Chapter 2 continues…

The earliest sign of the Taliban’s worth to Pakistan was in its role in rescuing a Pakistani trade convoy bound to Central Asia through Kandahar and Herat, which was captured en route by local warlords in October 1994. This convoy was organised by Naseerullah Babar, Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister, to test the viability of transporting goods via Southern Afghanistan.

Following this success, the Taliban rapidly moved on to and captured Kandahar, cleared the chains from the roads, set up a one- toll system for trucks entering Afghanistan at Spin Baldak and patrolled the highway from Pakistan. In December 1994, the first Pakistani convoy of 50 trucks carrying raw cotton from Turkmenistan arrived in Quetta.

Besides the military prowess of the group, a number of other factors also contributed towards Pakistan shifting its support from Hekmatyar to the Taliban. Their social composition, religious and ethnic ties with Pakistan and popularity within Afghanistan— especially in comparison to the contempt and disgust with which the other mujahideen commanders and warlords were viewed— generated the belief within Pakistan that it could prove to be the ideal anti-India, pro-Pakistan Islamist client regime that they desired in Afghanistan.


As evident from Pakistan’s equation with the Rabbani- Massoud administration, Pakistan strongly believed that Pashtuns were the only ethnic group in Afghanistan over which it could hope to have some leverage.

At the same time, Pakistan was keen to support Pashtun Islamists, who could dent any ethnic nationalist sentiments among Pashtuns. The Taliban, essentially a Sunni Islamic Ghilzai Pashtun-dominated movement with strong linkages to the Deobandi and Wahhabi school of Islam, fit this role perfectly. The Taliban’s origins could be traced to the Pakistani madrasas, which had sprung up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during the late 1970s and 1980s for the purpose of educating and training students, who could then take part in the struggle against Soviet Union.

To be continued…