Word: talibanize
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Dates: during 1996-1996
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...their clothes, the color of their skin, their very language mark them as outsiders. They are not Afghans. They are Pakistanis, captured while fighting against the forces of the Afghan government that was driven from the capital five weeks ago by the group of Islamic fighters known as the Taliban. The presence of these foreign supporters of the Taliban, claim officials at the prison, is hard proof that Pakistan, a U.S. ally, has arrogated for itself a more extensive role in Afghanistan's war than has ever been acknowledged...
...Taliban acknowledged only 70 arrests for looting and defended their actions as necessary to transform Afghanistan into a devout Islamic state. But it is still a shadowy one. Last week the Taliban's leader, Maulana Mohammad Omar, a one-eyed former cleric who is also known as Commander of the Faithful, had yet to make an appearance, running the capital from his base 300 miles to the south in Kandahar. And the Taliban aren't finished fighting. The forces of ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani, led by former Army Chief Ahmad Shah Massoud, are holed up 31 miles north of Kabul...
...government was recognized almost immediately by Pakistan. That move surprised few in Kabul, where it was widely believed that Islamabad has been quietly sending substantial support across the border to the Taliban--an allegation both sides deny. "Pakistan is not assisting the Taliban," Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told TIME last week. "If the Taliban could unite Afghanistan and end the factionalism, it will be a boon for the region." On the other hand, a Pakistan led by a female Prime Minister cannot be sanguine about a neighboring government exporting zealous, old-style Islamic ideals. For its part, the U.S. cares...
Russia, however, views the prospect of a fundamentalist Islamic Afghanistan with undisguised alarm, particularly the projection of Taliban rule or influence into pro-Moscow Tajikistan, whose border with Afghanistan is already patrolled by Russian soldiers. Last week Boris Yeltsin sent his Prime Minister to a hurriedly arranged meeting of leaders from four former Soviet--and predominantly Muslim--republics in Central Asia. Security Chief Alexander Lebed announced that Russia should help prop up Rabbani, though it is hard to imagine a Russian return to Afghanistan...
Residents of Kabul were generally too cautious to express concern about the Taliban out loud, but they certainly had reason to wonder: at the first Taliban-attended Friday prayer meeting, soldiers forced passersby into mosques at gunpoint. At the Malali High School, Siad Bibi knew that her life had turned a terrible corner. She was a cleaner until the Taliban decreed that she could not leave her house, which is right next door, without her husband, who is old and ill. "Now I have no work. I can't go outside," she says. She adds that the situation is even...