The following is an excerpt from the story
"RISE AND FALL The Legacy of the Taliban Is a Sad
and Broken Land"
The New York Times
December 31, 2001
By DEXTER FILKINS
" Mullah Omar: No Charisma, Just Pakistani Money
Mullah Omar rose as quickly as he fell, propelled to power
not by charisma but by the geopolitical maneuverings of
his friends. Like many successful leaders, he had a vision
and a wealthy patron. For Mullah Omar, the patron was
Pakistan.
The reclusive mullah, now believed to be in hiding in
southern Afghanistan, was a dour, soft-spoken cleric in
Sangesar, a wounded veteran of the jihad against the
Soviets, when he was stirred to holy war once again. It was
the summer of 1994, five years after the Soviet Union had
departed in defeat, and Afghanistan had collapsed into an
anarchy of competing warlords. In a story now part of the
Afghan folklore, Mullah Omar gathered his men and
attacked a group of warlords who had raped and shaved
the head of a girl.
By the end of that year, Mullah Omar had nearly 12,000
followers, and he was rolling up the warlords to the north
and east. With his promise of restoring the centrality of
Islam to daily life, he had created a genuine popular
movement.
In early 1996, as Mullah Omar swept across the country,
his main rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, sent an envoy to
take the measure of the man. Mr. Hekmatyar's messenger
was stunned by what he saw.
"I was prepared for a strong and magnetic leader," said
Syed Idris, the envoy. "This was a very ordinary Afghan.
He was uninspiring, without charisma. He had no idea
about what was happening in the world. He knew only
jihad."
Even with the popular support, the Taliban might have
withered were it not for the intervention of their neighbor
to the east.
The Pakistani government had nurtured the Islamic revival
that drove the war against the Soviet Union, and then
watched with frustration as the fighters they helped
began savaging one another. The Pakistanis had long
harbored a vision of a stable Afghanistan as a gateway to
the oil riches of Central Asia, and as a counterweight
against India.
For the Pakistanis, the turning point came in 1994, when
one of their convoys bearing relief supplies was held
hostage by Afghan warlords. As Pakistani officials
negotiated the convoy's release, Mullah Omar's men
attacked, wiped out the bandits and sent the convoy on its
way.
From that point on, former Taliban and Pakistani officials
said, Pakistani intelligence officers began funneling arms,
money and supplies to the Taliban, as well as military
advisers to help guide them in battle.
The Pakistani government had served as the paymaster for
the Americans during the war against the Soviets. With
the Taliban, they carried on the same role, with American
money and with their own. "The Taliban was not a
creation of Pakistan, but a logical outcome of the war
against the Soviets," said Mirza Aslam Beg, former chief of
the Pakistan armed forces.
Not everyone saw it that way. Mr. Idris, the former aide to
Mr. Hekmatyar, was so unimpressed by Mullah Omar that
he concluded that he was merely a stand-in for a foreign
government.
Years later, when he became chief of foreign intelligence
for the Northern Alliance, Mr. Idris unearthed evidence
justifying his skepticism: The Pakistanis, he said, had
funneled as much as $10 million a year to the Taliban,
much of it hidden in the budget for the Pakistani
Embassy in Kabul.
"Omar was a puppet of the Pakistanis," Mr. Idris said.
For all its logistical and monetary help, Pakistan's most
important contribution to the Taliban was people: the
thousands of madrasa students who flooded across the
border to join the Afghan militia. They did so at the
urgings of their mullahs, who told them that it was their
Islamic duty.
Indeed, it often seemed that there was little the Pakistani
government could have done to stop the holy warriors
even if it had wanted to. The border was too long and too
desolate, the madrasas were too numerous.
The Islam that flourished in the Pakistani madrasas found
its theological roots not in the mainline of the religion but
in an offshoot, the Deobandi movement. The Deobandi
creed, based in India, exalted extreme austerity and the
subjugation of women. The mullahs in Pakistan added
their own touches, including the emphasis on holy war.
Many of the Taliban's top leaders, including Mullah Omar,
studied at Deobandi madrasas.
Mullah Omar remained an enigma until the end of his
reign. He shied away from cameras, thinking human
images un-Islamic. His followers said he was an austere
and serious man, but he seemed to enjoy his status and
the comforts it conferred.
When he left Sangesar seven years ago to bring about a
Taliban victory, Mullah Omar had a modest mud-brick
home, a wife and a son. At the height of his power, he had
three wives, lived in a gaudy estate and called himself "the
Leader of the Faithful."
"He was a simple man unaccustomed to the perks of
power," said Mr. Yusufzai, the Pakistani journalist who
met regularly with Mullah Omar. "But over time he found
that he liked them."
Bin Laden: A New Cash Cow for the Taliban
In May 1996, Mr. bin Laden arrived by chartered jet at
Jalalabad Airport. For all the sacrifices that Mullah Omar
later made on his behalf, he came originally as the guest
of a local warlord, Yunis Khalis. When the Taliban
emerged as the dominant force in Afghanistan, Mr. bin
Laden went with them.
The Arab Afghans, the name given to the foreigners who
had fought against the Soviet Union, had been in
Afghanistan for years; many of them played a weekly
volleyball game on the outskirts of Kabul long after the
jihad against the Soviet Army was over.
As the ensuing civil war dragged on and the Taliban
became more isolated, Mullah Omar turned to the Arabs
for support. The Arabs were some of the Taliban's
toughest fighters, often far more so than the Afghans
themselves. And they had money.
Wahidullah Sabawoon, the finance minister for the
Northern Alliance, said financial records of the Taliban
indicated that the movement faced growing shortfalls of
money in the late 1990's.
There was no annual budget, Mr. Sabawoon and his aides
said; the Taliban appeared to spend $300 million a year,
nearly all of it on the war. In the last few years of their
rule, he said, the Taliban had come to rely increasingly on
three sources of money: "poppy, the Pakistanis and bin
Laden."
Mr. Khaksar, the former Taliban deputy interior minister,
said Mr. bin Laden had essentially bought his influence
in the Taliban government. He would sometimes walk into
a room, Mr. Khaksar said, and pull out wads of cash worth
as much as $100,000.
Mr. Khaksar said he once tried to persuade Mullah Omar
to rid himself of Mr. bin Laden and the foreigners, but
that Mullah Omar rebuffed him."The foreigners had taken
over our government," Mr. Khaksar said.
Toward the end of the Taliban's reign, the evidence of
foreign infiltration of the movement's upper ranks was
unmistakable. Monitoring Taliban radio transmissions,
Northern Alliance generals picked up Arabic and Urdu,
the language of Pakistan.
In Kabul, Qaeda members planned their attacks in homes
scattered around, some of them bearing the seals of the
Taliban government. A group of foreigners who had been
imprisoned by the Taliban said in interviews that they had
first been interrogated by Taliban officials, then by a
group of Arabic- speaking men who were far more brutal.
The Taliban, too, grew more extreme. Western diplomats
say Al Qaeda helped persuade Mullah Omar to order the
destruction of 800-year-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan,
an act condemned around the world.
Pakistan rushed a delegation to Kandahar to try to
persuade Mullah Omar to hold off. A Pakistani official who
attended that meeting said only Mullah Omar had
spoken; none of the other Taliban officials seated around
him uttered a word.
Mullah Omar did not budge.
"If even one Muslim prays before the Buddhas, how will I
explain myself to God?" the Pakistani official recalled him
as saying.
Mr. Milam, the American envoy to Pakistan at the time,
said, "the Taliban had become so dependent on Al Qaeda
that they didn't really need the Pakistanis anymore."
The Remains: Some Still Wait for More Holy War
The Taliban said they would fight to the end. But when
the end came, they surrendered, changed sides and ran
away. Some ran to Pakistan, where they wander the
bazaars with their turbans and ideologies intact. "We will
wage a guerrilla war," said Hamidullah, a former Taliban
soldier, strolling with a group of comrades in Quetta. "I am
waiting for word from my commander."
His pugnacity is rare these days. Among those Taliban
who have not fled to the hills, some, like Abdul Salam
Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, have applied
to Pakistan for asylum. His deputy, Mr. Shaeen, says he
stays in touch with former Taliban comrades, but he plays
down the likelihood that they would, or could, try a
comeback.
"If decisions continue to be made by one person, and the
same methods are used, then, no, the Taliban will not
return," he said.
The mass of Taliban soldiers, who left their villages to join
Mullah Omar, seem mostly to be waiting - in the ranks of
the new government they have joined, in the hamlets to
which they have returned. There are thousands of these
young men, many of them confused, most of them armed.
Not far from Mullah Omar's village, Muhammad Karam
joined the Taliban seven years ago. He was fighting, he
said, to restore the good name of Islam. He found many
enemies on his journey, and his eyes have the glazed look
of someone for whom pain no longer pricks the skin.
"I was just a soldier," Mr. Karam said, fiddling with his
band of his watch.
Three weeks ago, Mr. Karam, 32, quit the only job he ever
had and went home. He has never been to school, and he
is not certain where his life will carry him. Most of the
men in his village, he said, are willing to give the new
government a chance.
But no more than that.
"We Afghans, we all love our children and respect our
mothers, and fathers, but when the country is threatened
by infidels, we are ready to start the holy war again," Mr.
Karam said.
"I still believe in jihad."
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