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The Rise and Fall of the Taliban Controlled Stations 1996-2001 from Radio Netherlands 
The Rise and Fall of the Taliban Controlled Stations 1996-2001 At the start of the 1980's, although backed by an expeditionary force of around 117,000 Soviet troops, the Karmal regime was unable to establish authority outside Kabul. Around 85% of the countryside eluded effective government control. An overwhelming majority of Afghans opposed the communist regime, either actively or passively. Afghan freedom fighters made it almost impossible for the regime to maintain a system of local government outside major urban centres. Poorly armed at first, in 1984 the Mujahideen began receiving substantial assistance in the form of weapons and training from the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other outside powers. Late in 1985, the Mujahideen were active in and around Kabul, launching rocket attacks and assassinating high government officials. The failure of the Soviet Union to win over a significant number of Afghan collaborators or to rebuild a viable Afghan army forced it to bear an increasing responsibility for fighting the resistance and for civilian administration. Soviet and popular displeasure with the Karmal regime led to its demise in May 1986. Muhammad Najibullah, former chief of the Afghan secret police, replaced Karmal. As Prime Minister, though, Najibullah was ineffective and highly dependent on Soviet support. It was not until 1988 that the Governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the United States and Soviet Union serving as guarantors, signed an agreement settling the major differences between them. The agreement, known as the "Geneva accords", amongst other things, called for Soviet and US noninterference in the internal affairs of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the right of refugees to return to Afghanistan without fear of being harassed and, perhaps most important of all, a timetable that ensured full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by February 15, 1989. About 14,500 Soviet and an estimated one million Afghan lives were lost between 1979 and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Radio Moscow's World Service in English gave its account of the withdrawal on Feb 6th 1989 Significantly, the Mujahideens were neither party to the negotiations nor to the 1988 agreement and, consequently, refused to accept the terms of the accords. As a result, civil war did not end with the Soviet withdrawal, completed as scheduled in February 1989. Instead, it escalated. Najibullah's regime, though failing to win popular support, territory, or international recognition, was able to remain in power until 1992. The Soviet occupation force of some 115,000 troops and the Karmal government waged several campaigns to crush the uprisings with mass arrests, torture, executions of dissidents, as well as aerial bombardments and executions in the countryside. Some one million Afghans died during this period, most in aerial bombardments. These measures further expanded the resistance to the communist government in Kabul and fuelled a flow of refugees out of the country that soon reached five million out of an estimated population of about sixteen million. Islamic organizations that became the heart of the resistance based themselves in Pakistan and Iran. They collectively became known as the jihad fighters or Mujahideen. Seeing the conflict as a way to extend the Cold War battleground, the United States and Saudi Arabia, in particular, provided massive support for the resistance, nearly all of it funnelled through Pakistan. Thousands of Muslim radicals from the Middle East, North Africa and other Muslim countries joined the resistance forces. Most fought with Pashtun factions that had the strongest support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the Hizb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar and Ittihad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. Among them was Osama bin Laden, who came to Pakistan in the early 1980s and built training facilities for these foreign recruits inside Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance and the Mujahideen's Civil War In early 1992, the forces of Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of a powerful Uzbek militia that had been allied with Najibullah, and the Hazara faction Hizb-i Wahdat, joined together in a coalition they called the Northern Alliance. On April 15, non-Pashtun militia forces that had been allied with the government mutinied and took control of Kabul airport, preventing President Najibuillah from leaving the country and pre-empting a UN peacekeeping role. Najibullah took refuge in the UN compound in Kabul, where he remained for the next four years. On April 25, Massoud entered Kabul, and the next day the Northern Alliance factions reached an agreement on a coalition government that excluded the Hizb-i Islami led by Gulbuddin Hikmatyar - the protégé of Pakistan. Rejecting the arrangement, Hikmatyar launched massive and indiscriminate rocket attacks on Kabul that continued intermittently until he was forced out of the Kabul area in February 1995. In June 1992 Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Tajik leader of Jamiat-i Islami, became president of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA), while Hikmatyar continued to bombard Kabul with rockets. In January 1994, Hikmatyar joined forces with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of a powerful Uzbek militia that had been allied with Najibullah until early 1992, to oust Rabbani and his defence minister, Ahmad Shah Massoud, launching full-scale civil war in Kabul. By 1995, one-third of the city had been reduced to rubble. The Rise and Fall of the Taliban's Afghanistan During this period, the rest of the country was carved up among the various factions, with many Mujahideen commanders establishing themselves as local warlords. Humanitarian agencies frequently found their offices stripped, their vehicles hijacked, and their staff threatened. It was against this background that the Taliban emerged. Former Mujahideen, disillusioned with the chaos that had followed their victory, became the nucleus of a movement that grouped around Mullah Mohammad Omar, a former mujahid from Qandahar province. The group, many of whom were madrasa (Islamic school) students, called themselves taliban, meaning "students". Many others who became core members of the Taliban were commanders in other predominantly Pashtun parties, and former Khalqi PDPA members. Their stated aims were to restore stability and enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law. In September 1996, the Taliban took control of Kabul after Massoud was forced to retreat to the north. Sometime after Massoud's loss of Kabul, he began to obtain military assistance from Russia as well as Iran. The Northern Alliance was reconstituted in opposition to the Taliban. In 1997, the Taliban renamed the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; Mullah Omar assumed the title "amir-ul momineen" (Commander of the Faithful). In areas under their control, Taliban authorities enforced their version of Islamic law, enacting policies prohibiting women from working outside the home in activities other than health care, and requiring corporal punishment for those convicted of certain crimes. The Taliban also enforced a strict dress code for women, and required men to have 'fist-length' beards and to refrain from Western haircuts or dress. Arguably the most powerful agency within the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (al-Amr bi al-Ma'ruf wa al-Nahi 'an al-Munkir), which was responsible for the enforcement of all Taliban decrees regarding moral behaviour. Through 2000 and 2001, fighting continued in the North East between Massoud's forces and the Taliban, with the Taliban taking control of Taloqan in September 2000, and driving the United Front further east to Faizabad. On September 9, 2001, Massoud was assassinated when suicide bombers disguised as journalists detonated a device hidden in a video camera. United Front leaders have claimed that the Algerian assassins were linked to bin Laden, and many observers believe that the assassination was designed to deprive the United Front of its most effective leader in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC. Internet Ban On 25 August 2001, Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, signed an edict banning Afghan and international governmental and non-governmental organisations from using the Internet. According to the official radio station Voice of Shari'a, the religious police had the authority to punish violators. Nobody except the headquarters of Taliban militia based in Kandahar, could be connected to Internet. Some thirty other items were judged "un-Islamic": including lipstick, neckties, statues, fashion catalogues, greeting cards, pictures of people, musical instruments, computer discs, movies, satellite TV dishes, and musical recordings. The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, ordered the police to seize all these items and to hand them over to the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Inside the country, only a few Afghans and foreigners working for international organisations had Internet access through Pakistani phone lines. So, as foreign journalists poured into Pakistan and even some attempted to enter Afghanistan, the only broadcast source of the Taliban side of the story were the radio broadcasts of Taliban controlled Voice of Shari'a (the Voice of Islamic Law) in Kabul, operating from the same centre as the former Radio Afghanistan during Soviet-controlled days. At the time, this radio station broadcast only religious programmes and official announcements of the Taliban and was the foreign media's main source of information from the "government." Music on the radio station was forbidden. The Northern Alliance, on the other hand, operated a low-powered television station in the territory under their control as well as a radio station, Takhar Radio. The US-led military operation against Afghanistan started on 7 October 2001. As expected, one of the first targets was the Taliban's radio station, the Voice of Shari'a. Within the first hour, journalists in Afghanistan reported that the station had gone off the air. Shortly afterwards the Foreign Minister of the opposition Northern Alliance said that 'Kabul Radio' had been one of the first targets to be attacked by the allies. However, the station returned to the air a few hours later. Apparently, the electricity supply in the area near the station was interrupted by the first wave of bombing Blown Off the Air The following morning the station came back on the air, claiming there had been no human loss of life or material damage. Media Network's Victor Goonetilleke, listening in Sri Lanka, confirmed that he could hear the 100 kW shortwave outlet on 7084 kHz at 1530 UTC on 8 October. Minutes before a hail of missiles hit targets in the area, a powerful jamming station blocked the Taliban radio. The "bubbling sound" was designed to make reception of the station impossible, both inside and outside the country. During the Turkmen-language broadcast of the Kabul-based Voice of Shari'a outlet on short wave, Clandestine Radio Watch correspondent Yuki Sakagami in Japan monitored this bubble jammer. The jamming began at approximately 1607 UTC, covering a wide range of frequencies and obliterating Taliban radio's audio. Listen to recording made by Yuki Sakagami in Japan The jamming ended suddenly after 47 seconds, leaving the Voice of Shari'a free of interference for a few moments. Less than a minute later, at 1609 UTC, the station's audio ceases and then the transmitter leaves the airwaves completely. Kabul was hit at that time by a barrage of cruise missiles, which included an area just outside of Kabul, known locally as "TV Mountain", an ironic name because the TV transmitters there had been off the air for years. The US Department of Defense subsequently released photos that, it claims, were before and after shots after the bombing of Voice of Shari'a on October 8 th. The studio centre, it would appear from the photos, was hit by two cruise missiles and bombs dropped from B-1 and B-2 heavy bombers. The US-led forces sought to eliminate the station to silence its influence and also to clear its broadcast frequencies for use by special airborne psychological warfare radio programmes. A few days before the Northern Alliance troops entered Kabul on 13 November, there were reports that Voice of Shari'a was back on the air using a low power transmitter in the Kabul area. But its reappearance was brief. Difficult to Hear Abroad Voice of Shari'a was always difficult to receive outside Central and South Asia. Broadcasts were via a high power mediumwave transmitter on 1107kHz, and were audible as far as the border regions of neighbouring Pakistan. There was also a network of low power regional domestic stations on mediumwave. After the main broadcasting centre in Kabul was rendered inoperative, these regional outlets assumed major importance as the strategic voices of the Taliban regime. However, the Taliban seem to prefer communicating their messages to the outside world via the Qatar based Al-Jazeera TV network, which indirectly feeds Western TV networks such as CNN and BBC. Although Voice of Shari'a had a small external service, it was apparently never considered a major weapon in the Taliban's propaganda war. The Taliban, meanwhile, continued to broadcast from Mazar-e-Sharif with anti-American programming. The radio station remained untouched during the first month of air strikes. On November 12, 2001, however, its programmes also took a sudden turn as the Northern Alliance over-ran the city. For the first time in years Radio Mazar-e-Sharif, formerly dubbed by the Taliban as "The Voice of Shari'a of Balkh Province", aired music. © Radio Netherlands Media Network |