Taliban first received Pakistan’s backing in 1994 and by 1996 had replaced HiH as Pakistan’s chosen instrument in Afghanistan. It was an attempt to continue Pakistan’s strategy of aiming at political control in Afghanistan through a new set of clients. President Benazir Bhutto and interior minister Nasrullah Babur were secular nationalists that had no problem with using Islamic fundamentalists as policy tools. Taliban’s leadership was drawn from Pushtun ulema (clergy), many with shared backgrounds in the war against the Soviets or in the Deobandi-influenced madrassas of the FATA. This leadership gave the Taliban a capability to mobilize Afghan Pushtuns, reaching across tribal and local lines.
The tension between fundamentalism and traditional Afghan Islam for many years proved a limit on the resurgent Afghan insurgency, but by 2008–10 the Afghan Taliban, well funded and using effective propaganda, had been able to infiltrate or bring over many of the Sufic brotherhoods in southern Afghanistan and influence what was being preached in mosques throughout Afghanistan.
Because Afghanistan is decentralized and lacks a tradition of a state-supported unitary national ulema or religious leadership, the nature of Afghan Islam is largely determined at the grassroots level. There is nosingle question more important for Afghan stability than “to whom do you listen?” at the mosque. Religious authority—either local, reflecting tiers of kinship, tribe, or qawm, or that of more remote figures (especially Sufic leaders) that can have a broader appeal—is important to provide legitimacy for any actions or change, secular or religious. This authority had been in the hands of major figures connected with Sufic orders (such as Pir Sayid Ahmed Gailani and Sayid Sibghatullah Mojadidi, both of whom led one of the seven Peshawar-based Sunni Afghan resistance parties in the 1980s) or their local counterparts, pirs, ulema and sayids. Afghanistan’s Shia, especially in the Hazara Jat, have a structure of religious authority separate from Sunni practice, one largely unsupported by pre-2001 Afghan governments. These religious authorities have all been challenged by the emergence of new generations of Afghans (and ulema) that have been affected by Deobandi influences from the subcontinent (the original Taliban leadership were educated in madrassas in Pakistan) and other sources of radical Islam.
The Afghan conflict against the Soviets in 1978–92 was remote to the West. Yet its impact on Afghan life and society cannot be overestimated. To Afghans, it is what the Great War was to Europeans and the Patriotic Fatherland War to the Soviets. Among the many lasting impacts has been the tendency to associate change, reform and modernization with the enemy and what is permanent and resistant—to change as well as conquest—with Islam and Afghanistan.
Islam has increased importance in Afghanistan as both a unifying and a dividing factor. The damage to Afghan society inflicted by the conflicts of 1978–2001, the refugee camps, and the exile experience has led the diverse and divided Afghan people to turn increasingly to Islam (encouraged by the policies of Pakistan and foreign donors from the Islamic world). Today, Islam has a assumed a greater importance in Afghanistan than it did in the years before 1978. Conflict also brought religious radicalization (as well as state failure) to Afghanistan.
This trend towards radicalization has increased the Islamic role in society as well as its political-military impact and has contributed to the greater role of Islam in Afghan life, culture, and politics today compared with “the Golden Age,” the generation beforethe conflicts started in 1978. Purely secular solutions, ones that cannot be legitimated in Islamic as well as Afghan terms, are often ineffective, regarded with hostility or as foreign impositions. But change in Islamic practice is also generally viewed with suspicion, as reflected by
The tension between fundamentalism and traditional Afghan Islam for many years proved a limit on the resurgent Afghan insurgency, but by 2008–10 the Afghan Taliban, well funded and using effective propaganda, had been able to infiltrate or bring over many of the Sufic brotherhoods in southern Afghanistan and influence what was being preached in mosques throughout Afghanistan.
Because Afghanistan is decentralized and lacks a tradition of a state-supported unitary national ulema or religious leadership, the nature of Afghan Islam is largely determined at the grassroots level. There is nosingle question more important for Afghan stability than “to whom do you listen?” at the mosque. Religious authority—either local, reflecting tiers of kinship, tribe, or qawm, or that of more remote figures (especially Sufic leaders) that can have a broader appeal—is important to provide legitimacy for any actions or change, secular or religious. This authority had been in the hands of major figures connected with Sufic orders (such as Pir Sayid Ahmed Gailani and Sayid Sibghatullah Mojadidi, both of whom led one of the seven Peshawar-based Sunni Afghan resistance parties in the 1980s) or their local counterparts, pirs, ulema and sayids. Afghanistan’s Shia, especially in the Hazara Jat, have a structure of religious authority separate from Sunni practice, one largely unsupported by pre-2001 Afghan governments. These religious authorities have all been challenged by the emergence of new generations of Afghans (and ulema) that have been affected by Deobandi influences from the subcontinent (the original Taliban leadership were educated in madrassas in Pakistan) and other sources of radical Islam.
The Afghan conflict against the Soviets in 1978–92 was remote to the West. Yet its impact on Afghan life and society cannot be overestimated. To Afghans, it is what the Great War was to Europeans and the Patriotic Fatherland War to the Soviets. Among the many lasting impacts has been the tendency to associate change, reform and modernization with the enemy and what is permanent and resistant—to change as well as conquest—with Islam and Afghanistan.
Islam has increased importance in Afghanistan as both a unifying and a dividing factor. The damage to Afghan society inflicted by the conflicts of 1978–2001, the refugee camps, and the exile experience has led the diverse and divided Afghan people to turn increasingly to Islam (encouraged by the policies of Pakistan and foreign donors from the Islamic world). Today, Islam has a assumed a greater importance in Afghanistan than it did in the years before 1978. Conflict also brought religious radicalization (as well as state failure) to Afghanistan.
This trend towards radicalization has increased the Islamic role in society as well as its political-military impact and has contributed to the greater role of Islam in Afghan life, culture, and politics today compared with “the Golden Age,” the generation beforethe conflicts started in 1978. Purely secular solutions, ones that cannot be legitimated in Islamic as well as Afghan terms, are often ineffective, regarded with hostility or as foreign impositions. But change in Islamic practice is also generally viewed with suspicion, as reflected by
Similar Books
