Widely recognised as deputy leader of the Taliban, and in the
view of some a moderating influence, was Mulla Muhammad
Rabbani (nota relative of President Rabbani), who was to die of
cancer on 16 April 2001. Initially, Omar was advised by a
Supreme Shura of other mullas, but as time passed, Taliban deci-
sion making, always an obscure process, became more and more
opaque, with most Taliban excluded from the decision-making
circle. By mid-2001, the picture of the leadership was as
follows:
Shura meetings are no longer held, and the Kabul ministers are
rarely consulted about key decisions. Mullah Umar has become
much more isolated. The core group around him includes some
Qandahari ulama and judges of the Supreme Court of Qandahar
(who are all above 70 years old, have never traveled outside
Qandahar, and are extremist and simplistic in their views); a few
powerful, hard-line individuals from the Taliban structure such
as Mullah Nuruddin Turabi, Minister of Justice and head of the
Religious Police, Chief of Army Staff Mullah Mohammed
Hasan, and Commander Dadullah; individual Afghans working
in Umar’s office who were educated in Pakistani madrasas and
who have a strongly expansionist and jihadist view of the
Taliban’s role in the Muslim world; Usama Bin Ladin and other
Arabs who advise Umar on foreign policy (some Afghans from
Qandahar even claim that Bin Ladin is consulted on domestic
issues such as the Buddhas); and Pakistani ISI officers.
(Rubin, Ghani, Maley, Rashid and Roy, 2001: 12)Within the Taliban, there were a number of distinct groups. The
leaders were not young students, but like Omar himself had typ-
ically been combatants in Mujahideen parties, most commonly the
Hezb-e Islamiof Khalis, and the Harakatof Mawlawi Muhammadi
(who strongly supported the Taliban). The madrassa students who
gave the movement its name, on the other hand, were often too
young to have fought against the USSR. Many were orphans from
refugee camps who had been recruited into madrassas and had
lacked any normal family or home life. To a large extent they were
224 The Afghanistan Wars