preted in a number of different ways. Some saw it as personal, cit-
ing the rumour – never supported with credible evidence – that the
two had been linked by the marriage of Bin Laden to Omar’s
daughter. Others saw it as religious: both were Sunni Muslims.
However, Islam ordains punishment, not hospitality, for those who
engage in criminal acts. Two explanations were more plausible.
One pointed to the power in Pushtun society of the norm of hospi-
tality contained in the Pushtun tribal code. The other pointed to
obligations of reciprocity, springing from Bin Laden’s support for
the Taliban to overthrow Rabbani’s government. It is in this con-
text that the assassination of Massoud can also be viewed, as a
measure to shore up Bin Laden’s support from the Taliban on the
eve of an Al-Qaidaattack which might give them an excellent rea-
son for bringing the relationship to a close.
Here, it is worth noting that the relationship was not without its
tensions. The Taliban were not a unified force, and on occasion
issues arose as to how to proceed. Bin Laden’s presence seems to
have been one of those issues. Not all Taliban were necessarily
sympathetic to Bin Laden: some commentators saw the late Mulla
Rabbani as a moderating force, and one less sympathetic to the Al-
Qaidaconnection than Omar himself (Rashid, 2001a). Others cast
the Taliban ‘Foreign Minister’, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in a simi-
lar role, but this was probably a misreading, since Muttawakil was
little more than a mouthpiece, with no power base of his own: he
was hardly a ‘force’. In addition, some evidence surfaced that even
the relationship between Bin Laden and Omar was not without its
tensions. Peter Bergen hints at a crisis in relations in February 1999
over Bin Laden’s anti-American statements, and notes that in June
2001, Omar stated that Bin Laden had no authority to issue a fatwa,
or authoritative ruling, of a kind that might undermine his own
position (Bergen, 2001a: 164). Recently captured computer files
also point to an earlier crisis, before July 1998 (Cullison and
Higgins, 2002). What these materials all suggest is a tension in the
Taliban’s attitudes between calculations of international political
interest, on the one hand, and norms of identity on the other. After
September 1996, the Taliban obtained almost no international
The Fall of the Taliban 255