Where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is

the ruin.

thomas hobbes, Leviathan

For us, Afghanistan is destroyed... It is turning to poison and not only

for us but for all others in the world... Maybe one day [the Americans]

will have to send hundreds of thousands of troops to deal with that. And

if they step in, they will be stuck. We have a British grave in Afghanistan.

We have a Soviet grave. And then we will have an American grave.

‘abd al-haq arsala

B

y the summer of 1994 the chaos in Afghanistan finally convinced

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (isi) that Gulbudin Hikmatyar

stood little chance of taking Kabul, let alone ruling Afghanistan

under Pakistan’s tutelage. Yet instead of mending fences with the Rabbani

government, Pakistan regarded it as inimical to its interest and the isi

continued to pursue the old colonial paradigm of a Pushtun solution.

The search for potential allies among the Pushtun mujahidin led the isi to

Quetta where a small group of Ghilzais from Kandahar and southwestern

Afghanistan, dismayed at the lawless in their region, had banded together

and begun to take unilateral action against commanders in defence of

local populations.

The Taliban, their background and religious influences

All of these men were veterans of the jihad against the Soviet occupation

and had fought under the banner of one or other of the Peshawar Sunni

factions. Many of them bore the scars of war, including their leader

Mullah ‘Omar, who had been badly wounded and had lost his right eye.

In an attempt to distance themselves from the mujahidin, whom they

believed had failed not only Afghans but Islam, the group referred to

fourteen

‘Between the Dragon and his Wrath’,

1994–2017