{"id":306243,"date":"2010-02-10T18:48:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T23:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/pakistan\/?p=4681"},"modified":"2010-02-10T18:48:43","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T23:48:43","slug":"%e2%80%9cmy-life-with-the-taliban%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-on-study-and-islamic-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/306243","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMy Life with the Taliban\u201d \u2013 on study and Islamic values"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zaeef\"In\u00a0\u00a0“My Life with the Taliban”<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0Abdul Salam Zaeef — who fought with\u00a0the\u00a0mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later served\u00a0in the Taliban government\u00a0before it was ousted in 2001 — writes of how he longed to\u00a0escape\u00a0the trappings of office and instead\u00a0follow in the footsteps of his father as the\u00a0Imam of a mosque, learning and teaching the Koran.<\/p>\n

“It is work that has no connection with the world’s affairs. It is a calling of intellectual dignity away from the dangers and temptations of power. All my life, even as a boy,\u00a0I was always happiest when studying and learning things. To work in government positions means a life surrounded by corruption and injustice, and therein is found the misery of mankind,” he writes in his memoirs, newly translated and\u00a0edited by\u00a0Alex Strick van Linschoten<\/a> and Felix Kuehn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zaeef became best known as the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — he was then\u00a0arrested and sent to Guantanamo — and his memoirs provide a unique insight into the\u00a0developments which led to the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.\u00a0 That alone makes it a must-read, providing an alternative and very personal account to set alongside Western concepts of the Taliban —\u00a0more closely associated with their human rights record, their treatment of women, and their refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

But the ideological heart of the book lies in his belief in the value of study (Talib means student) and his unswerving faith that only an\u00a0Islamic system based on the implementation of sharia\u00a0can drag Afghanistan out of its current misery.\u00a0\u00a0Given the current discussion about whether a political settlement can be reached with the Taliban<\/a>, it is perhaps his representation of this internal faith, as much as the outward trappings of jihad, that merit the most serious attention.<\/p>\n

Zaeef was born in 1968 to a poor but educated family in Afghanistan, was orphaned as a boy, and later fled with his relatives to Pakistan shortly before the Soviet invasion in 1979.\u00a0\u00a0At the age of 15, without telling his family, he ran off to join the jihad against the Soviets.\u00a0 Countering the commonly held view that the movement\u00a0emerged — or was\u00a0created by Pakistan — only in 1994, he writes that the Taliban were\u00a0very much present and active\u00a0in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

A group of religious scholars and students, they stood out from the other mujahideen because of their\u00a0piety and their\u00a0commitment that those who fought with them must continue their studies even on the battlefield.\u00a0“The Taliban were different,” Zaeef writes.\u00a0“Jihad was not just about fighting; in our view there had to be a strong educational perspective as well as a provision for justice.”<\/p>\n

Despite the gruelling conditions, the injuries and deaths, these early years had an innocence to them, forging bonds\u00a0among the Taliban that would endure through decades of war.\u00a0\u00a0“It’s hard to believe, maybe, but we were happy.”\u00a0 One night, he remembers\u00a0Mullah Muhammad Omar,\u00a0who lost an eye\u00a0in the fighting and later became the leader of the movement,\u00a0singing a\u00a0“ghazal” – a form of poetry more commonly associated nowadays with Sufi Islam than with the austere brand of Islam represented by the Taliban.<\/p>\n

During the descent into civil war which followed the Soviet withdrawal and subsequent collapse of the Soviet-backed government, the Taliban\u00a0faded into the background. But as\u00a0Afghanistan\u00a0collapsed into\u00a0chaos and lawlessness, the former fighters living in and around Kandahar\u00a0decided in 1994 — after months of discussion — to try to impose order.\u00a0 (This is a narrative which is not forgotten in southern Afghanistan today, where support for the Taliban\u00a0derives in part from a view that they are better placed to restore justice and security than the representatives of the central government in Kabul,\u00a0seen as weak and corrupt.)<\/p>\n

Mullah Omar was chosen as the leader of the movement and Zaeef became one of his most loyal\u00a0followers.\u00a0 One of his most common habits, writes Zaeef, was to listen carefully to every side of an argument.\u00a0“He would listen to everybody with focus\u00a0and respect for as long as they\u00a0needed to talk, and would never seek to cut them off. After he had listened, he then would answer with ordered coherent thoughts.”<\/p>\n

The movement founded in the late autumn of\u00a01994\u00a0was committed to implementing sharia,\u00a0prosecuting vice and promoting virtue — and when it took control of Kabul, it did just that. Zaeef writes with very little defensiveness about how women were no longer allowed to work, instead stressing how the Taliban restored security. He also cites examples of how — through what he\u00a0sees as the correct\u00a0implementation of sharia —\u00a0convicted criminals were offered\u00a0both\u00a0justice and forgiveness.<\/p>\n

In\u00a02000, Zaeef learned of his\u00a0appointment as ambassador to Pakistan on the radio. (Mullah Omar’s\u00a0ability to listen to all sides of the argument appears to have escaped him at this point\u00a0since Zaeef made clear he did not want to go, but his loyalty to his leader was such that he had no choice.)<\/p>\n

Right from the beginning of his time in Islamabad, Zaeef\u00a0was deeply wary\u00a0of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency,\u00a0suspecting it of double-dealing with the Taliban’s own enemies in Afghanistan. This included the\u00a0Northern Alliance, the Afghan\u00a0opposition movement\u00a0which was\u00a0then — according to Pakistan — backed by Iran, India and Russia to try to destabilise the Pakistan-backed Taliban government in Kabul. (Readers are allowed to be confused here and rest assured:\u00a0 everyone else is too.)<\/p>\n

“In my dealings with them (the ISI) I tried not to be so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out,” Zaeef\u00a0writes.<\/p>\n

Zaeef suggests — but does not say — that\u00a0Pakistan might have been worried that the\u00a0Taliban in Afghanistan\u00a0would\u00a0try to\u00a0export their own version of sharia law to a country whose identity has always been torn between the pro-Western secular stance of its elite, its South Asian roots, and its commitment to Islam. He notes only that Mullah Omar wrote to then President Pervez Musharraf\u00a0at the beginning of 2001 calling on him to\u00a0implement sharia law and give Pakistan an Islamic government.<\/p>\n

As ambassador to Pakistan, he was the man who received foreign delegations begging him to stop the destruction of the Bamyan\u00a0Buddha statues<\/a> — giant statues of Buddha carved out of rock which were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001.\u00a0 Pay close attention to what he writes about this since it happened before 9\/11. Stripped of the\u00a0politics which followed the attacks on New York and Washington, it may give a better insight into whether Taliban and Western thinking can ever be reconciled.<\/p>\n

Zaeef recounts that a\u00a0Japanese delegation suggested that the\u00a0statues — built during the days when parts of Afghanistan were at the heart of a great Buddhist kingdom —\u00a0could either be covered up or removed piece-by-piece and reassembled in Japan. He argued in turn that Afghans had\u00a0evolved from\u00a0the days it believed in Buddhism and had since discovered the “true religion”. \u00a0“Furthermore, the Buddha statues are made out of stone by the hands of men. They hold no real value for religion, so why were they so anxious to preserve them?”\u00a0 He says\u00a0he believes the destruction of the statues — although\u00a0he was not party to the decision — was within the bounds of sharia. At the same time, he also says\u00a0“the destruction was unnecessary and a case of bad timing”.<\/p>\n

Even before the 9\/11 attacks,\u00a0the Taliban came under pressure to hand over Osama bin Laden to America over the 1998 bombings of\u00a0U.S. embassies in Africa. But Zaeef insists — and here is where the Taliban’s legalistic and intellectual\u00a0approach comes to the fore –that Afghanistan could not hand over bin Laden since it had no extradition treaty with the United States. The Taliban — and to read Zaeef they sound still like students debating a point of law of law — suggested instead that bin Laden should be put\u00a0on trial. If the United States did not accept a trial in Afghanistan, he writes, the alternative was for three, or four, Islamic countries to put him on trial and let Washington submit the evidence; even to\u00a0use the U.N. court in The Hague as a face-saving compromise for both sides.<\/p>\n

Such was the naivety of the Taliban approach — or so you are led to understand — that even after 9\/11 Mullah Omar believed that there was less than a 10 percent chance that America would attack Afghanistan, thinking\u00a0that it would first meet his demand that Washington held a formal investigation and supplied evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in 9\/11.<\/p>\n

It was not until Zaeef\u00a0was detained\u00a0in early 2002 that he fully understood what was going on. In the words of\u00a0the Pakistani official\u00a0who\u00a0arrested him:\u00a0 “Your Excellency, you are no longer an Excellency! America is a superpower. Did you not know that? No one can defeat it, nor can they negotiate with it. America wants to question you and we are here to hand you over to the USA.”<\/p>\n

The arrest led to long years of humiliation and degradation in jails first in\u00a0Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo – a story which deserves a\u00a0separate article in itself.\u00a0 For now, here is how he\u00a0recounts being handed over to the Americans near Peshawar after\u00a0being driven there from Islamabad.\u00a0As soon as he was handed over, he was attacked and his clothes ripped with knives. “Pakistani and American soldiers stood around me. Behind these soldiers,\u00a0I could see military vehicles in the distance, one of which had a general’s number plate.”<\/p>\n

“The Pakistani soldiers were all staring as the Americans hit me and tore the remaining clothes off my body. Eventually I was completely naked, and the Pakistani soldiers — the defenders of the Holy Koran — shamelessly watched me with smiles on their faces, saluting this disgraceful action of the Americans.”<\/p>\n

“That moment,” he says,\u00a0“is written in my memory like a stain on my soul.”<\/p>\n

Finally freed from Guantanamo without charge on\u00a0Sept. 11 2005, he returned to Kabul where he now lives under government protection. He continues to believe that a solution to Afghanistan can be found only by\u00a0respecting Islamic\u00a0values and Afghan traditions, and while he would like peace for a country which has suffered three decades of war, is sceptical about whether this can be achieved.<\/p>\n

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he says, would like to bring peace but also to remain in power, and therefore does not know how to achieve it. \u00a0Karzai came to power the wrong way, through foreign backing, without acquiring the wisdom and trusted advisers of a man who had\u00a0earned his role as a leader\u00a0in Afghanistan.\u00a0“Karzai is trying to find a solution and one can feel that he is not a cruel man,” he writes, noting that he had met him three or four times\u00a0at\u00a0Karzai’s invitation.\u00a0 “He can play a crucial role. But Afghanistan’s problems are going on above his head. He is just\u00a0a pawn in the hands of the main player.”<\/p>\n

America, he says, should seek a real peace in Afghanistan and let Afghans decide how it should be run rather than imposing a system of government from outside.\u00a0 “Perhaps it is true that the Americans want peace as well.\u00a0 But it is their own peace on their own terms.”<\/p>\n

Even after eight years of war, the United States offered peace accompanied by threats. The administration of President Barack Obama appeared to be making all the same mistakes as its predecessor by sending an extra 30,000 troops. Obama had failed to understand that after eight years of war, force was not a solution. “And yet still they send more troops. The current conflict is a political conflict and as such cannot be solved by the gun.”<\/p>\n

(File photo of Zaeef as ambassador; shortly after he applied for political asylum in Pakistan in 2001)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0\u00a0“My Life with the Taliban”,\u00a0\u00a0Abdul Salam Zaeef — who fought with\u00a0the\u00a0mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later served\u00a0in the Taliban government\u00a0before it was ousted in 2001 — writes of how he longed to\u00a0escape\u00a0the trappings of office and instead\u00a0follow in the footsteps of his father as the\u00a0Imam of a mosque, learning and teaching the Koran. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}