On the front just outside Kabul, where mortar fire is exchanged daily in Afghanistan’s latest civil war, a bearded commander said what Islamic soldiers have been saying here for two decades.
“It’s victory or martyrdom: In victory we bring Islamic rule to Afghanistan. In martyrdom we go to paradise,” Mulawi Khan Mohmad declared as 30 of his scruffy militiamen sat listening intently, Kalashnikov rifles by their sides.
In the middle of his forehead, just below his turban, is a cylindrical pockmark. It is a bullet wound he took during the long guerrilla war against the former Soviet Union.
The injury is one visible scar of many in Afghanistan from a holy war that will not end.
From 1979 to 1989 bands of Islamic rebels known as mujahedeen fought and finally outlasted the Soviets. Then the Muslim warriors turned on each other, with at least five factions, including the commander’s Taliban movement, destroying what was left of the country.
Since the Soviets invaded the country to prop up a faltering communist regime, more than 1 million of Afghanistan’s 16 million inhabitants have died. Millions more have become refugees.
Kabul mostly was spared the Soviet onslaught. Now it has been almost completely obliterated by the factional fighting that followed, killing 45,000 civilians and turning every prominent building into a bullet-scarred disaster.
Children playing in their homes have been blown up by mines placed by adversaries as front lines shifted through the city. Relief workers say much of Kabul depends on food aid or goes hungry.
The windows in most government offices have been blown out, and workers shuffle papers as an early winter Siberian wind howls past their desks.
In addition to the fighting, Kabul is experiencing a new conflict. What some warriors call true Islam, the United Nations says is an abuse of human rights.
After beating back a fragile coalition of rivals, the Taliban movement has conquered two-thirds of Afghanistan. The Taliban imposes its strict interpretation of Islamic law, an interpretation other Muslims challenge. In Kabul, which the Taliban took in late September, women are banned from schools and work, and they are required to hide behind full-length veils on the streets. Music and movies are prohibited. Men must grow beards.
Taliban warriors with rifles harass and beat civilians who don’t rush to the mosque for prayers, and in some cases string chains across roads to prevent movement at prayer time. When the militiamen search houses, mainly for arms, they smash any musical instrument they find.
Accustomed to a liberal city by Islamic standards, Kabul residents are bridling under the restrictions of what many consider a religious police state.
“These people are very narrow-minded,” said Rahman Rehmani, a Kabul businessman who runs a currency exchange office. “I like to pray, but I don’t want to be told I have to do it.”
Still, Rehmani said that he is so tired of war that he accepts the Taliban occupation.
“I’d have been glad if even a dog came to power if he brought peace,” he said.
Rehmani’s ambivalence reflects a wide debate among residents and relief agencies in Kabul over whether the Taliban’s rule is an improvement over the previous carnage and chaos.
Taliban soldiers have stopped the fighting in Kabul and disarmed opponents, restored some electricity, reduced highway banditry and made efforts to respect property rights.
Still, many people are incensed at the ban on work and school for women. Taliban soldiers, who staff checkpoints and roam the city, have been so threatening and suspicious that some women have not left their homes for months.
“This is a new brand of extremism,” said Terry Pitzner, who heads the Kabul office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “Iran is moderate by comparison.”
Pitzner said that aid officials are deeply concerned how the ban is affecting poor widows and children. He said they cannot earn money for food and relief agencies are having a tougher time reaching out to victims because the agencies can no longer employ local women.
“If we can’t reach the most vulnerable population, what is going to happen to them?” Pitzner said. “We’re looking at illness and catastrophe.”
In one of Kabul’s poor hilltop neighborhoods, men stand watch outside as their children play. The women cannot be found. They may peer out from their doorways but dart back inside if seen.
A young storekeeper named Rohullah said many of the women in the neighborhood are war widows who worked in schools or offices.
“Now they don’t have enough to eat,” he said. “They’re hungry. The children can get some food– potato soup, bread, tea–but it’s not enough. They have no energy.”
The economy is tough on the men too. Few have jobs. But as they gathered on a street that has a stupendous view of snowcapped mountains that no one seems to notice, they say they are incensed with the Taliban’s new laws.
The current fighting in Afghanistan, mainly along two fronts, pits the Taliban against a coalition of armies led by Ahmed Shah Masood, a Tajik and one-time mujahedeen, and Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek ex-communist. They are former enemies who hold a more liberal view of Islam.
The Taliban was unheard of two years ago. How the movement grabbed power in Kabul so quickly is one of several mysteries that surround it. Its origin is murky and so is its strength. It is assumed that Pakistan bankrolls the Taliban while Russia, Uzbekistan and Iran support the rival coalition. Several stories, all perhaps apocryphal, say the Taliban started on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border two years ago among religious students. One story says 40 students joined together to rid a highway of thieves. Another says 2,000 students rescued two refugee girls held prisoner by a local militia chief.
Wrapped in a blanket in his freezing office, Ameer Jon Mutaqi, the Taliban minister of information and culture, seemed to prefer shrouding the Taliban’s history in mystery as well, protecting it like sensitive information.
There appears to be a strategic purpose to the Taliban’s doctrinaire brand of Islam as well.
Many Afghans say the movement’s religious edicts are wrong because they say the teachings of Islam permit women to go to school and work.
Mutaqi suggested that some religious regulations may be more a matter of military strategy than theology. Most of the fighters are young and uneducated zealots who would oppose any move toward liberalism.
Mutaqi said he believed that the government eventually would allow women to return to work and school.
“In the future we have a plan for them: Islamic instructions,” he said. “We want women to go to work, but with Islamic rule.”
The battle for Afghanistan is not only about competing visions of religion but is also about tribal rivalries. The Taliban are Pashtuns, as are many Pakistanis. The rival coalition is mainly Uzbeks and Tajiks. Such rivalries have always rent Afghanistan, which is home to at least 13 ethnic groups.
