International on a charge of proselytisation. Bin Laden’s influence
may have been at work here, but a desire to reinforce the Taliban’s
ranks by energising impressionable madrassa students in Pakistan
may also have been a significant consideration, and perhaps even
the wish to drive Western NGOs from the country, of which there
had been some evidence since July 1998 (Maley, 2000a: 24–5).
The United Nations was acutely aware of this radicalisation, to
which it was exposed on a daily basis. In a December 2001 report
(United Nations, 2001d), the Secretary-General noted that through-
out the year, ‘the Taliban became increasingly uncooperative as the
influence of extremists closely linked with al-Qa’ida network grew.
The number of foreigners fighting for the Taliban surged, and their
role in helping the Taliban carry out massacres of civilians, parti-
cularly in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, and in serv-
ing as shock troops for Taliban military offensives against the
United Front was significantly enhanced’ (para. 87). He also noted
that ‘it became clear over the year that the tone of Mullah
Mohammed Omar’s decrees and statements had evolved from
concern with just Afghan issues to notably greater support for a
global jihad, as promoted by Bin Laden’ (para. 88).
September 11: the logic of messianic terror
Some analyses of the 11 September attacks depicted them in
instrumental terms, as means to a rationally calculated end.
Anthony Sampson, for example, argued that ‘he must have planned
this terrifying act, not as an end in itself, but as part of a much
broader strategy against his enemy’, that being to provoke a US
reaction which would ‘inflame the Saudi fundamentalists who felt
so humiliated by the Gulf War’ (Sampson, 2001). There is no
doubt as to Bin Laden’s hostility to the Saudi state (Simon and
Benjamin, 2001–02: 8), but this over rationalises the mindset of
messianic terrorist groups, which typically mix religious inspir-
ation with cognitive dissonance, conspiracy theorising, and a denial
of social and political realities. They are sustained by an image of
a world populated by enemies (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 171–8), and
The Fall of the Taliban 257