of Kabul, in early February 1995. By this time, the Taliban and Massoud, who still
controlled Kabul and much of the north of the country, had become the main com-
batants. The Taliban took control of western Herat province in September 1995,
defeating a regional warlord who had strong backing from Iran. (Although they shared
some of the same conservative Islamic values as the Shiite clerics who ruled Iran, the
Taliban were Sunni Muslims. Iran considered the Taliban to be an enemy.)
The big break for the Taliban came in September 1996, when they captured the
eastern city of Jalalabad, thus nearly encircling Kabul. After three surrounding
provinces fell to the Taliban, Massoud ordered his forces to withdraw from the capi-
tal. The Taliban moved into Kabul on September 26, completing an extraordinary
sweep for an organization that had been in existence for only two years and whose
leaders had little military command experience. Mullah Mohammad Omar, who
emerged as leader of the Taliban, had taught at a rural Islamic school and then joined
the mujahidin to fight against the Kabul government after the Soviet withdrawal.
In one of their first acts after gaining control of Kabul, the Taliban seized Najibul-
lah and his brother from a UN compound, dragged them around town behind a jeep,
shot them, and hung their bodies for public display. Of more lasting significance was
the issuance of a series of decrees based on extreme interpretations of Islamic law and
rural Pashtun customs. Many of the rules concerned women and girls, including a
requirement that all females wear full-body coverings when outside the home and pro-
hibitions on women working outside the home or attending school. All men were
required to wear full beards. Other decrees banned all sports and entertainment,
including music and games, such as chess, and kite flying (a popular diversion in
Afghanistan). The Taliban also cracked down, at least temporarily, on cultivation of
opium poppies, one of the country’s most successful agricultural crops. Afghanistan
traditionally had been one of the world’s largest sources of the opium paste used to
make heroin, but production plummeted under Taliban rule.
By the end of 1998, the Taliban had gained control of at least 80 percent of the
country, with the most significant resistance coming from an alliance of Tajik and
Uzbek forces in northern Afghanistan, headed by Massoud and Dostum. These forces,
which eventually became known as the Northern Alliance, carried out numerous guer-
rilla attacks against the Taliban but had neither the military power nor the popular
support to make serious inroads until they received the backing of the United States
in 2001.
Bin Laden in Afghanistan
Even before the Taliban seized control of Kabul, a little-noticed event took place that
would ultimately lead to the end of the Taliban’s hold on Afghanistan: Osama bin
Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian exile of Yemeni descent, arrived in Jalalabad, via a
chartered jet in May 1996. Bin Laden, whose family ran one of the biggest contract-
ing firms in the Middle East, had served with the mujahidin in the 1980s, for the
most part running logistical operations out of Peshawar, Pakistan. Angered by the con-
tinuing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia after the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War,
bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1992 as a volunteer for Hassan Turabi, the new Islamist
leader there. Bin Laden had several businesses in Sudan, where he also was largely
responsible for creating al-Qaida (the Base), a network consisting for the most part of
594 AFGHANISTAN