The Taliban

Afghanistan's fundamentalist leaders

CBC News Online/July 2001
By John Bowman

The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have drawn the ire of human rights groups and governments around the world with a series of edicts imposed on the Afghan people. Recently, they have decreed that all non-Muslims in Afghanistan must wear identification tags, destroyed two 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha and forbidden women from working, even for United Nations relief agencies. The Taliban is a fundamentalist Islamic militia that controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan. Its rise to power effectively ended a 25-year period of civil war, but now Afghanis find themselves under the rule of an austere and puritanical regime.

The Taliban - whose name in Arabic means "seekers of truth" - have banned television, dance, film, photography, kite-flying, non-religious music and, most famously, statues such as the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, which the Taliban destroyed in March 2001.

Under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic law - a controversial interpretation some Islamic scholars call a gross distortion - women cannot work or attend school and must be covered from head to toe when outside of their homes. Since female doctors generally cannot practice and male doctors can not see or touch their female patients' bodies, access to medical care for women is severely restricted.

Only three nations - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - recognize the Taliban and their leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The United Nations has imposed trade barriers and travel restrictions on Afghanistan. The sanctions are, in part, designed to pressure the Taliban into handing over Osama bin Laden, the accused Saudi terrorist.

The Taliban first drew the world's attention in 1994, when Pakistan recruited them to protect their trade convoys. They grew in popularity because they fought corruption and lawlessness and because they, like most of the Afghan people, are ethnic Pashtoons, while the leaders at the time were Tajiks and Uzbeks. The Taliban captured the Afghan capital of Kabul in 1996 and, by 1998, had virtually eliminated the opposing northern alliance.

Afghanistan has had a history of civil war and instability since a coup ousted King Zahir Shah in 1973, ending the Durrani Dynasty and the Afghan monarchy. The country was the front line of the Cold War for the latter half of the '70s and the '80s, with Soviet-backed Communists battling the U.S.-backed Mujahedeen, or Muslim holy warriors.