taliban
Taliban
By Ahmed Rashid
Ahmed Rashid's Taliban was the best book on the history and ideology of the Taliban when it was first published in 2000. It still is. In three sections that read easily and fluidly, Rashid oulines the ideological and historical origins of the Taliban, the Taliban's interpretation of Islam, and the Taliban and Afghanistan's place in "the new great game," a competition between regional and western powers for that region of the world.
Fanaticism Resurgent
In 2000, the Taliban was still a relatively mysterious militia that had managed to take over most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban ended a four-year civil war that had shredded the country even more than the Soviet occupation of 1979-1989. The Taliban applied the most extremist interpretation ofSharia law through edicts, prohibitions and repression that stunned the world. Only three countries recognized the new regime: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, each of which had funded and armed the mysterious, turbaned bands of "Talibs" (the word means student in Arabic, as talibs were students of Pakistan's madrassas). Few western reporters ventured into Taliban territory.
Among them was John Burns of The New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 "for his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban."
"When the Taliban religious movement decided to stone to death a couple caught in adultery, it chose a blazing afternoon in late August," Burns wrote in a dispatch dated Nov. 3, 1996. "The condemned woman, Nurbibi, 40, was lowered into a pit dug into the earth beside the wall until only her chest and head were above ground. Witnesses said she was dressed in a sky-blue burqa, the head-to-toe shroud with a slit for the eyes that the Taliban require all women to wear when they are outside their homes." After the judge threw the first stone, "Taliban fighters who had been summoned for the occasion stepped forward and
By Ahmed Rashid
Ahmed Rashid's Taliban was the best book on the history and ideology of the Taliban when it was first published in 2000. It still is. In three sections that read easily and fluidly, Rashid oulines the ideological and historical origins of the Taliban, the Taliban's interpretation of Islam, and the Taliban and Afghanistan's place in "the new great game," a competition between regional and western powers for that region of the world.
Fanaticism Resurgent
In 2000, the Taliban was still a relatively mysterious militia that had managed to take over most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban ended a four-year civil war that had shredded the country even more than the Soviet occupation of 1979-1989. The Taliban applied the most extremist interpretation ofSharia law through edicts, prohibitions and repression that stunned the world. Only three countries recognized the new regime: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, each of which had funded and armed the mysterious, turbaned bands of "Talibs" (the word means student in Arabic, as talibs were students of Pakistan's madrassas). Few western reporters ventured into Taliban territory.
Among them was John Burns of The New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 "for his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban."
"When the Taliban religious movement decided to stone to death a couple caught in adultery, it chose a blazing afternoon in late August," Burns wrote in a dispatch dated Nov. 3, 1996. "The condemned woman, Nurbibi, 40, was lowered into a pit dug into the earth beside the wall until only her chest and head were above ground. Witnesses said she was dressed in a sky-blue burqa, the head-to-toe shroud with a slit for the eyes that the Taliban require all women to wear when they are outside their homes." After the judge threw the first stone, "Taliban fighters who had been summoned for the occasion stepped forward and