Al Qaeda's Global Crisis: The Islamic State, Takfir and the Genocide of Muslims by V. G. Julie Rajan

Author:V. G. Julie Rajan [Rajan, V. G. Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General, Political Science, Islam, Terrorism, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781317645382
Google: Pz5yBgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28024794
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

4

Afghanistan, 2001

Centuries of imperialism, the rise of the Mujahidin, and the Taliban

Since 1979, the Afghan people have experienced decades of consecutive civil wars that have profoundly undermined their security. During the Mujahidin War (1979–1989) against the Soviet Union alone, approximately 873,000 died and of those 25,000 were killed by landmines, 1.2 million were disabled, three million were mutilated and wounded, and six million displaced (one million internally and five million externally). A source from the Afghan Red Crescent society reported that in 1993, during the ensuing civil conflict among ethnic factions, 10,000 civilians were killed. A 2009 Oxfam survey of approximately 700 Afghans’ experiences of civil strife since 1979 reveals that two in five Afghans (43 percent) reported their property destroyed, 25 percent their land destroyed, one-third (34 percent) being robbed, 75 percent being displaced from their homes, one-tenth being detained in some capacity, and one-fifth being tortured.1

In 2009, half of the Afghan population lived below the poverty line. The situation is equally dire for Afghan refugees. Between 1979 and 2012, approximately 2,586,034 of 30,252,435 Afghans fled to either Pakistan (1,637,740), Iran (824,087), or Germany (31,746).2 Some reports reveal that of the Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, 71 percent had no formal education, 89 percent had no skills, and 71 percent lacked any monthly income. Having lived through successive civil wars since 1979, Afghans have been forced to normalize excessive levels of violence in their everyday lives. Oxfam describes: “A whole generation has grown up never having experienced peace and many Afghans are struggling to cope with the psychological, economic, social and physical ramifications of the conflicts, past and present.”3

It is in the midst of this human rights crisis that the AQ-backed Afghan Taliban began its resurgence after having been defeated by the U.S. in December 2001. Since 2006, and most notably since 2009, the AQ-backed Taliban and their affiliates, including the Pakistani Lakshar-e-Taiba (LeT), have reignited their jihad against foreign forces and personnel stationed in Afghanistan. This latest jihad is different because it is being driven by the pro-Wahhabi takfiri ideologies espoused by Zarqawi’s takfiri jihad in Iraq and his strategies of mainly deploying suicide missions (see Chapter 2). Following in Zarqawi’s footsteps, the Afghan Taliban have radically appropriated takfir to charge the central Afghan government with apostasy. Their charge is based on the government’s association with the non-Muslim West. They are also charging the government as a tyrant because it does not enforce sharia in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban is also attacking Afghan military and police. Yet most disturbingly, the AQ-backed Taliban are waging an intense takfiri jihad directly against Muslim civilians they consider kufr to establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, an Islamic state in the Wahhabi sense on a par with the caliphate but limited geographically by the Afghan national borders (see Introduction). Like AQI, the Taliban are targeting en masse the Shia (mainly Hazara), and also, increasingly, non-Wahhabi Sunnis.

The Taliban’s takfiri strategies are inflicting mass civilian fatalities to the point of genocide. Afghan civilian deaths in the entire decade plus since the U.

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