Inside the Mullah's Mind

The Taliban leader rules by faith and fear. A look at the enemy we face

Newsweek/October 1, 2001
By Jeffrey Bartholet

The only known photo of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Islamic Taliban militia and self-styled "supreme leader of the Muslim faithful," is grainy, out of focus and more than five years old. Released by the BBC last week, it shows a thin-faced man with a dark beard and oversize black turban during a rally in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It could be just about any Afghan holy warrior. You can't see the scars on Mullah Omar's face, or that his right eye is missing, blown away by a Soviet missile blast. Nor, if you're hoping for a peek through the one remaining window on his soul, can you get a clear look at his good left eye. Mullah Omar appears instead like an apparition - or a prophet - floating among a blurry, bearded throng of devoted followers.

It's not much to go on. But if Mullah Omar had his way, there would be no such picture at all. He doesn't allow himself to be photographed, believing that "graven images" of human beings are forbidden by Islam. In a land where television is outlawed, even most Afghans have never caught a glimpse of Mullah Omar and don't know what he looks like. Only rarely has he met foreigners. In an interview some years ago with a BBC journalist, Mullah Omar spoke from behind a curtain (through a third person) explaining that he had no wish to meet anyone not "helpful" to his cause. Some merchants in the Kabul bazaar like to joke that Mullah Omar doesn't really exist. And, in a sense, that is true: he never finished the Quranic schooling required to get the title mullah, but his followers call him that anyway as a sign of respect. "If the U.S. attacks us, we will declare jihad against America."

Mullah Muhmajin

Such is the elusive nature of the enemy that America may soon face in battle. President George W. Bush bluntly warned last week that if the Taliban leaders did not meet a series of nonnegotiable conditions, including the handover of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden and his comrades in the terror network Al Qaeda, the United States would treat the Taliban just as it would the terrorists. In response, the Taliban made warnings of its own: that American attacks would inflame the anger of Muslims around the world and plunge the region into crisis. "If the U.S. attacks us," Taliban spokesman Mullah Muhmajin told Newsweek by phone, "we will declare jihad against America." War in Afghanistan seemed all but inevitable. But what kind of war, and against how dangerous an enemy?

That will depend, in part, on how much popular support the Taliban can muster. It wasn't that long ago that its militiamen were regarded by many Afghans as saviors. The movement began in 1994, two years after mujahedin fighters had overthrown the Soviet puppet regime in Kabul. At the time, rival warlords vied for power, and criminals plagued the countryside. According to a commonly told tale of how the Taliban got started, frantic neighbors called on Omar one day, pleading for help: a local commander had abducted two teenage girls, shaved their heads and sent them to a military camp, where they'd been raped. With 30 students and 16 guns, Omar attacked the base, freed the girls and hanged the commander from the barrel of a tank.

The story spread, and Omar soon became an Afghan Robin Hood. His band attracted more recruits (mainly from religious schools) and eventually he received military support from neighboring Pakistan (which sees Afghanistan as a vital sphere of influence). The mullahs imposed their ultra rigid beliefs on areas they controlled, forbidding women to go to school, requiring men to grow beards, outlawing neckties. But although the Taliban fighters captured Kabul in 1996, they were never able to defeat their enemies completely, and gradually they came to alienate their friends.

The Saudis, in particular, cut off much of their support after a heated 1998 meeting between the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal, and Mullah Omar. The prince was haranguing Mullah Omar about bin Laden, according to a Pakistani general who was present. But as Prince Turki spoke, the mullah rudely removed his own turban and asked an aide to douse him with a bucket of water. "Look, I just cooled myself off so I would not lose my temper," Mullah Omar told his stunned visitor. "You have done very much for us, you Saudis, and now you should never talk to me again."

The Taliban insists that its power really lies with God and the Afghan people. But the movement now presides over ruin. The country is suffering its worst drought in decades, famine is imminent and U.N. sanctions imposed earlier this year to pressure the Taliban to hand over bin Laden remain in effect. Yet in recent months, Mullah Omar has implemented several controversial decisions that reflect the political agenda of bin Laden and his Arab-Afghan friends. These include a new school curriculum emphasizing Arabic, the prosecution of two American and six European aid workers for proselytizing and the destruction of the rock-hewn Buddhas of Bamiyan. "Afghanistan is a hijacked country," says Elie Krakowski, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. "If anything, bin Laden controls the Taliban."

Other analysts believe the relationship is more symbiotic "a happy spiritual union," in the words of a former CIA operative. Bin Laden has provided Mullah Omar with millions of dollars, and the terrorist's network has trained several thousand Arab-Afghan guerrillas, some of whom fight in the front lines against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. And bin Laden may have also put suicide bombers at Mullah Omar's service. Roughly 48 hours before the attack on the World Trade Center, two Arabs posing as journalists killed the Northern Alliance's top general, Ah-med Shah Massoud. The assassins were carrying false Belgian passports and spoke fluent French, an eerily similar MO to the seemingly Westernized fanatics who hijacked planes in the United States.

Terrorists and guerrillas may not pose the most daunting challenge for American forces in Afghanistan, however. "As soon as an American soldier places a foot in Afghanistan, great expectations will rise among the Afghan people," says Olivier Roy, an expert with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. "They will be looking for food, a political solution to their problems, better roads and health systems." Tough as that seems, providing the simple requirements of life may do more to destroy the Taliban than all the bullets and bombs the United States and its allies can unleash.

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