The Rise and Fall of the Taliban

When the Taliban seized the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sept. 27, 1996, their first act was seizing Muhammad Najibullah from his bed in a United Nations compound. They quickly judged the Soviets' last figurehead ruler, then they tortured and castrated him. Next, they took him to a public square and shot him. Still alive, he was hanged from a lamp post at dawn, some six hours after the Taliban had entered the city. This convincing display, hard on the heels of a blitz in which they took control of the entire country in a mere 30 days, helped to raise the Taliban's stature to a mythical level in the eyes of the population. Fellow aid workers I met with at a conference on Afghan relief in England over the weekend, people with years of experience in the country, said the Northern Alliance scored a desperately needed victory with the fall of the northern city of Mazaar-i-Sharif. A psychological war accompanies every actual war and until they suffered a major setback the Taliban retained an aura of invincibility among the people. With that stripped away, they abandoned the capital in scarcely more than a day and the uprisings, even among their fellow Pashtuns, began in significant numbers.

Bill Koops

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(c) 2001 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 1 no. 5
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