Review: Wise and Frightening

Reviewed Work(s): Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia by Ahmed
Rashid
Review by: William Maley
Source: The World Today, Vol. 56, No. 5 (May, 2000), p. 27
Published by: Royal Institute of International Affairs
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40476399
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BOOKS -THE TALIBAN

Wise and Frightening

William Maley

RASHID HAS LONG the city'. Likewise, in

been known as an author of August 1998, in Mazar-i
works of the utmost Sharif, they conducted
distinction dealing with what Rashid calls a

politics and society in South and Central 'brutal massacre,

Asia. His new book on the Taliban will be genocidal in its ferocity'.
required reading not only for specialists, Human security, it should
but for anyone who wishes to learn how hardly need repeating,
the wider world contributed to the demands more than a
emergence of a pariah regime from the terrorised population.
wreckage of the Afghans' courageous Third, he documents
struggle against the armed forces of the the quite astonishing
Soviet Union. If there is a central lesson in extent to which

Rashid 's book, it is that the Afghans have Washington's policy

been shamefully misused by their 'friends'. towards Afghanistan
His analysis also makes it clear that was dominated by the
ordinary Afghans deserve vastly more narrow-minded and
understanding and compassion than they bizarre aspirations of
have received. US energy corporations.
The picture he paints of
DISMAL TALE maladroitness in analysis
The book falls into three natural and policy formulation
sections. In the first, Rashid sheds new is truly devastating, and
light on the origins of the Taliban move- demonstrates in searing
ment. In the second, he explores its ideo- detail how Washington
logical roots, highlighting the movement's slept its way through the
pathogenic character. In the third, he rise of Osama Bin Laden,
provides the fullest account yet of the ways whose activities under

in which the machinations of energy com- Taliban protection now

panies have affected the politics of West cause it such angst.
Asia in the aftermath of the disintegration
of the Soviet Union. The tale he tells is a that it has any favourites in Afghanistan. GLOOMY
dismal one, replete with lessons for policy- This is not to say that Pakistan controls Rashid's conclusions are gloomy.
makers seeking to navigate the shoals of the Taliban on a day-to-day basis, but Change or moderation within the Taliban
this complex and threatening region. rather that the fate of the movement as a movement are unlikely: 'The Taliban are
First, he brings out very clearly the whole lies in its hands. Islamabad keeps essentially caught between a tribal society
extent to which the Taliban phenomenon the Taliban supplied with resources for which they try to ignore and the need for
embodies Pakistan's desire to dominate its military campaigns - such as the a state structure which they refuse to
Afghanistan. In October 1994, he notes, $38.5 million provided for the mid-1998 establish'. Furthermore, 'if the war in
the Pakistan Interior Minister travelled offensives. Afghanistan continues to be ignored we
into Afghan territory with a group of Second, he demonstrates in great can only expect the worst. Pakistan
foreign ambassadors without even inform- detail, if any more were needed, just how will face a Taliban-style Islamic
ing the Afghan gov- extreme have been the policy prescriptionsrevolution, which will destabilise it
ernment, despite the of the Taliban. But he also dispels the mythand the entire region'.
is Associate
fact that it was repre- that the Taliban have brought 'security' to These are wise, if frightening, words.
Professor of
sented by an embassy Afghanistan, a claim richly in need of But is anybody listening in the capitals
Politics, University
College, University
in Islamabad. This challenge. Too often this security amounts that matter? On the record of the recent
of New South blasé approach to to little more than freedom of road move- past, one would have to be an optimist
Wales, Australia. His Afghan sovereignty ment for international agencies, and to think so. WT
most recent work is has been a hallmark incidentally for smugglers and drug
The Foreign Policy of Pakistani action traffickers as well.
of the Taliban (New
ever since, despite Rashid notes that in April 1996 alone, Taliban: Islam, Oil an
York: Council on
occasional and the Taliban fired more than eight hundred Game In Central Asi
Foreign Relations
Press, 2000).
implausible attempts rockets into Kabul, 'killing 180 civilians, Published by IB Tauri
by Pakistan to deny injuring 550 and destroying large tracts of 274 pages £12.95 pbk

THE WORLD TODAY | May 2000 27

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