It battled U. The group claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan at the weekend read more. It also claimed a suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport last month that killed 13 U.
Mujahid denied the movement had any genuine presence in Afghanistan though he said it "invisibly carries out some cowardly attacks".
Still, some people who may be our own Afghans have adopted the ISIS mentality, which is a phenomenon that the people do not support," he said. Contrasted to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda had a global perspective, expanded horizons, and long term goals.
The plights of the Palestinians, Kashmiris, Chechnyans, and Muslims everywhere were of ultimate concern. The attack on Islam in Afghanistan was just one instance of oppression of Muslims, but they did not have a vested interest in Afghanistan beyond expelling the atheist invaders. It is of crucial importance to understand the geographic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds and sources of recruits of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to discern between the two groups.
Both of the most influential founders of Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri and Bin Laden, came from notable families and both were very well educated. The backgrounds of the Arabs who went to fight in the jihad against the Soviets varied.
Some were ostracized renegades in their home countries who were deemed religious fanatics. Death and martyrdom particularly attracted those who experienced government repression and economic deprivation. Martyrdom and paradise seemed a lot more appealing than the pains of life While another group of Afghan Arabs included those who were curious about the jihad, longed for adventure, and wanted an exciting way to spend their break.
Many came from wealthy families and going to fight in the jihad provided a deeper meaning for their otherwise frivolous or mundane lives Bin Laden and some Al-Qaeda operatives returned to Afghanistan in , after spending time in Sudan. During their stay, the Al-Qaeda operatives were not popular with the Taliban or other Afghans because Al-Qaeda members were wealthy, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan.
Additionally, they were quite racist and viewed the Afghans as uneducated barbarians. The Afghans resented the arrogance with which they drove their air-conditioned, shiny new vehicles that had blacked out windows and Dubai license plates Fergusson The jihad expanded in the years following the Soviet war and became a truly globalized movement.
Al-Qaeda does not institute any formal procedure of indoctrination or recruitment; instead they rely on attracting a wide array of volunteers who join for diverse reasons. Al-Qaeda recruits do not share a uniform practice of religious or political mobilization Landscapes of the Jihad No cultic, ideological, ethnic, class, or personal background commonality unites them In fact, most Al-Qaeda militants receive a secular education, instead of a religious education and many attend American universities Al-Qaeda leaders do not control or own their operatives; instead they network the operatives through the provision of information, contacts, training, and finances This lack of prescribed uniformity explains how Egyptian citizen and German resident, Muhammad Atta, who lead the hijackings, was known to be very pious, while some of his comrades drank alcohol, gambled, and enjoyed strip clubs.
As discussed earlier, many Al-Qaeda members are highly educated and some can speak many different languages.
Most of those Afghans, who would make-up the recruits of the Taliban, were orphans who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan. A solution for these orphaned boys was to enroll them in Islamic madrasas, which followed the curriculum of the Deobandi Sunni Hanafi Islam school of thought, since they were the only institutions that could care for them because they provided, room, board, and an education.
The Deobandi fostered intense mental and moral discipline through an iron regulation of personal conduct Fergusson Two Pakistani religious parties, the Association of the Ulama of Islam and the Islamic Party, created and managed the extensive networks of madrasas that dotted the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. The founders of the Taliban predominantly came from the Association of the Ulama of Islam. Although too young to take on prominent or leadership roles in the jihad, students of these madrasas still participated in the war against the Soviets and Najibullah regime Crews During the Soviet war and the civil war that followed, the madrasas shut down classes and sent the students to war whenever the mujahideen needed reinforcements.
Because girls did not attend these madrasas, these boys lived in a solely male dominated world. This lack of knowledge or interaction with women can partly explain the oppressive policies and practices of the future Taliban regime.
When the Taliban officially formed and began to cleanse Afghanistan of the vicious warlords, they began to recruit men who were too young to fight in the jihad against the Soviets and provided them an opportunity to fight in the new jihad against evil and corruption. These men lived in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers, who defeated the Soviet superpower, and they wanted to obtain glory for themselves Wright While the Taliban are still predominantly Pashtun, the movement has expanded and has incorporated many different ethnic groups.
Compared to the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are a defiantly tribal society. They are divided into roughly sixty tribes, including over four hundred sub-clans. The Pashtuns are one of the largest tribal societies in the world and they are proud of it.
Understanding Pashtun culture is crucial to understanding the Taliban. The two main defining qualities of Pashtuns are their Indo-Iranian language — Pashto — and a strict adherence to Pashtunwali.
One important facet of Pashtunwali is hewad, which is a devout loyalty to the Pashtun nation. Defending Pashtun culture from foreign intrusion and protecting it from disintegration by external threats is paramount Because the Taliban movement is deeply rooted in rural, tribal culture, they hold very rigid perspectives of urban culture Crews Leading up to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban had very different goals and still do.
The Taliban had three goals from to cleanse Afghanistan of the corrupt warlords and bring order to Afghanistan, create a functioning government for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan grounded in Sharia law, and gain international recognition. Even after the Taliban took control of Kabul and gained control of ninety percent of the country, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance were still fighting, and the Taliban desperately tried to gain total control of Afghanistan.
Initially, however, forming a government themselves and ruling over Afghanistan had not been part of the agenda. Their goal was to bring order to Afghanistan, install a government that would rule according to Sharia law, and go back to their lives studying Islam Fergusson Shortly after Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan in , the Taliban sent forces to try to take Mazar, but the operation utterly failed and hundreds of Taliban fighters died in battle and thousands more were imprisoned and executed Crews He offered to share political power with Massoud in the region; however, Massoud also wanted to share military power by instituting a joint military council, but the Taliban rejected this offer fearing that this would lead to future clashes and bloodshed.
The negotiations fell through Fergusson Fortunately for the Taliban, three commanders of the Northern Alliance — Malik, Dostum, and Massoud — turned their guns on each other, weakening the Northern Alliance. The Taliban capitalized on this opportunity and captured Mazar Crews Because the Taliban did not have plans to run the country, they had no preparations for running the country, but once they came to power, they instituted a very radical version of Sharia law and attempted to create a functioning state apparatus.
The Taliban created an image of being neutral in the context of Afghan conflicts This can explain why Stuart Worsley, program director of Care International, argues that the Taliban generally tried to govern by consensus. Mullah Zaeef said the Taliban calmed ethnic tensions and united Afghanistan On the other hand, the imposition of their version of Sharia law, blended with Pashtunwali, was very swift.
The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Provision of Vice enforced these policies brutally, but also quite arbitrarily Crews The Taliban had the very difficult task of building a state nearly from scratch. The former communist government relied on Soviet funds to function and when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the Afghan state and its infrastructure.
The ensuing mujahideen civil war led to the further disintegration of state institutions Crews The structure of the new Taliban government consisted of a six member Inner Shura led by Mullah Omar, who had the supreme authority, and then a nine member Central Shura handled the administrative and foreign affairs Barfield While most of the government funds went towards the war and the highest priority of the Taliban regime was to implement and strictly enforce Sharia law, many Taliban leaders made the construction of state administrations a priority also.
After they captured Kabul, the Taliban earnestly began state building efforts and within a year, twenty-seven ministries functioned in Kabul Crews The Taliban regime experienced the same problems that previous regimes experienced also.
The ministries in Kabul and the provincial governors disputed endlessly. The pledge has been renewed several times since, although it has not always been publicly acknowledged by the Taliban. Under the peace deal with the US, the Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in areas under their control. They reiterated this vow days after the takeover of Kabul on 15 August. But they do not appear to have publicly rejected al-Qaeda either. And al-Qaeda has certainly not softened its rhetoric towards the US.
The Arabic word bay'ah is a term meaning a pledge of loyalty to a Muslim leader and is the foundation of fealty between many jihadist groups and their affiliates. It entails obligations for both parties, including obedience by the one offering bay'ah to a leader. Reneging on the pledge is considered a serious offence in Islam. In al-Qaeda's case, it effectively subordinates it to the Taliban, by bestowing the honorific title of "commander of the faithful" upon the Taliban leader and his successors.
One famous example of the flouting of bay'ah came when al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq refused to adhere to its pledge to central command, leading it to break away and later re-emerge as the Islamic State group IS. Al-Qaeda is not the only jihadist group to offer bay'ah to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban have previously pledged loyalty and recently renewed it after the takeover of Afghanistan.
After Bin Laden's death in , his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, offered his pledge of allegiance to Mullah Omar on behalf of al-Qaeda and its regional branches.
This was renewed in after IS declared its caliphate in areas of Iraq and Syria. But in July , the Taliban announced that Mullah Omar had died two years prior. Embarrassingly, al-Zawahiri had offered allegiance to a dead man.
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