By Kaleem Kawaja via e-mail
With the defeat and disbanding of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in its recent face-off with the mighty US army, another bold attempt of Afghan Muslims to assert themselves and the Islamic values in their country has come to an ignominious end. Unfortunately, unlike the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979-80, the Taliban had not developed a realistic strategy to implement their plan, even though the terrible chaos and circumstances in Afghanistan had provided them a golden opportunity to do so. Indeed, during their short stay in power, with few resources and little help, the rag-tag semi-literate Taliban carried out major societal reforms in Afghanistan - reforms that the mighty British and the Russian empires failed to introduce earlier in the last century.
The Taliban almost completely stopped the cultivation of opium in a land where harsh climate and abysmal irrigation facilities did not allow farmers to grow any cash crop. In a highly male-chauvinist land where for almost a century women were treated as chattel at the command of men and for their pleasure, the Taliban made sure that women were not treated as the plaything of men and that sexual promiscuity in society was eliminated. Extreme lawlessness and brutalities by the tribal warlords towards the poor and powerless were also eradicated.
However, after the Taliban achieved these successes in a remarkably short period of three years, instead of re-charting their strategy, they gave in to the insane demands of the extremists from their ranks and their outside advisers, who wanted to impose extremist interpretations of Islam’s basics on the society. Take for example their overly strict attitude towards women. Stopping women from working outside their homes, obstructing women from acquiring higher/professional education, punishing women who did not wear head-to-toe burqa rather than hijb in public, ignoring the helplessness and basic needs of women who were the sole supporters of their families owing to the death of men in their families in recent wars were steps that could not be condoned but only censured. Even in the early history of puritan Islam, such conditions were hardly ever imposed on women.
In Muslim societies some practices have always been farz (obligatory), while some practices have been sunnah (desirable options to observe). But the Taliban made many sunnah practices compulsory and those not observing them were punished severely. For instance, men not wearing beards and people listening to music or enjoying/participating in performing arts were taken to task by the state. The police got out of control but the Taliban government declined to discipline them. The demolition of the Buddha statues in Bamian despite worldwide appeals, including appeals from many well-meaning Islamic scholars, flew in the face of highly tolerant practices of earlier Muslim rulers, like Hazrat Omar and Sultan Saladdin, who upon vanquishing their Christian enemies, made sure that Christian churches were not harmed and Christians were allowed to practice their religion and rituals.
Indeed, the Taliban had a great opportunity to become great reformers, but by not controlling the extremists among them or extremists who came from other countries to help them, they threw away that opportunity.
Rather than cooperating and coordinating their activities with Iran, a country that had made major Islamic reforms using Islamic methods, and that had faced terrible opposition from Western countries for many, many years, they entered into an unwarranted confrontation with Tehran. Taliban’s hostilities with Iran created substantial friction between Iran and Pakistan and hurt not only these two countries but also the entire Muslim world.
Taliban should have realized that Afghanistan, being a war-ravaged country, needed help in equal measure from both Iran and Pakistan, its two big neighours, in order to be successful. Instead they became headstrong and thought that extreme interpretations of Islamic teachings alone will help them against odds. While they demonstrated great diplomatic ability at uniting Afghanistan and its very diverse tribal society, often by negotiation, they threw caution and tactfulness to the wind and instead resorted to hardheadedness.
Today an overwhelming majority of Muslims all over the planet feels deep sadness at the tragedy that befell the attempts of the Muslims of Afghanistan to reform and make their country strong by applying the egalitarian Islamic practices. They are sad at the ignominious failure of the Taliban movement that had showed so much promise for the whole world, but that only served to inflict so many fatal wounds on itself.