The U.S. State Department characterized the Taliban as “harsh and oppressive. We continue to receive reports that the Taliban detain Tajiks, Panjshiris, and others indiscriminately, shipping at least some to a prison in Kandahar. Women are not seen as frequently on the streets” out of “fear of being accosted.”22 Zalmay Khalilzad wrote in an essay with fellow RAND analyst Daniel Byman that “Afghan women face a horrifying array of restrictions, among the most repressive in the world.” These problems, they argued, would only worsen. “‘Talibanism’—a radical, backward, and repressive version of Islam similar to the Saudi “Wahhabi’ credo but rejected by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide—is gaining adherents outside Afghanistan and spreading to other countries in the region.”23
The Taliban enforced a stringent interpretation of the Islamic dress code for men as well. They were forced to grow beards and avoid Western haircuts or dress. The Taliban closed cinemas and banned music. Another Taliban decree ordered: “In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws, cassettes and music are prohibited.” If music or a cassette was found in a shop, “the shopkeeper should be imprisoned and the shop locked.” The same was true if a cassette was found in a vehicle.24 The Taliban also banned many forms of entertainment, such as television, videos, cards, kite-flying, and most sports. They punished theft by amputating a hand and often punished murder by public execution. Adulterers were stoned to death. In Kabul, punishments were carried out in front of crowds in the city’s former soccer stadium. And yet there was no revolt. A Canadian intelligence assessment surmised that while the Taliban imposed a harsh form of sharia law, “residents of Taliban-administered areas have accepted these harsh policies as the price to be paid for peace and social stability.”25
The Taliban also destroyed hundreds of cultural artifacts that were deemed polytheistic, including the holdings of major museums and countless private art collections. Perhaps the most appalling was the Taliban’s destruction of the great statues of Buddha in the city of Bamiyan, roughly eighty miles west of Kabul. Bamiyan was once the center of Buddhism and an important resting place on the ancient Silk Road, which linked the Roman Empire with Central Asia, China, and India. Two magnificent statues, carved into a sandstone cliff face and surrounded by frescoes, dominated the approach to the town. One statue stood 165 feet high, the other 114 feet. In March 2001, Taliban fighters dynamited and fired rockets at the statues, which had stood for nearly 2,000 years and had withstood waves of invading armies. In one callous act, the Taliban destroyed one of Afghanistan’s greatest archaeological treasures. Mullah Muhammad Omar defended these and other actions by saying they were carried out to protect the purity of Islam.26 While in power, the Taliban massacred thousands of ethnic Hazaras, who are predominantly Shi’ite.
The Taliban’s religious ideology was particularly apparent in Kabul, a city that most Taliban viewed as modern, implacably corrupt, and bubbling with apostasy. The Taliban banned women from work there, even though women ran one-fourth of Kabul’s civil service, the entire elementary-education system, and much of the health system. Girls’ schools and colleges in Kabul were closed down, affecting more than 70,000 students. On September 28, 1996, Radio Kabul announced: “Thieves will have their hands and feet amputated, adulterers will be stoned to death and those taking liquor will be lashed.”27 The Taliban appropriately gave Radio Kabul a new name, Radio Shariat, to reinforce the importance of sharia law.
Despite their religious zealotry, however, the drug trade flourished during the Taliban years. In 1997, approximately 96 percent of Afghan poppy had come from areas under the Taliban control. The Taliban expanded the area available for opium poppy production and increased trade and transport routes through neighboring countries, especially Pakistan.28 “Opium is permissible,” acknowledged Abdul Rashid, head of the Taliban’s counter-narcotics force, “because it is consumed by kafirs [infidels] in the West and not by Afghans.”29 But the growing levels of poppy production caused some, including in the United States government, to protest. In 1998, a Taliban representative told U.S. officials that the drug trade was a “manageable problem” and that the Taliban would consider banning it once they “gained [international] recognition and a way was found to compensate poppy growers for their losses.”30
In July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Omar finally banned the cultivation of opium poppy, though not the trafficking from existing stocks. The ban caused a temporary decrease in the cultivation of opium poppy in 2001 and a significant rise in prices, but much of the damage had already been done. During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan had become the world’s largest producer of poppy, the source of 70 percent of all illicit poppy.
ISI Support
Much like during the anti-Soviet jihad, Pakistani support to the Taliban was critical, especially that from the ISI. Throughout the 1990s, Islamabad pursued a pro-Taliban policy. A 1997 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan explained that, “for Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan,” adding that worries that the “Taliban brand of Islam…might infect Pakistan” was “apparently a problem for another day.”31 Another State Department cable concluded: “Pakistan has followed a policy of supporting the Taliban.”32 Two staple Pakistani exports to the Taliban were wheat and fuel, which the Taliban used to help feed their troops and run their vehicles.33 In 1998, the Pakistan government provided more than $6 million in direct support to the Taliban in addition to the regular trade with their neighbors.34
Pakistan’s ISI also played a key role. U.S. State Department officials understood that “ISI is deeply involved in the Taleban take over in Kandahar and Qalat.”35 ISI officers were deployed to such Afghan cities as Herat, Kandahar, and Jalalabad—and stationed in Pakistani consulates—to provide assistance and advice.36 Another U.S. intelligence assessment contended that the ISI was “supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food,” and “using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces.”37 Though the CIA knew about its involvement, the ISI was often effective in masking its activity. For example, its operatives utilized private-sector transportation companies to funnel supplies in convoys to Taliban forces, including ammunition, petroleum, oil, lubricants, and food. These companies departed Pakistan late in the evening and, especially if they had weapons and ammunition aboard, they concealed the supplies beneath other goods loaded onto the trucks. There were several major supply routes. One began in Peshawar, Pakistan, and passed through Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan on its way to Kabul. Another left Quetta and passed through Kandahar before ending in Kabul. Yet another began in Miramshah, Pakistan, and continued through Khowst and Gardez before entering the Afghan capital.38
Sultan Amir, Pakistan’s consul general in Herat (better known by his nom de guerre of Colonel Imam), helped the Taliban take that city in 1995. “I had an emotional attachment with the Taliban,” he later recalled. “They brought peace, they eradicated poppies, gave free education, medical treatment and speedy justice. They were the most respected people in Afghanistan.”39