JULY 17, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 2

God's Militia
A riveting chronicle of Afghanistan's Taliban
By MICHAEL FATHERS

ALSO IN TIME COVER: Rethinking the Riddle As repression and modernization take their toll on an ancient culture, some believers look to the newly exiled Karmapa as the best chance for breaking the impasse with China • Interview: The Dalai Lama says he still has hope • Dissent: A nun's tale of arrest and torture • Viewpoint: Both sides must compromise before it's too late • Photo Essay: Web-only exclusive--photographs of a forgotten homeland CAMBODIA: Smoke Rings the Registers One man's exploitation is another's development program. Big Tobacco isn't making people healthier, just a whole lot richer INDIA: Pretty Girls All in a Row A winning streak in international pageants encourages middle-class women to flout traditions and flaunt their beauty BOOKS: A remarkable American activist in India • God's Militia: A riveting chronicle of Afghanistan's Taliban SPOTLIGHT MILESTONES TRAVEL WATCH: Finding Rustic Charm Down on the Farm

The promiscuous way in which the United States jumps from conflict to conflict without considering the long-term consequences can be seen clearly and tragically in Afghanistan, where Washington supported—and armed—groups of simple tribesmen as they fought the might of the Soviet army. But when Moscow pulled out in defeat in 1989, the Americans walked away, too, leaving behind a devastated country awash with modern weapons, a traumatized population and rival groups fighting one another for control.

From this chaos emerged a militia known as the Taliban ("Students of Islam"). They were welcomed at first by Afghans because they brought an element of stability, but feared when they began purging the country of alien influences and set about imposing an uncompromising regime based on their own interpretation of Islam. So what's new? Afghan ethnic groups have been fighting one another for hundreds of years. The difference today is that Afghanistan's instability has spread beyond its borders and to every other nation that has tried to intervene.

Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (I.B. Tauris; 216 pages) is a startling and riveting account of a religious movement few outsiders understand and a country everyone wants to forget. As Rashid, a leading Pakistani journalist and commentator on Central Asian affairs, points out, the legacy of wanton foreign intervention in Afghanistan is beginning to take its toll, especially in Pakistan, where the forces unleashed by Islamic fundamentalism during the Afghan conflict are threatening to tear the country apart. The Central Asian nations also worry about a fundamentalist spillover. Even the U.S. lives in fear of Osama bin Laden and his followers who shelter in the ruins of Afghanistan. Rashid's book is a catalogue of missed opportunities, lost innocence, despair and awful hubris in what has become the most dangerous country in Central Asia.

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