Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan Under the Taliban (Updated Edition)

Description

Fundamentalism Reborn? is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of their history, ascendancy, and decline of the most dramatic manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism since the Iranian revolution.

In 1996, the world watched with varying degrees of interest, surprise, and unease as armed, ultra- fundamentalist insurgents overthrew the Afghan government. Within days of their victory, the Taliban, a militant Islamic sect, were issuing draconian religious decrees, restricting women’s employment and movement, rounding up Afghans at gunpoint to pray five times a day, and publicly executing political opponents and criminals. Composed of essays commissioned from the foremost experts on the Taliban, this anthology traces the movement’s origins, its ascendance, the reasons for its success, and its role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Crucial to the Taliban’s staying power as a governing force will be its relations with neighboring countries and with the West. Interestingly, given their intense hatred of Iran, the Taliban were enthusiastically supported by the U.S. government up to the very moment of their triumphant arrival in Kabul. Examining yet another country on the brink of ethnic disintegration, Fundamentalism Reborn? is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the history, rise to power, and future of the most dramatic manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism since the Iranian revolution.

This book traces the Taliban movement’s origins, its rise to power, and the tensions and contradictions which made it impossible to accommodate within the modern international system. It exposes some of the misunderstandings which led various powers, including the United States, to believe that the Taliban could bring peace to Afghanistan and permit its reconstruction after years of destructive conflict. More significantly, it also highlights steps that can be taken to assist the Afghan people to recover from the consequences of the fragmentation of their society, and its subordination to an anti-modernist force of a kind unprecedented in Afghanistan’s recent history.

Author Biography

William Maley is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and has held visiting appointments at Oxford University and the Russian Diplomatic Academy. Most recently he has authored The Foreign Policy of the Taliban (2000) for the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.