Sabawoon Editorial Board

It is common consensus not only in America but also throughout the world community that what happened on September 11, 2001, was a barbaric and cruel act against humanity which has no place in the basic norms and teachings of Islam. It is only justice that the people directly or indirectly responsible and involved in this crime should be brought to justice and punished. If Bin Laden and his organization are the responsible parties, they must be tracked down and eliminated. But at the same, a question comes to mind, is the killing of Osama bin Laden going to solve the problem of terrorism? Is he the only priority in fight against terrorism? Not necessarily. To fight terrorism, we have to find the root causes of terrorism that arise from injustice throughout the world, oppression of local populations by autocratic governments, suppression of people by various undemocratic regimes, and the unbalanced treatment of various underdeveloped and developing countries and groups by powerful countries in many areas.

The second question concerns the Taliban. Taliban is an Afghanized plural of the Arabic word Talib, meaning student. In the war against the Soviet Union there didn’t exist a group called the Taliban. Some of the Taliban’s leaders, including Mullah Muhammad Omar participated in the Jihad against the Soviet Union as local commanders, but majority of the current Taliban who were in their tens and twenties were pursuing religious studies in various Madrassas in Pakistan. Some of these local commanders retreated to their hometowns after the so-called Islamic State of Afghanistan was instated in April 1992. The emergence of the Taliban is the result of factional fighting between various groups who were seeking power and the atrocities committed by these groups. The groups include Jamiat-i-Islami of Burahanuddin Rabani, Shura-i-Nazar of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Abdul Ali Mazari’s and many other small splinter Shiite groups, Abdul Rashid Dostam’s Militia, Itehad-i-Islami of Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and many other small groups. Except the last, the remaining groups comprise the current Northern Alliance.

The pursuit of United States policy to topple the Taliban government without an acceptable alternative by the Afghan people will result in civil war and the further escalation of violence in the region and the expansion of terrorism in the world. The United States government is concentrating on two alternatives for the future government of Afghanistan. The first one is reinstating the Northern Alliance to the seat of power in Kabul, which will spell disaster, civil war, and the re-institution of ethnic war in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance is a combination of splinter groups ranging from communists to religious extremists. The groups comprising the Northern Alliance are the same people who came to power in April 1992 and started the destruction of Kabul with their appearance. In Burhanuddin Rabani’s presidency and Ahmad Shah Massoud’s defense ministry innocent people were killed. The city was shelled. Women, girls and young boys were raped. Opposition fighters were skinned alive.

Before discussing the Northern Alliance it is important to understand who the Taliban are. To go into the history of the Taliban and to discuss how they came to power would require a long and extensive investigation, but it will be useful for our discussion to know briefly what the ranks of the Taliban are comprised of. I divide the Taliban into four groups: The Taliban Taliban, the Talib Taliban, the Common Taliban and the Communist Taliban. The Taliban Taliban is the group, which was educated in Madrassas across Pakistan. The majority of them have bachelors and some have master degrees in religious studies, and some have a second degree either in history, economics or political science. Some members of this group are in the decision-making ranks but are not as powerful as the other groups. Their views and acts are blocked by the extremist elements. The second group, the Talib Taliban is comprised of students who either finished high school or broke their education in the middle to join the ranks of Taliban. This group also includes small local commanders from the Jihad time and some small local countryside Mullahs. This is the dominant group of the Taliban ranks who are involved in the daily decision making process. Their views and ways thinking are imposed on the rest of the Taliban and the general population. Their strength does not come from their reasonable argument but from their capability to organize a fighting force. The third group, the Common Taliban are illiterate people of the countryside who joined the ranks of the Taliban to survive financially. This group does not have any particular political agenda. Traditionally these people are very conservative, prefer a paternalist society and any kind of discussion about freedom, women’s rights and education will lead one nowhere. This group is the main fighting force of the Taliban groups. The fourth group of the Taliban, the Communist Taliban is mainly the ex-communists who switched sides after the collapse of the Communist government. Because of their past experience in government and administration, this group is involved in the administrative affair at lower levels. Some members of this group have managed to reach some higher level of government administration. Along with the extremist elements of the Taliban, this group is mainly held responsible for harassing and beating men and women in the name of imposing the Islamic code.

Now coming back to the Northern Alliance and to understand exactly who these people are, it is important to look into the background and history of individual players. To discuss their background thoroughly will require long research. However, I will give a short introduction that hopefully will shed some light in the hypocritical faces and behaviors of these people.
If we go back to the time when the communists were in power in Afghanistan and the country was occupied by the Soviet troops, Rashid Dostam, a self-proclaimed general, was the bloodiest and most torturous military commander of the Gilam Jam Militia. As the term explains, when this group got to a place, they did not only kill all the Mujahideen they could capture, but also innocent women, children and elderly people. They destroyed the houses, crops and fields of the town people. He was a person who didn’t care for Islam, Islamic values, democracy, human rights or any other ethical issues.

Ahmad Shah Massoud has had various faces and interesting backgrounds in the past two decades or so. One could talk about his connection with the Maoists when he was a student at the University of Kabul, his cooperation and services for Pakistan’s ISI when he left the university and fled to Pakistan in mid 70’s, his connection with Israel’s Mossad, or his working for the Russian’s KGB in the time of Jihad. However for our purposes, I will not discuss his previous background and connections but will only concentrate on the events and time when the the Afghan people were fighting the Soviet invasion.

In the height of the Jihad when the rest of the country was fighting the Russians, Ahmad Shah Massoud signed several peace treaties with the occupiers, the Soviet Union, several times (see Extract of Agreement Between Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Soviet 40th Army, SABAWOON, Vol. 3, Issue 3, July 23, 1996). During that period, Ahmad Shah Massoud never launched any attacks, which could have caused serious casualties on the Soviet army. Most of his attacks were designed and articulated to appease the show biz of the French, Britain and other foreign news agencies.

To discuss Burhanuddin Rabani’s past would be a waste of time, but his real face could be better seen in the four-and-half years of his torturous reign over Kabul. Under his rule, thousands of innocent people were killed. Women, young girls and young boys were kidnapped and raped. People were burnt alive. Women’s breasts were cut of their bodies. Nails were inserted in people’s head and so many more atrocities that the world has blindly forgotten. Hezb-i-Wahdat, a current member of the Northern Alliance, specifically committed the last two atrocities. Under his regime human and women’s rights were abolished. The Afghan people were subject to the despotic rule of his government (For more information read the reports of Amnesty International). One example of his style of government, to which I would like to bring your attention, is a decree issued by the Islamic Government of Afghanistan in 1-5-1372 A.H. (March 26, 1993): (Translation from Farsi)
Afghanistan is an Islamic country. For the implementation of the rule of God and an Islamic state and government, the people of Afghanistan have fought for fourteen years . . . From beginning when the Islamic Government of Afghanistan came to power until now, we still see with great sorrow and distress, that women in Afghanistan are still working in public offices, Radio and TV. We request the various government entities and agencies that women must be relieved from their jobs and they (women) must not be allowed to walk on the street or in the cities…Schools for women, which in reality are the centers of prostitution, must be closed and also women must be thrown out from radio and television (Decree Pages, 36 and 37).

General Fahim and many other communist generals who comprise half of the Northern Alliance’s top leaders and forces are responsible for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan. They are the ones who cooperated with the Soviet Union and the communist government in Afghanistan and leveled the country to its current status of rubble.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, the factions fighting each other prior to this takeover formed an alliance to fight the Taliban. This became known later as the Northern Alliance. After losing Kabul to the Taliban these forces were pushed to Northern Afghanistan. In 1997, a member of Northern Alliance and a commander of Rashid Dostam, Abdul Malik massacred more than five thousand innocent ethnic Pashtoons in three days in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. This included some Taliban fighters. These kinds of stories could go on. These are a few examples of their record regarding human and women rights, peace and stability. They are brought up so that one could understand who the Northern Alliance is and what kind of government and ideas they will bring back once they come back to power. All the other members of the current Northern alliance are equally involved in crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. More information can be obtained from Amnesty International and other human rights watch organizations.

The second alternative, which the United States is looking for, is bringing of the eighty-six year old ex-monarch Mohammad Zahir back to power. Some people see him as a viable alternative but not the majority of the Afghan people. Some elites and bureaucrats who worked in various administrations when Mohammad Zahir was king would like to see him come back to power. The majority of these people did not participate in any way in fight against the Soviet occupation. These are the ones who migrated to the West. These people do not have popular support in Afghanistan. People in Afghanistan tend to give power to those who were actively involved in Jihad against the Soviet Union in one way or another. Mohammad Zahir satisfied himself by a yearly condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and didn’t go beyond that.

Mohammad Zahir, because of his passive role in the Jihad period lost the support he once had when he was king. Tribal leaders and political parties who were desperately working for the return of Shah in the Jihad period are opposing his return to Afghanistan in the current situation. For example Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the leader of Jabha-i-Nejat-i-Milli, who through the entire period of Jihad sought his return to Afghanistan, called him an American puppet few days ago. Popular support for Mohammad Zahir has diminished as result of his indifference to the cause of Afghanistan in the past twenty-eight years.
What is left?

If the United Sates really wants to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, establish democratic institutions in Afghanistan, and fight terrorism in Afghanistan, it has to look beyond the Northern Alliance and the ex-king. There are Afghans around the world that are willing to work for the establishment of peace and stability in Afghanistan. There are elements in the Taliban ranks with whom one could initiate a dialogue. The President and the United States government need to investigate alternatives that will fill the power vacuum after the United Sates leaves Afghanistan, and is an acceptable form of government in which peace and stability is insured and the dignity of the Afghan people is preserved.

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