Afghanistan's fundamentalist leaders
John Bowman, CBC News Online | May 2001
Updated July 2001
The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have drawn the ire of human rights groups and governments around the world with a series of edicts imposed on the Afghan people. Recently, they have decreed that all non-Muslims in Afghanistan must wear identification tags, destroyed two 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha and forbidden women from working, even for United Nations relief agencies.
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The Taliban – whose name in Arabic means "seekers of truth" – have banned television, dance, film, photography, kite-flying, non-religious music and, most famously, statues such as the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, which the Taliban destroyed in March 2001.
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Only three nations – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – recognize the Taliban and their leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The United Nations has imposed trade barriers and travel restrictions on Afghanistan. The sanctions are, in part, designed to pressure the Taliban into handing over Osama bin Laden, the accused Saudi terrorist.
The Taliban first drew the world's attention in 1994, when Pakistan recruited them to protect their trade convoys. They grew in popularity because they fought corruption and lawlessness and because they, like most of the Afghan people, are ethnic Pashtoons, while the leaders at the time were Tajiks and Uzbeks. The Taliban captured the Afghan capital of Kabul in 1996 and, by 1998, had virtually eliminated the opposing northern alliance.
Afghanistan has had a history of civil war and instability since a coup ousted King Zahir Shah in 1973, ending the Durrani Dynasty and the Afghan monarchy. The country was the front line of the Cold War for the latter half of the '70s and the '80s, with Soviet-backed Communists battling the U.S.-backed Mujahedeen, or Muslim holy warriors.
