In the Villages, the Taliban’s Absolute Hold on Power Begins to Slip

Four years after imposing one of the world’s harshest Islamic regimes, the armed movement known as the Taliban is beginning to lose its grip.

In villages across Afghanistan, families that once offered up their sons to fight in the country’s long civil war are now refusing--and even battling to keep the clerics at bay. In the cities, Afghans are resisting the harsh edicts enforced by whip-wielding Taliban police. Within the movement itself, the Islamic zeal that inspired Taliban troops to bring order to a fragmented land is giving way to bribery and theft.

For the first time since the movement swept to power in 1996, many Afghans are openly resisting Taliban rule.

“Hundreds of people in this village are against the Taliban,” said Akhand, a 42-year-old farmer in this arid village in the country’s west. Like many Afghans, he uses one name. “In the beginning we supported them, but now they are defamed.”

Last month, Akhand and his neighbors fought a bloody two-day battle against Taliban troops when they came to take the village’s young men to fight in the civil war. Taliban troops crushed the village’s revolt--but only after they deployed helicopters, rocket launchers and more than 600 soldiers.

The revolt in Musa Qaleh is the most dramatic in a string of recent anti-Taliban actions, which have included bombings, riots and demonstrations. Most have occurred in the very regions where Afghans helped the Taliban take power four years ago, far from the front lines of the civil war, which is being fought mainly in the country’s north.

The deteriorating position of the Taliban poses a paradox for Western leaders: They have condemned the orthodox Islamic regime for violating human rights and are considering tightening economic sanctions, but many worry that no other group is capable of taking control. The civil war is locked in stalemate, and other resistance leaders are scattered in exile.

Western officials fear that if the Taliban loses its hold, Afghanistan could lapse into the anarchy of the early 1990s, when it fell prey to the murderous infighting of dozens of armed groups.

“There is no alternative to the Taliban,” said a senior Western aid official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “What we fear is a return to the rule of plundering commanders.”

In recent remarks before Congress, Karl F. Inderfurth, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for South Asia, declared that the Taliban had reached its “high-water mark” and was beset by internal dissent. Inderfurth said he was encouraged by recent diplomatic initiatives to end the war, but he offered no predictions on when--or how--the Taliban might be replaced.

“Afghans are giving up whatever hope they had for Taliban rule,” Inderfurth said.

The Taliban’s leaders, hardened by years of war, claim firm control of 90% of the country. They say they will soon capture the last sliver of Afghanistan’s northeast held by the rebels. Taliban leaders deny that most of the recent anti-government incidents took place.

“Every day I bathe in the river without my pistol,” said Mullah Abdul Karim Akhund, the Taliban’s governor in Musa Qaleh. “What better proof is there that the people love us?”

Yet, even the Taliban’s supreme leader seems to acknowledge the growing unpopularity of his movement. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive, one-eyed founder of the Taliban, recently blamed the Afghan people for the drought that has devastated the country.

“Some people in Afghanistan are not thankful for the Islamic Emirate and the Islamic system and are nurturing discontent, unnecessary prejudice and jealousy against it,” Omar said.

Such behavior, Omar said, may anger Allah and “prompt his tortures.”

In the Beginning, Conditions Improved

The Taliban took over the Afghan capital, Kabul, in 1996, and for a time it appeared likely to quell the anarchy that had engulfed the country since the pullout of the Soviet Union seven years earlier. With amazing speed, the Taliban subdued the many armed groups that had turned Kabul into a labyrinth of militia checkpoints and free-fire zones.

Driven by an Islamic fervor imported from the Pakistani religious schools where many had studied, the Taliban imposed a draconian brand of Islam. Among the edicts: Women may not work, girls may not learn, men may not shave. Violators are flogged, mutilated and killed in public ceremonies animated by readings from the Koran.

In interviews across the country, many Afghans say the trade-off was worth it--for a time. For the price of putting up with the Taliban’s harsh rule, they gained security and hope for peace. But for many, the deal is now off. With the country in ruins and the war dragging on, many Afghans have begun to openly rebel against the Taliban’s ironfisted ways.

Of all the factors behind the discontent, the biggest is the civil war, now in its 11th year. The conflict pits the Taliban against a force of mostly ethnic Tajiks led by Ahmed Shah Masoud, a hero against the Soviets. A ballyhooed Taliban offensive last summer ended in disaster, with thousands of white-turbaned soldiers dying in the valleys north of Kabul.

With the Taliban offensive against Masoud underway, many Afghans are refusing to fight. Reports around the country tell of Taliban soldiers frantically searching for manpower, pulling people from mosques and even holding up buses until young men step forward.

‘No One Wants to Fight for the Taliban’

Abdullah Nuzai, 35, was living in the village of Qalahbost in western Afghanistan when Taliban soldiers asked the local mullah to help draft young men to go to the front lines. The mullah posted a list of names on the wall of the mosque, and Nuzai’s name was on it.

Nuzai, who in four years has lost three cousins in the fighting, decided that he wasn’t going to fight. So did others: The people in his village took to the streets, Nuzai says, and killed three Taliban soldiers. Nuzai took a bus to Kabul, where he now sells watermelons from a cart in the city’s main bazaar.

“No one wants to fight for the Taliban anymore,” said Nuzai, who added that he fears for his life if captured. “They tell us our opponents are atheists, but everyone knows this is not a sacred fight.”

Some parents are so desperate to keep their sons out of battle that they are bribing the Taliban to stay away. One is Moghul Karim, a 50-year-old widow from the village of Ghowrband. When the Taliban tried to take her two sons, Mohammed and Fardeen, she gave the soldiers everything she had. When they kept coming back for more, she fled with her family to Kabul, where she now lives in a blasted building with shattered windows.

“I sold my dishes, my carpets, my earrings--I wept at their feet,” the woman, who uses the name Moghul, said as she sat on the floor in her empty house. “It was the same for all the people in my village. Everybody pays the Taliban.”

Still, Moghul didn’t get far enough away. Taliban officials in Kabul found her sons, and they, too, demanded money. Now, Moghul forks over $100 a month--half the money her family earns--to keep her boys out of battle. Like many Afghans interviewed for this story, Moghul says she supported the Taliban forces when they first seized power but now wishes that they would go away.

“There is no work, they have rebuilt nothing, the prices are so high,” Moghul said. “I was thinking they were good people. I was wrong. They have no goodness in their hearts.”

In Musa Qaleh, the battle began when Taliban officials upped the village’s quota for young men. Most years, they took 12. This year, they demanded 24. When the families refused, the Taliban shut off the irrigation to their fields. Last month, when a squad of Taliban soldiers came to try again, the villagers dusted off the guns they had used against the Soviets and went after the Taliban.

A huge battle erupted, with hundreds of Taliban troops arriving from as far as Kabul--250 miles away. The revolt was crushed, with 12 villagers and more than a half a dozen Taliban fighters dead. In the end, the Taliban left with 24 new soldiers.

“All they talk about is jihad,” said Abdul Samad, a 45-year-old farmer whose nephew was taken away. “Next time, I am going to have to give them my son.”

Frustration with the Taliban is growing so intense that many Afghans are beginning to reject the group’s medieval edicts. Mothers risk arrest by sending their daughters to underground schools. Satellite dishes are sold secretly to those willing to risk the ban on television. Young men gather around old cassette players, the volume turned down low.

Increasingly, women walk the city streets alone, their head-to-toe burkas wafting open in the breeze, their bare ankles and high-heeled shoes exposed. Two years ago, the burkas were fastened shut, the women escorted, the ankles covered. Even women wearing white socks were beaten for drawing attention to their ankles.

Today, so many women flout the rules that Taliban leaders insist that they never spoke of such things.

“We have always allowed women to walk the streets alone,” Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel snapped.

“The women are much more open with their burkas,” said Nafisa, a Kabul woman who asked that she be identified by only her first name. “Still, I am very afraid of the Taliban whip.”

Lately, the protests against the Taliban have begun to turn violent.

On most evenings at 6, the Taliban’s dreaded Vice and Virtue police interrupt the soccer match at the Kabul Sports Stadium to force the spectators to pray. People often complain that they have to pray without having completed their ablutions and that the 6 p.m. Taliban edict is stricter than what Islam requires. Still, the Vice and Virtue cops wade into the crowd and usually whip a few spectators until the rest begin to pray. Sometimes, the police go onto the field and drag off a soccer player for wearing shorts.

On July 1, the Taliban cops got a shock. When they began to whip a group of people in the stands, the crowd attacked them. The angry spectators, some shouting obscenities, tore off the signature white turbans of the Taliban police, beat the cops and chased them out of the stadium. The crowd cheered, and the match resumed. The Taliban returned with guns and arrested more than a dozen people.

“All the people were hitting the Taliban,” said Zalmai, a 24-year-old man who took part in the riot. “People have enough to worry about without these idiots telling us to pray.”

The riot in the Kabul Sports Stadium wasn’t the first. In the Khost region of southern Afghanistan, resentment boiled over in January, when Taliban officials were accused of selling land to out-of-town cronies. A riot ensued, and the local Taliban governor fled for his life.

The upheaval in January came after riots last year, when several people died in clashes after the Vice and Virtue police broke up an “egg-fighting” match--a sport played by the locals.

The Taliban’s opponents have only just begun to exploit the recent unrest. A series of bombings of government buildings in Kabul--including two at the Pakistani Embassy last month--has dispelled the illusion of Taliban control.

The bombings might have helped trigger a Taliban crackdown, which included the expulsion in July of a U.S. aid worker on the grounds that she was a spy.

Crackdown May Suggest Infighting

The crackdown, which included prohibiting women from working for international agencies, also suggests that the Taliban forces might have begun to fight among themselves. The order was issued by Mohammed Turabi, the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue minister and a notorious hard-liner. In negotiations, Foreign Minister Mutawakel, thought to be a moderate, promised U.N. officials that the order would be rescinded. It was not.

“The biggest threat to the Taliban is fighting among themselves,” said a Western aid worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The one promise the Taliban seemed to have kept--bringing security to the people--appears to be giving way to greed and corruption. A crime wave has hit Kabul, and residents blame the Taliban.

When Kabul’s currency market was robbed earlier this year of $250,000, the traders blamed the Taliban guards who disappeared after the incident. Armed men have robbed a number of trucks owned by foreign aid agencies--and recently carjacked a truck driven by a U.N. official outside Kabul. Some relief officials, too wary to speak publicly, suspect the Taliban.

“They are the only people with guns,” one aid official said.

Taliban officials deny that any of their men are involved in such acts. But residents in several Kabul neighborhoods blame Taliban soldiers for a series of recent home robberies. At the Microyan Apartments, a sprawling complex built during the Soviet era, residents say a gang of men carrying Kalashnikovs and identifying themselves as Taliban officers recently looted nine flats.

“Everybody knew they were Taliban, but we didn’t dare complain,” said Mohammed Wossiq, a resident. “We were hoping the Taliban would bring security to the city. Now they are committing the crimes, and no one is amputating their hands.”

With the Taliban appearing shakier than ever, many Afghans fear that the fragile peace they’ve mustered over the past four years will soon give way to fighting again. Nobody seems to know where the violence will take them.

Nafisa, the Kabul woman who asked that her last name not be used, was fired from her job teaching Persian when the Taliban took over four years ago. Widowed in a rocket attack, she has successfully fended off Taliban requests to take her son for military service, and she secretly teaches Persian to her young daughter in her home.

Nafisa doesn’t like the Taliban, but she worries that the measure of peace that the regime has brought is beginning to slip away.

“For so many years I was under fire,” Nafisa said. “Anything, anything is better than that.”

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Filkins, The Times’ New Delhi Bureau chief, was detained and expelled from Afghanistan by Taliban authorities while reporting this story. His film was seized and he was accused of breaking the law. His translator, an Afghan national, was beaten, arrested and jailed. He is believed to be in the custody of the Taliban.