun, and this ethnic group holds regional prestige and power. The area where Pashtun is the dominant ethnicity extends into much of Pakistan and is called the Pashtun Belt. Pashtuns are a tapestry of major clans, minor clans, and sub-clans of varying prestige and influence. Deeply conservative, Pashtunwali, the Pashtun social code, is a fusion of religious and clan supremacy. When they held power, the Taliban imposed their Pashtun social codes on all those they conquered. The Taliban alienated many non-Pashtun Afghans while in power because many of the Taliban’s laws and customs were based on Pashtunwali. If some Pashtun recruits were attracted to the Taliban by bonds of tribal affinity, non-Pashtuns seethed with resentment, which would have repercussions in the following years.
Though the sub-tribes have regional and clan differences, Pashtuns share a common social code. Pashtunwali is practiced in a fiercely independent tribal region that straddles Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even by Afghan standards, this region is remote, barren, and inaccessible. The area is porous, and its resident clans often make their living by smuggling. But Pashtunwali extends well beyond the Pashtun belt; it is observed throughout all territory controlled by Pashtuns. 
            Pashtunwali rests on five principles: honor, revenge, hospitality, absolution, and protection. Honor, or nang, requires each Pashtun male to protect the family's honor. Even small offenses, slights, and what Westerners would consider trivial, offhand comments must be resolved. Stemming from the first principle, nang, a Pashtun must exact revenge, or badal, if his family is shamed. Hospitality, or melmastia, the third principle, is a Pashtun trait that has been acknowledged by many non-Pashtuns as well as Pashtuns. A fourth principle is forgiveness, or nanwatay.
            If a Pashtun wants to end a feud with a fellow Pashtun, he can approach his rival and ask forgiveness. It is an alternative to revenge.  The fifth Pashtun principle is allegiance with a stronger force, or hamsaya. This happens when a group or individuals give allegiance or switch sides to a stronger clan or subclan. In the current conflict, it became widely used as the Taliban were in retreat in 2001 and, once again, when they began to show muscle. As the United States prepares to withdraw most of its forces in 2014, the principle of hamsay could help determine the course of the insurgency.
            The tribal system in Afghanistan has been compared, if very loosely, to the clans of ancient Scotland or to the Hatfields and McCoys of American folklore.  While exaggerated, this historical analog holds some truth. Many Afghans will take their primary identity from their tribal affiliation and only secondarily see themselves as Afghan nationals. There are five dominant Afghan tribes.
            The Durrani tribal confederation, concentrated mostly in southeastern Afghanistan, has disproportionately produced Afghan leaders since Ahmad Shah Durrani, considered the founder of modern Afghanistan, established a monarchy in 1747. The historic Pashtun rivals of the Durranis are the Ghilzai tribal group, concentrated mostly in eastern Afghanistan. Some of the major Taliban leaders today are Ghilzais.
             The hoary rivalry between Pashtun bloodlines continues in 21st-century Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the current president of Afghanistan, is a Durrani, and Mullah Omar, the long-serving leader of the Taliban, is a Ghilzai. The Karlanris, or "hill tribes," are the third-largest group of Pashtuns. Although geographically separated, two major groups make up the Sarbani. The last major tribal group is the Ghurghusht, who live in and around Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Provinces. Sometimes the sub-tribes coexist peacefully, and sometimes they do not.
            Two-thirds of the Pashtuns are Durrani or Ghilzai, and these two sub-tribes sparred and tangled on many issues over many centuries.  The Taliban continued to be led by Ghilzais, but by 2008-2009 Durrani commanders had been given stronger leadership roles and positions of trust and responsibility.
            Florid Cruelty “….That Screams Will Frighten Even Crows from Their Nests”
            “Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible, and if the person survives, he will never again have a night’s sleep.” Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, Former Taliban torturer
 
            The Taliban are not uniquely cruel. Compared to two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century – the German National Socialists and Soviet communists - the Taliban committed fewer murders and never refined genocide to an industrial science. However, much like the feared Gestapo of the Nazis and the KGB of the Soviets, the Taliban’s secret police tortured and murdered enthusiastically and creatively. Prisoners were nailed to the wall and crucified; killed slowly by hanging upside down; and starved to death, while occasionally forced to crawl and grabble for bread crumbs, to the amusement of guards.  One of the Taliban torturers explained, with some pangs of regret, "Maybe the worst thing I saw was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream."
            Taliban torture continues to make the daily news.  For nearly 18 years, 1994-2013, there has been a carnival-like atmosphere to public executions and amputations.  In Taliban-controlled territory, whippings, beatings, shootings, face slashings, and occasional crucifixions take place in public squares.  Even the dead are not spared desecration. The Taliban photograph their enemy dead as grim trophies. A village elder explained that when the Taliban killed a British soldier in July 2011, they, the Taliban, “kicked the body and threw it in the canal…then they (other Taliban) pulled him out of the canal and started trampling on him, stabbing him and even shot him (the corpse).”
            This cruelty came to light in full after the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001. Books such as The Kite Runner, widely praised by critics, brought the full depravity of the Taliban to Western audiences. A 2003 movie, “Clouds,” a romantic drama, was filled with scenes of murder and amputations and intended to expose the Taliban’s savagery and the misery of their era. A critically acclaimed movie, “Osama,” highlighted the despair of beggars in the Taliban’s Afghanistan and the plight of girls in the Sharia state. Private screenings were held for then-first lady Laura Bush and senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kay Bailey Hutchison. “Escape from the Taliban” was an Indian-made movie that, like “Osama,” uncovered the depraved treatment of women. Another movie, also critically admired, was “Kandahar,” filmed in Iran in 2002 and serving as a general indictment of the Taliban’s rule. 
             In the brief artistic spring of winter 2001, Afghan artists were optimistic. New plays were performed in the bombed-out theater of Kabul. The city’s creative scene had promise. The theater’s lead actor explained, “My dream is to have a proper theater with seats, a roof, and a stage…Maybe even a curtain.”
Profile 2:  Marjan and Donatello
            The Taliban’s cruelty was not only directed at people; animals suffered too. The Taliban outlawed dog and pigeon fighting, popular male pastimes, because they were considered un-Islamic and involved gambling. The Taliban do not like pets, but many Afghans enjoy them, particularly singing birds. Before the Taliban, Kabul residents delighted in visiting their zoo, which once housed 400 species of animals and an aquarium. Built in 1967, it became a point of civic pride. But zoos do not have a place in the Taliban’s Salafist realm.
            The Taliban would beat and torture the zoo’s animals, despite the pleas of the skeletal, largely unpaid staff for mercy. A particular target was a bear, Donatello, whose nose the Taliban cut off and whose festering wounds they poked for fun. One of the zookeepers explained, “She is a poor little animal. She hasn't hurt anyone, and yet, when the Taliban were here, they used to come in just to torment the animals.” 
            Marjan, the lion, was the zoo’s prize, where he had lived for 23 years. Like the human residents of Kabul, Marjan had a hard life and lived in cramped quarters. But he was cared for and fed regularly until the Taliban came, because the zoo’s staff loved him. When a bumptious Taliban member jumped into the lion’s cage to display his masculinity, Marjan bit off one of his legs. The following day, the recently amputated man’s brother threw a hand grenade at Marjan, blinding him in one eye.
            Marjan died in January 2002, and many Afghans grieved their loss. “This old, busted-up lion, with one eye, his jaw hanging down, was the symbol of the country. Old, ailing but proud, like Afghanistan,” said Johnalsh of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, who was caring for Marjan in Kabul. Marjan died at a moment when international aid was beginning to restore the zoo and improve the lives of its animals. Donatello was nursed to health and given Marjan’s pen, which was roomier. The animals at Kabul’s zoo were better accommodated and fed healthier food. They were treated with love again, and the Taliban were long gone.
            Summary
            The Afghan moniker “graveyard of empires” is well earned. Western and eastern empires have invaded the country, only to meet often stiff, sometimes insurmountable resistance. Among the invaders were the Greeks, Mongols, Arabs, British, and Soviets.  Most Afghans saw Soviet developmental efforts as cosmetics to pretty-up atheistic collectivism.  The emergence of the Taliban could not have occurred without the collision of modernity with traditional Afghan society and the power vacuum left after the Soviet War. Some of the Afghans and the Arabs who fought jihad against the Soviets would emerge as leaders in the Taliban, and one Arab, Osama bin Laden, would become the most wanted man in the world.
            The fountainheads of the Taliban identity are Pashtun culture and Deobandi Islam. The Pashtuns are and have been the dominant tribe in Afghanistan. Pashtunwali is a code of conduct particular to the Pashtuns, and it characterizes many elements of the Taliban leadership and ranks. The cultural elements among Pashtuns include honor, revenge, hospitality, requesting forgiveness, and serving a stronger tribe. The Deobandi School also made an imprint on the Taliban.
Islamism is a political variant of Islam that enshrines the most puritanical and primitive elements of the religion with modern political means of governance. The haughty Bin Laden and the dour Mullah Omar did not share identical views of Islam but held common goals. Both wanted to establish totalitarian, Islamist states.  Whether or not Islamism, or modern political Islam, is fascist is debatable. Its unrelenting hostility towards liberalism is not. 
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
Historians refer to the war in Afghanistan as the Soviets’ Vietnam. If the analogy is inexact, it underscores the angst within both the Soviet armed forces and civil-military relations. Things went poorly for the Soviets from the beginning, and drug problems were widespread. Some Soviets traded clothes, cigarettes, fur caps, even their weapons for hashish and heroin. Abroad, anger at the Soviet Army’s killing of Muslims in Afghanistan also fueled Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Asian republics and in Chechnya.
            Much like Americans in Vietnam a decade earlier, not all “Afghanistanis,” often transliterated “Afghanistanys,” the Soviet troops who fought in Afghanistan, could leave their battles behind. Years later, many exhibited signs of emotional distress associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms included alcohol and chemical dependency and high suicide rates.
            Belatedly, the Soviet Army recognized the inadequacy of its preparations. Soviet forces were ill-equipped for guerrilla warfare and, initially, poorly trained. Although the Soviets deployed advanced armored vehicles and attack aircraft, both rotary- and fixed-wing, they became highly vulnerable to US-supplied ground-to-air missiles. Almost anything that flew was subject to attack. The journalist Edward Girardet recounts the perhaps apocryphal exchange between two mujahedin in the war's final days. One notes that he has not seen any Siberian cranes flying over Kabul that year, which is unusual. “Have we even killed all the cranes?” replies the other.
            In February 1989, the Soviets left. The last Soviet soldier to depart after the 9-year intervention was Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, who rode the final armored personnel carrier out of the country, clutching a bouquet of flowers. Years later, he would confess, without dreamy nostalgia, “I wasn’t looking back.” But US military planners, years later, would look back on the Soviet experience and scrutinize all the major battles, hoping to learn from their successes and failures.
            Before they left, the Soviets handed over vast caches of weapons and ammunition to Najibullah’s still-Soviet-friendly government forces. Moscow continued to provide material support for 2 years after the Soviets’ departure, but their withdrawal left the Kabul government to fend for itself. A civil war followed, and the communist government stepped down in April 1992. Differences among the mujahedeen parties quickly surfaced, and each faction had a leader or warlord with aspirations for national power.
            There was a global view that the Soviets had been defeated in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union collapsed only a few years later. The mujahedeen celebrated and savored their achievements as a victory. Some Afghans were grateful to the United States for funding, logistical support, training, and the lethally effective Stinger missiles, while others were not. Some Mujahedeen and al Qaeda hoped to defeat the world’s only remaining superpower, their former benefactor, the United States. Washington would be their next target.
            Western leaders would examine Soviet successes and failures. The use of overwhelming force and relatively sophisticated weapons was not necessarily sufficient to defeat the enemy. Another lesson both the Americans and Soviets learned was the importance of domestic considerations and the necessity of popular resolve to fight a protracted, distant war.
Profile 1:  Nekmuhammad – Afghanistani        
            Gennady Tsevam fought as an enlisted soldier in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. A Ukrainian national, he was drafted at 18, trained in Russia and Soviet Uzbekistan, and then deployed to Kunduz to fight the Mujahedeen. He didn’t last long. His first night on sentry duty would be his last with his Red Army comrades. His outpost was attacked, and he was whisked away in a cloth sack as a prisoner of the Taliban. Unlike other Soviet soldiers who were tortured and killed, Tsevam was given the choice of becoming a Muslim or having his throat slit. He chose the former, became Nekmuhammad, took a wife, and fathered three children.
            When the Soviets left Afghanistan, he stayed behind with his wife and family. He may have faced the same dilemma as other Soviet captives. How would he be greeted back home? Would the authorities and his Ukrainian family be sympathetic? There might be prison. So he stayed in Afghanistan and worked odd jobs. After the Taliban were forced from the country, Nekmuhammad took a job as a driver for NGOs. In 2004, he was working for an Italian firm as a driver. Later, he moved his family to Konduz.
            But life was very difficult for him in Afghanistan, and he still suffered from a leg wound. His children were social outcasts because their father was a “shuravi,” or Soviet soldier. Other children would not play with them. By 2003, both his parents had died in Ukraine. They had not seen him since the day they saw him off at the Donetsk enlistment office 20 years earlier.
            By the turn of the millennium, Nekmuhammad’s world had changed many times. The Soviet Union had been gone for years, and Ukraine had become an independent state. He had a brother in Ukraine. But Nekmuhammad confessed, ''I am frightened that if I go and cannot come back, then who will feed my family and look after them?'' So Nekmuhammad would talk to his brother on the phone, and his children would notice their father’s slow tears as he spoke, his voice cracking with emotion in a strange-sounding language they did not understand.
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 

Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
 
The Soviets Invade – The “Afghanistanis”
            The tranquility of the 1970s was shattered in December 1979. The Soviet Union tried to shore up a moribund, secular Afghan government by deploying troops. What was intended as a quick intervention quickly stalled. Over nearly 10 years of occupation, Soviet forces and their Afghan communist allies reportedly killed 1.3 million Afghans, shattered infrastructure in urban and rural areas, and forced 5.5 million Afghans to flee to refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. The turmoil in Afghanistan escalated into an insurgency and then a civil war. Finally, it took elements of a world war for the United States to enter the fray.
            The Soviets’ muddle in Afghanistan afforded Washington an opportunity to inflict a slow–bleeding wound on Moscow. At a relatively low cost and without deploying any US combat forces, the United States supplied the mujahedin with lethal ground-to-air Stinger missiles in November 1986, which Soviet aircraft were not adequately protected against. At the same time, Soviet dissidents circulated disparaging war-related news. Informal information networks among parents who had lost their sons expanded. This war, compounded by the long-declining standard of living, ushered in the last days of the Soviet Union. 
            As the war progressed, more international players joined the fighting. Iranian support went largely to the Hazaras, who are Shia. The Saudis supported, in contrast, a Wahhabi network and a rival warlord, the brooding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is still an active player. The Saudis also sponsored Wahhabi-guided madrassas to expand their influence in the country.
            The Soviet experience in Afghanistan illustrates the failure of military pacification efforts. Stephen Pomper, a military analyst, notes that the Soviets recognized early in the conflict that they would have to train local forces and secure and maintain their sympathies, similar to the US turn-of-the-20th-century counterinsurgency efforts in the Philippines, or they would have to field an army of over 600,000 men. This would have required a significant diversion of troops from Europe, a proposition unacceptable after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, or a vast increase in military personnel and expenditures.
            Like the opponents they faced, the Soviets could be ruthless. A RAND Corporation study cited the devastation caused by napalm and fragmentation bombs and the widespread use of antipersonnel mines, which maimed and killed indiscriminately. The study compared Soviet pacification tactics to those of the Nazis, a historic analogy that stirred American sympathy for the Afghans. Their use of booby-trapped toys and the execution of civilian hostages horrified many Americans. A 1986 Amnesty International study concurred, charging that Afghan prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured, sometimes to death, in extreme cold or heat. Some described electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, and others witnessed the slaughter of fellow prisoners.
            The Soviets tried to soften their image but failed. Soviet operators were, at best, marginally capable and unimaginative, and ill-equipped to persuade a highly devoted, religious, and tribal society. The propaganda was largely directed at an Afghan population that could not process its largely secular messages. The Soviet-generated themes focused on class struggle and dialectical materialism but were heard by Afghans as muddled twaddle. The quality of the transmission equipment was also poor. Finally, Soviet hubris assumed that military superiority could trump the Afghans’ primitive tactics. They were wrong.
            The Soviets refined their tactics as they expanded operations and tried to use honey. Moscow hoped to engage Afghans in international prestige projects, such as sending an Afghan into space aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Hovering in the stratosphere, Afghan cosmonauts would conduct scientific research. Few Afghans were impressed. On the ground, Moscow offered 15,000 Afghans free education in the Soviet Union and brought 50 professors from the Soviet Union and East Germany to the American-built Kabul University. It didn’t work. Frustrated Soviet workers grumbled, “It’s all the Middle Ages… We just sink money in.” This disenchantment was reciprocated by an Afghan who retorted that all the Russians had done was create a “filthy, bloody mess of our country.”
            Afghans agonized. In the spirit of the Mongols, the Soviet armies laid waste to vast stretches of Afghanistan. The war ravaged the economy, throwing millions of Afghans, already living on the margins of human existence, into despair. Corruption, always a problem in Afghanistan, thrived during the war years of the 1980s. In the 1980s, households postponed long-term economic planning because of uncertainty about the future. Above all, most Afghans tried to survive, a task that was often difficult.
            If the Soviet information operations were fruitless, the Taliban effectively terrorized their Soviet enemy. Soviet prisoners were tortured and mutilated, and their corpses were photographed. This had a chilling, demoralizing effect on the Soviets, many of whom became afraid to engage the enemy. These morbid propaganda effects would be replicated by the Taliban years later and directed against Americans.
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
 

          Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security.
          In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Afghanistan’s strategic importance to the West declined. The dominant European empires faded or dissolved after the First World War. A militarily fatigued Europe turned inward. Britain’s global power waned in the 20th century, and Tsarist Russia was reconstituted as the Soviet Union. As a result, neither country focused on Afghanistan. By the middle of the 20th century, Britain, still the dominant, though tired, Western power in South Asia, was pessimistic about Afghanistan’s ability to govern itself. British diplomats seriously considered partitioning the state between Pakistan and Iran.
            The great powers had little incentive to modernize Afghanistan, which suited Afghan leaders. National and tribal leaders were content to remain neutral in international ideological and geopolitical struggles. Afghanistan refused to enter into a formal pact with the United States in the 1950s, during Washington’s unprecedented period of alliance-building in South Asia. Instead, Afghanistan turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic aid and established a relationship based largely on barter. This barter economy did little to end Afghanistan’s isolation or promote sustained human development.
 
Afghan Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan, commonly known as Daoud, served from 1953 to 1963 and again in the mid- to late 1970s. He was not ideologically wedded to any political or economic theory. He was a reformer who sought to court Washington and Moscow to integrate Afghanistan into the regional economies of southern and central Asia. 
 
            Daoud gradually sought to end Afghanistan’s isolation by courting international financing for development projects. He had some success. However, foreign aid slowed in the 1970s, partly because of Afghanistan’s declining geostrategic importance to the West and the Soviet Union. Afghanistan remained neutral. A treaty of friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union was promulgated in December 1978, bringing more Soviet aid and advisors to Kabul. The United States had provided aid to Afghanistan since the 1950s, but most programs ended after the April 1978 coup.
     Standards of living began to rise in the 1960s and early 1970s. There was political stability and a belle époque in Afghanistan under King Mohammad Zaher Shah. He was a well-liked, tough, but not dynamic, king. In a coup, King Shah was gently deposed by his cousin, Mohammed Daoud, and Shad went into exile. He would return, if only briefly, after the Taliban were defeated in 2001.
Elements of Constitutional Law
Afghanistan was never a Jeffersonian democracy, but Afghans enjoyed many human rights, most of which the Taliban later revoked. The Afghan 1923 constitution abolished slavery and protected religions other than Islam, while still asserting that Afghanistan was an Islamic state. It offered some measures of political freedom, including the right to own private property. However, the constitution cannot be considered liberal by contemporary Western standards. It asserted the supremacy of Sharia, or Islamic law.
            Of enduring consequence in the 1923 Constitution is the Loya Jirga. The Jirga, a Pashtun tradition, is a loose assembly of village elders whose judgments and decisions influence national-level policy. For centuries, it was the most important conflict-resolution mechanism with democratic traits. The 1923 Constitution gave it unprecedented status, shifting power to the local level. The Jirga would reemerge as an important component of Afghan law and policymaking in the post-Taliban era.
            In 1964, Afghanistan adopted a new constitution that strengthened the role of the Shura (parliament) and established a bicameral legislature. Its references to “basic principles” of democratic rule were ambiguous, its tolerance of religions other than Hanafi-Sunni Islam was questionable, and its civil and criminal protections for women were weak. Nonetheless, elements of universal human rights were gradually adopted. This progress ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
            The promise of social change unsettled the deeply religious. Not all the young were drawn to the West’s promises. By the 1950s, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had scholars at Kabul University’s Faculty of Islamic Studies. By the late 1960s, the Muslim Youth Organization of Afghanistan had become a university student organization, including Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. They became a bulwark against Western liberalism, and several would become national leaders 20 years later.   
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book reflects the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.

Hello and welcome to a reading from The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Praeger, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing in New York, New York. This reading is brought to you by Kensington Security Consulting, where we bring education to national security. We begin with Chapter One: The Landscape, The People, and Islamism.
"You can occupy it, you can put troops there and keep bombing, but you cannot win." Soviet Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev, who was decorated for bravery during the Soviet 1979-89 war
The Land
            Afghanistan is a remote and rugged land, protected from modernity by a “mud curtain” of geographic and cultural isolation. As tough as the people of Afghanistan are, the country’s terrain is tough. It is roughly the size of Texas and comprises over 250,000 square miles of diverse geography and climatic zones. Despite its relatively large size, only 12 percent of the land is arable. Vast tracts in southern and western Afghanistan are desert and share geographic traits with the Southern Californian or New Mexican high desert. Other parts of Afghanistan are mountainous, and earthquakes are frequent there.
            As historical accounts of invading armies attest, Afghanistan is well-suited to insurgent warfare. The harsh terrain offers a strong tactical advantage to insurgents, who, with their intimate knowledge of the terrain, can command the forbidding mountains and valleys. The deep gorges and valleys, craggy defiles, and the primitive road network, generally aligned with watersheds, are ideal for ambushes and hit-and-run tactics. In the 19th century, the terrain wore down even the strongest British ponies, and in the 20th century, the dirt and rocky roads, mountain rockslides, and generally primitive infrastructure took a toll on sturdily built Soviet and later American all-terrain vehicles. The myriad crevices that hid Afghan partisans in the 19th century gave sanctuary to late-20th-century mujahedin and, now, to their sons. Stinger-clutching mujahedin instilled an often-paralyzing fear in the Soviet Army.
            The famed Khyber Pass is draped in ancient, martial folklore. Through its canyons passed the supply trains of Alexander’s armies, which fought for their lives in 327 BCE. Centuries later, the marauding armies of Genghis Khan and, later, the Mughal warriors marched through this 33-mile pass in the Hindu Kush mountain range. Beyond the Khyber Pass, Afghanistan’s heartland and hinterland were battlegrounds of the Afghan Wars. In these wars, British soldiers were at the mercy of Afghan marksmen, who, with their jezails, used the rugged terrain as shields and sanctuary. In the last century, as today, the well-hidden caves and heavily forested northern mountains provided shelter for both Afghan insurgents and the soldiers who pursued them. As with Alexander’s armies, the armies of the British, the Soviets, and Americans would see their transport vehicles bogged down, their soldiers ambushed, and their morale challenged.
            For many non-Afghans who have trespassed in northern and northeastern Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, or “killer of Hindus,” has lived up to its name. It is among the highest mountain ranges in the world, and Mount Nowshak, at 24,557 feet, approaches the climbers’ death zone. It is 10,000 feet higher than the continental U.S.’s highest peak, Mt. Whitney. The bone-chilling cold of Afghanistan’s mountains, particularly at higher elevations, has served as an ally to Afghan insurgents, just as “General Winter” ground down German forces in Moscow and Stalingrad. In sum, Afghanistan’s landscape is Spartan. These factors combine to test the mettle, endurance, and military skills of both Afghan and non-Afghan pro-government forces.
A Brief History
            The first Europeans to arrive en masse in Afghanistan were the armies of Alexander the Great. His tenure was brief, but he left a Hellenistic influence that endured for centuries. His troops also left a genetic legacy among the Afghan people, some of whom retain European racial features. Buddhism took root in the mid-sixth century BCE and flourished alongside other religions, including Zoroastrianism. In 698 CE, Islam arrived in Afghanistan to stay, despite repeated challenges. Under successive caliphates, Afghans converted in large numbers to Sunni Islam, which became the dominant religion. Afghanistan was nearly decimated by the Mongols, who struck like lightning in the 13th century. Not all of Afghanistan’s cities were destroyed, but many were devastated and never revived. Most towns west of the Helmand River moldered.
            In a fragmented Central Asia, Timur, or Tamerlane, shaped a vast empire in the early 15th Century. From his base in Samarkand, he also became a patron of the Islamic arts. In the next century, Babur captured Kabul from the Mongols and founded the Mughal Empire in India.  The Mughals ruled until 1707. 
            In the 19th century, European leaders vied for supremacy and empire in Central and South Asia. Afghanistan was torn between the ambitions of two expanding empires, the British and the Russians, in the “Great Game.” In this struggle, the Afghans proved themselves fierce fighters. In January 1842, Britain’s Kabul garrison was forced to withdraw to its hard-pressed fort in Jalalabad. The retreating British-Indian units, some 16,000 soldiers and camp followers, were ambushed by Afghans, and only a few, including a wounded doctor, survived to reach Jalalabad. This death march crystallized in the European imagination. In art, Lady Butler’s portrayal of the near-dead Dr. William Brydon, slouching in his saddle as he approached Jalalabad, became iconic. It brought to canvas the enervation and then the annihilation of a once-proud British army.
 
            In response, the British built an "Army of Retribution" in India, smashed through the Khyber Pass, recaptured Kabul, and set the ancient Great Bazaar ablaze. But more British defeats were to come. In July 1880, a British brigade under Brigadier George Burrows was overrun by forces led by the formidable Ayub Khan. This time, however, there was no public call for vengeance, and Parliament decided that retribution would not be worth the estimated cost. Britain was content for Afghanistan to serve as a buffer state during the Anglo-Russian rivalry. In literature, Rudyard Kipling brought the Great Game to life in his novel “Kim.”
Thank you for listening to this reading from “The Taliban – Afghanistan’s Most Lethal Insurgent Group.” If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing and liking it. Nothing in this book represents the official position of any person or agency of the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.