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Omar loyalists vow they`ll rise again : Hindustan Times
Ardent loyalists gathered this week in the Taliban`s war cemetery to pay their respects to fallen comrades.
Ardent loyalists gathered this week in the Taliban's war cemetery to pay their respects to fallen comrades.
Crushed in battle, these die-hard Taliban supporters stood and spoke together quietly on a chilly winter morning, vowing to relaunch their movement.
"We are certain the Taliban can come back because the heart of the people is with them and people do not like the present government," said Raz Mohammad, 21, who runs a store in Kandahar's bazaar. "The Taliban brought Islamic laws. They listened to everyone's problems and solved them," said Mohammad, one of several men who visited the graveyard this week. Sakhi Dad, a former Taliban fighter who fought two years ago against Northern Alliance fighters in Herat, said, "I was very sad when we were ordered to surrender, but we obeyed."
Those feelings are strong, and these men say they could grow across the southern desert plains where Omar founded his extremist Muslim movement seven years ago.
While the Taliban now lies in tatters, the militia's supporters note that it began a short time ago with a handful of religious students, few resources and only basic weapons. There were no tanks, rocket launchers or surface-to-air missiles. "When Omar started it was just three men with grenades. Then it was 10, then 100 and then it was thousands," Janan, 31, a goat and sheep trader from a nearby village, said while visiting the graveyard on Tuesday. Asked how the Taliban grew to the point it captured power in 1996, Janan said: "God gave them power to rule the country."
Others cite less spiritual reasons for the hard-line Islamic militia's success, and for its comeback prospects. People living along the main trading route linking Afghanistan to Pakistan 75 miles south of here say the period before the Taliban emerged is remembered as a time of corrupt warlords and rampant thieving. They fear those days could now return.
In an interview outside his office at the border earlier this month, Muhallah Shafi, Pakistan's chief civil servant in the frontier town of Chaman, conceded, "From a law and order point of view, nobody compares to the Taliban." As they prepare for the installation of the new interim government in Kabul on Saturday, many Afghans there and in other cities are rejoicing at the defeat of the Taliban. They are no longer living under strict Islamic law that banned women from working and studying, called for the amputation of thieves' hands and jailed men for trimming their beards.
Others remember a different Taliban: an organisation that brought order to an intolerably violent society. Some say they will miss that feeling of security. "The Taliban was the only powerful force that could deal with all the tribes and warlords," said Ata Ur Rahman, medical superintendent of the Al-Khidmat Al-Hajeri Hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, shortly before the Taliban surrendered Kandahar on December 6.
"We are certain the Taliban can come back because the heart of the people is with them and people do not like the present government," said Raz Mohammad, 21, who runs a store in Kandahar's bazaar. "The Taliban brought Islamic laws. They listened to everyone's problems and solved them," said Mohammad, one of several men who visited the graveyard this week. Sakhi Dad, a former Taliban fighter who fought two years ago against Northern Alliance fighters in Herat, said, "I was very sad when we were ordered to surrender, but we obeyed."
Those feelings are strong, and these men say they could grow across the southern desert plains where Omar founded his extremist Muslim movement seven years ago.
While the Taliban now lies in tatters, the militia's supporters note that it began a short time ago with a handful of religious students, few resources and only basic weapons. There were no tanks, rocket launchers or surface-to-air missiles. "When Omar started it was just three men with grenades. Then it was 10, then 100 and then it was thousands," Janan, 31, a goat and sheep trader from a nearby village, said while visiting the graveyard on Tuesday. Asked how the Taliban grew to the point it captured power in 1996, Janan said: "God gave them power to rule the country."
Others cite less spiritual reasons for the hard-line Islamic militia's success, and for its comeback prospects. People living along the main trading route linking Afghanistan to Pakistan 75 miles south of here say the period before the Taliban emerged is remembered as a time of corrupt warlords and rampant thieving. They fear those days could now return.
In an interview outside his office at the border earlier this month, Muhallah Shafi, Pakistan's chief civil servant in the frontier town of Chaman, conceded, "From a law and order point of view, nobody compares to the Taliban." As they prepare for the installation of the new interim government in Kabul on Saturday, many Afghans there and in other cities are rejoicing at the defeat of the Taliban. They are no longer living under strict Islamic law that banned women from working and studying, called for the amputation of thieves' hands and jailed men for trimming their beards.
Others remember a different Taliban: an organisation that brought order to an intolerably violent society. Some say they will miss that feeling of security. "The Taliban was the only powerful force that could deal with all the tribes and warlords," said Ata Ur Rahman, medical superintendent of the Al-Khidmat Al-Hajeri Hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, shortly before the Taliban surrendered Kandahar on December 6.