Word: taliban
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Dates: during 1996-1996
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Even before the Taliban's victorious drive on Kabul, the ousted government had long insisted that the student-led band of Muslim warriors were actively backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and by some members of the country's powerful military. The motive: gaining some influence over a neighbor with whom it shares a long and exceedingly porous border. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has denied any involvement, but in late September, Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan's Interior Minister, flew to Afghanistan to work out a settlement between the Taliban and the most powerful of the Afghan warlords. While...
...fighter and rise to a high position of influence." He was transported across the border by Pakistani military vehicles and, once in Kabul, received orders and money from the senior Pakistani officer in Kabul, a man named Naser. Zai was in the forefront of the Taliban troops who swept into Kabul on Sept. 27 and pushed the armies of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former government's army commander, into the hills surrounding the capital. Zai was captured Oct. 13 near the Salang Pass, the high-water mark of the Taliban effort to drive Massoud's forces from the region...
...Charikar, where Mohammed Zahid Pashtun, 26, another Pakistani fighter, was stationed. A devout Muslim and former engineering student, Zahid says he signed up for combat duty with a Pakistani intelligence officer and was given 40 days of training. He eventually reached Charikar, where Afghan civilians, who initially welcomed the Taliban, revolted after just 11 days of repressive rule, outraged by a draconian regime that bars women from working outside the home. Also outlawed are movies, music and chess. Captured, he now says he regrets his role. "I heard and saw how the Taliban treated people. If I get home again...
While Massoud is eager to drive them out, the Taliban have sworn they will not leave Kabul. Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, is aided by the Taliban's plummeting popularity, but the key to his offensive is his tenuous alliance with Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek warlord, who is with Massoud's forces battling the Taliban near Kabul. The tribal nature of the conflict has always complicated the fighting. Last week the Taliban, mostly ethnic Pashtun, were going house to house in Kabul in search of Tajiks and Uzbeks. Pakistan's meddling can only worsen the hostilities, and the lines...
Afghanistan's new rulers, the Taliban, may have firm notions about Islam [WORLD, Oct. 14], but I beg to disagree that calling for the imprisonment of women in their homes enforces Islamic law. Islam gives equal status to women and men. I invite Taliban clerics or any Islamic scholars to prove that Islamic law prohibits women from going outside the house to get an education or take jobs for their survival or for extra income. Allah gave equal rights to women 14 centuries ago, but Muslim men took them away...