‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017embraces traditional mysticism and millenarianism as well as pushtunwali,
or customary law.
The Taliban, though, differed from Peshawar-based Sunni mujahidin,
inasmuch as their model of Islam and the Islamic state was rooted in the
Indian subcontinent rather than Saudi Arabian Wahhabism or Egypt’s
Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Furthermore, unlike Hikmatyar and Ma‘sud, most
of the Taliban had no secular education but were the product solely of
cloistered madrasas, while its leadership and supporters came from
marginalized rural and nomadic tribes, Pushtuns who were at the bottom
of the tribal socio-economic ladder. Mullah ‘Omar’s father, for example,
was an impoverished sharecropper. Other Taliban were war orphans, the
children of poor refugees, or maldar who had been reduced to poverty
by the war or forced to adopt a sedentary life and eke out a precarious
existence on the fringes of Baluchistan’s refugee camps.
The Taliban already had strong links with Sami al-Haq and Pakistan’s
jui and, since the organization was small and relatively weak militarily,
the isi believed it would be easy to manipulate the movement’s political
agenda to reassert Pakistan’s influence in southern Afghanistan. Benazir
Bhutto, who had been returned as Pakistan’s prime minister in 1993, also
hoped the Taliban would restore security on the Chaman–Kandahar–
Herat highway and open up a potentially lucrative trade route between
Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This would offer the possibility
of the construction of a pipeline from Turkmenistan, which could provide
Pakistan with cheap gas and oil. With the mujahidin in power, this trans-
Asian vision was impossible, for Kandahar was divided by warring factions
and commanders had established dozens of checkpoints on the Chaman–
Kandahar highway, where they extracted heavy tolls and frequently looted
trucks and passengers.
The Taliban and the fall of southern AfghanistanPakistani officials tried to negotiate safe passage for the first overland
convoy only for talks to break down after the Kandahar shura demanded an
exorbitant fee in return for safe passage. Instead the isi began to supply the
Taliban with large amounts of cash and weapons in return for a pledge they
would clear the checkpoints from the main highway. On 12 October 1994
the Taliban stormed the Hizb-i Islami-held frontier post of Spin Baldak.
A few weeks later a convoy of vehicles set out for Kandahar, driven by
Pakistani army personnel in mufti under the leadership of an isi colonel.
When the faction that controlled Kandahar airport impounded the trucks,