By Amir Taheri
 

TALIBAN - THE NEW CUSTODIANS OF ISLAMIC KABUL?

Paris- "As the rugged looking guerrillas slipped into the city brandishing their romantic guns, a sigh of relief could be heard all around. The feeling was that years of war would come to an end and the new rulers would create a clean, almost ascetic administration".

The above report does not describe the entry into Kabul recently of the Taleban militia. It is taken from a report in a French weekly more than two decades ago when the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh.

I was reminded of that press cutting (which for reasons long forgotten, I kept among my papers) when reading reports of the Taleban's seizure of Kabul.

The Khmer Rouge, like the Taleban today, cultivated the image of a puritan radical movement ready for self-sacrifice in the service of peace and justice.

Like the Taleban, they were supported, if not actually created, by a neighbouring country (in that case China) to unseat a government supported by another neighbouring country (Vietnam).

Those who wanted to fool themselves into seeing the Khmer Rouge as saviours of Cambodia discounted reports of the savage repression that Pol Pot's henchmen carried out in areas under their control. Also ignored were reports, some well documented, that the Khmer Rouge were involved in criminal activities that included drug trafficking.

The Khmer Rouge were portrayed by some Western, especially French, intellectuals as a model of redemption politics for other so-called "developing nations". The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Will the Taleban turn out to be a religious version of the atheistic Khmer Rouge. The two groups share several basic dogmas.

Both believe that there is one single version of the truth, and that they are its exclusive custodians. Both attracted half-educated men in their 20's and 30's whose little knowledge was more dangerous than ignorance.

The Khmer Rouge leaders had read a few badly translated summaries of the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and regarded themselves as the sole possessors of "scientific socialism", whatever that might mean.

The Taleban leaders have studied a few- pamphlets by Pakistani fundamentalist mawlawis, often in poor Pashtun translations from Urdu, and think that they understand Islam better than anyone else.

When they say that women should not be educated, they think they are being "very Islamic", because some Pakistani backwoodsman says so in a pamphlet. They do not know what in Islam, education and the quest for knowledge in general are sacred duties for all believers, men and women.

The most dangerous point the Taleban men have in common with the Khmer Rouge is their disdain for real life as it exists in their societies right now. Both believe that they can turn society into a tabula rasa on which they can design an ideal society that they have not yet discovered.

On the first day of its rule, the Taleban decreed that women should stop working outside their homes. But what about the existing realities? There are 40,000 war widows in Kabul. How are they going to survive and raise their children if they do not work?

Afghan women have always worked. Without their work, Afghan agriculture, the country's largest source of income, will collapse.

In the past 25 years, many Afghan men have been drawn into guerilla bands or fled to neighbouring countries to secure an income. Their places have been taken by women.

Today, for example, two thirds of the teachers at all Afghan schools, for both boys and girls, are women. Get rid of women teachers and nearly half of the boys schools will also close.

Taleban members have a fixation with the beard. They have announced that men aged over 16 should grow full beards or be regarded as Kaffir (infidel) and punished.

The problem is that among the Hazara, Turkmen and Uzbeks who account for 30 percent of the population, many men are biologically unable to grow the kind of beard that the Taleban ordains. Should they buy theatrical false beards to be left in peace?

There are reasons for hoping that the Taleban will not be able to do in Afghanistan what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia. Afghanistan is a larger and more difficult country to control. It is unlikely that the Tajiks, the Hazara, the Uzbeks, the Char-Imaq And even many of the Pashtan tribes will submit to the Taleban for long.

The Muslim world is already speaking against the claim by the Taliban to represent "the sole true version" of a faith shared by more than a billion people in more than 180 countries.

Washington should think twice before recognising the Taleban as the new Afghan government. America's long-term interest in the Muslim world is served by dialogue with moderates and progressives within Islam not with fanatics.

In response to an article which appeared in The Mail on Sunday (U.K.) Signs Magazine wrote to the author stating what the Quran says about punishment in comparison with the wrong actions of the Taleban. Following is the reply from Kim Willsher the Chief feature Writer of The Mail on Sunday.
 
  The harsh rulings imposed by the Taliban were not stated in the Holy Book

I do hope it was clear from my article that I was not attacking Islam or the teachings of the Quran, but the Taliban interpretation of those teachings with regard to women.

I was already aware, having read an English translation of the Quran, that the harsh rulings imposed by the Taliban were not stated in the Holy Book, and indeed many of the Afghan people I spoke to in Kabul were most insistent that these restrictions were not representative of Islam.

However, on rare occasions I was able to communicate with the Taliban soldiers they were consistent with Islamic teaching. As with much religious debate and disagreement it appears to be a question of interpretation.
 

Kim Willsher
Chief Feature Writer.
The Mail on Sunday
London W8 5TS.
England.