Abstract
In April, a nondescript outdoor swimming pool was reopened after several years of neglect. Pool openings normally don't receive press attention. But this was no ordinary pool–it was located at the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, Afghanistan. As one of the few leisure facilities in the Taliban-controlled country, the opening was reported by press outlets throughout the world. After all, asked reporters, hadn't the Taliban issued fatwas against all fun things, including music, dancing, picnics, and pigeon racing?
Even before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Taliban was the international community's enfant terrible. Despite the Taliban's reputation and the sustained press coverage it has received, surprisingly little is known about the details of the movement or the political and social conditions that helped give rise to it. In Reaping the Whirlwind, Michael Griffin helps fill in the blanks, providing a rich portrait of this highly secretive organization.
Griffin, a journalist who spent several years in Afghanistan as an information consultant for the United Nations Children Fund, is an engaging writer. In describing the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, he writes that “Moscow tore off its colonial crown in 1991 and stormed off the central Asian stage.” This eloquent style pulls the reader into a tale that is filled with high drama from the outset. The author opens his narrative with a breath-taking description of the Taliban's entrance on the international stage, following their capture of Kabul and their brutal killing of then-President Mohammed Na-jibullah in September 1996.
Most Western media stories focus on Afghanistan's dire domestic situation, specifically the lack of human rights and the country's abysmal living conditions. Although Griffin closely examines the internal situation, the book's greatest strength is its analysis of the Taliban's place in Asian politics as well as in the broader international context.
Pakistan's relationship with the movement is extensive. Its Afghan policy is a Cold War relic, a legacy of the Soviet invasion and U.S. support for the mu-jahideen. Pakistan's secretive Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which was the CIA's arms conduit to the mujahideen, continues to determine Islamabad's policy towards the country and purportedly funnels economic assistance to the Taliban.
Islamabad has been criticized–both inside and outside the country–for supporting the Taliban in an effort to curry favor with the regime, which would give Pakistan a semblance of strategic depth vis-à-vis its arch-rival India. Griffin cites a phrase used in Pakistan to warn those who would develop too close an association with the Taliban: “You cannot buy an Afghan, but you can rent one at a very high price.” The author also quotes Abdul Rahman Ghafoozai, a former Afghan foreign minister, who warned Pakistan: “Those who would ignite the fire in our country … will burn themselves.”
Until the September 11 attacks on the United States, U.S. policy toward the country had stumbled along blindly, torn by a number of competing interests. Although Washington initially welcomed the Taliban as a force for stability, it expressed outrage over the regime's gender policies. Saudi militant Osama bin Laden's presence in the country and Afghan heroin flooding U.S. streets further angered U.S. policy-makers. Still, the United States was loath to cut off all ties to its erstwhile Cold War companions in arms, not least because of pressure from the energy lobby, which wants to tap the potentially lucrative Caspian oil reserves by running a pipeline across Afghanistan. Griffin sums up the consequences of Washington's failure to resist intervening in Afghanistan affairs, writing, “Far from washing its hands of its Afghan proxy after the termination of direct diplomacy in 1992, it had, in fact, brought the vengeful bastard of its Cold War affair back into the happy home.”
The Taliban has also reawakened fears in Moscow of Russia's “soft underbelly.” Russia is terrified that Islamic fundamentalism could gain a foothold in its southern regions and former republics. Griffin illustrates this fear with a photo caption from a military newspaper: “The sentiment was exploited in a photomontage in Krasnaya Zvezda … which showed a woman in a burkha walking down a Moscow street: ‘It could come to this,’ read the caption, ‘if the army continues to be seriously weakened.’”
Griffin also explores the Taliban's oppressive treatment of women, which has been greeted with global disbelief and revulsion. He quotes a senior Taliban leader, who says: “There [are] only two places for [an] Afghan woman; in her husband's house and in the graveyard.”
The author enriches his narrative with several humorous anecdotes. For example, he describes the escape of a Russian airplane crew that had been arrested by the Taliban. The Taliban guards were “so mortified” by the escape, writes Griffin, that they “could not eat their lunch.” In another anecdote, the author describes Sayed Jaffer Naderi, the leader of the Shia Ismailis–“a significant and tenacious minority in the Northern Provinces”–as “a Birmingham-educated former Hell's Angel with a taste for hashish, heavy metal rock, and Pekinese dogs.”
Reaping the Whirlwind is a comprehensive and readable alternative to the many academic analyses that have been published in the last couple of years. These studies tend to offer relatively little new information and have instead attempted to analyze the Taliban through Western theoretical lenses, which are often inadequate when describing the complex politics and traditions of Afghanistan. Griffin shows that the movement is not simply a gaggle of religious zealots hell-bent on fanaticism, but a complex and nuanced political force. He provides the reader with a comprehensive account of one of the most fascinating and under-researched political stories of the last half century, explaining how over a period of 10 years the Taliban went from being an obscure religious movement to the dominant political force in Afghanistan.
Along with Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Griffin's work will be a seminal text on the Taliban. The book should be read by anyone–student or academic, journalist or activist–who wishes to better understand the Taliban's complexity. Above all, it should serve as a stark warning to political leaders, foreign ministries, and intelligence agencies that wish to forge geopolitical marriages of convenience. Such unions may seem like a good idea at the time, but they may also cause untold problems following the divorce.