‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017aid. Washington, however, was in no mood to negotiate and so the ground
was cut from under the Saudi initiative. The usa then sponsored a series of
Security Council Resolutions, which imposed travel and financial sanctions
on the Taliban leadership and an arms ban, although Pakistan blatantly
ignored these prohibitions.
Following the u.s. missile strikes in southern Afghanistan, several
senior Taliban leaders became increasingly concerned at the movement’s
direction and the loss of national sovereignty to bin Laden’s Arabs and
P a k i s t a n’s isi. ‘Abd al-Ahad Karzai and ‘Abd al-Haq Arsala decided Mullah
‘Omar had to be replaced and began to plan a coup, only for the isi to get
wind of the plot before it could be enacted. In January 1999 ‘Abd al-Haq’s
wife and children were brutally murdered by unknown assassins as they
slept in their house in Peshawar. A few months later ‘Abd al-Ahad Karzai
was gunned down as he left a Quetta mosque. When Hamid Karzai
succeeded his father as head of the Popalzais, the Pakistani authorities
informed him that they would not renew his residency visa. Hamid Karzai,
though, continued his father’s attempts to depose Mullah ‘Omar and to
create a more broadly based government, meeting with Durrani khans,
The Greater Buddha of Bamiyan. At 55 m (180 ft) high, this image and its smaller counter part
to the east (38 m/125 ft high) dominate the Bamiyan valley, once a major Buddhist settlement
that straddled two of the ancient trade routes between Kabul and the Balkh plains.