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By Root 679 0

Burhanuddin Rabbani tried to negotiate with them, but they simply demanded his resignation. The wily and experienced commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, managed to push the young insurgents out of southern Kabul and then roll back their advance in some of the other provinces. After observing the anarchy that came with mujahideen rule and deciding that the Taliban offered the best chance to impose order, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan rebuilt the Taliban forces, providing training, weapons, and vehicles—mainly Datsun four-wheel-drive pickup trucks with heavy machine guns, cannons, anti-aircraft guns, or multiple-barreled rocket launchers mounted in the beds. The Taliban moved swiftly, in swarms, making up in speed and daring what they lacked in organization and discipline. They hired pilots and commanders from the former communist regime as mercenaries. Opposition leaders acknowledged the flow of events and used the opportunity to stuff their pockets with Taliban bribes. Jalalabad, which had fended off the mujahideen for months, suddenly surrendered to four Talibs in a jeep. The Taliban now commanded the gateway to the Khyber Pass. They also found themselves in charge of a famous refugee.

The Taliban had not invited bin Laden to return to Afghanistan and had no obligation to him. They sent a message to the Saudi government asking what they should do with him. They were told to hold on to him and keep him quiet. Thus bin Laden came under the control of a political hermit named Mullah Mohammed Omar, who had only recently declared himself “the ruler of all Muslims.”

Mullah Omar had lost his right eye in an artillery shell explosion in the battle of Jalalabad in 1989, which also marred his cheek and forehead. Thin but tall and strongly built, he was well known as a crack marksman who had destroyed many Soviet tanks during the Afghan War. Unlike most of the Afghan mujahideen, he spoke passable Arabic, and he became devoted to the lectures of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. Piety, modesty, and courage were the main features of his personality. He was little noticed in Azzam’s lectures, except for the occasional shy smile buried within his heavy black beard and for his knowledge of the Quran and the hadith; he had studied Islamic jurisprudence in Pakistan.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Omar returned to teach at a madrassa (religious boarding school) in a small village near Kandahar. The fighting, however, did not end, not even when the communist government finally fell to the mujahideen in April 1992. The violence had no limits. Warring tribes and bandits roamed the countryside. Ancient ethnic hatreds combined with mutual calls for revenge in the escalating savagery. A local commander orchestrated the gang rape of several young boys. Such indecencies were common. “Corruption and moral disintegration had gripped the land,” Omar later stated. “Killing, looting, and violence had become the norm. Nobody had ever imagined that the situation could get this bad. Nobody thought it could be improved, either.”

In this desperate moment, Omar received a vision. The Prophet appeared to him and instructed this simple village mullah to bring peace to his country. With the fearlessness of total religious commitment, Omar borrowed a motorcycle and began visiting students in other madrassas in the province. The students (the word in Pashtu is “taliban”) all agreed that something had to be done, but few were willing to leave their studies and join Omar in his risky quest. He eventually gathered fifty-three of the bravest of them. His old commander in the war against the Soviets, Haji Bashar, humbled by Omar’s vision of the Prophet, helped by raising money and arms, and personally donated two cars and a truck. Soon, with about two hundred adherents, the Taliban took over the administration of the Maiwand district in Kandahar province. The local commander surrendered, along with 2,500 men, a large supply of weapons, some helicopters and armored vehicles, and six MiG-21 fighter jets. Desperate for order, many Afghans rallied to the Taliban, who advertised