God's Century by Monica Duffy Toft

Author:Monica Duffy Toft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Religious Civil Wars: Nasty, Brutish, and Long

ACTS OF RELIGIOUS TERRORISM USUALLY AIM AT SINGLE, focused targets—a mosque in Iraq, a café in Jerusalem, a resort in Bali, skyscrapers in New York—and kill smaller numbers of people than full-scale wars. Civil wars, by contrast, involve large populations in prolonged bloodshed that typically takes tens of thousands, and sometimes millions, of lives, destroys social fabrics, and spills beyond a country’s borders to infect a broader region. The two sorts of violence cannot be completely separated. Sometimes terrorism occurs within or even leads to civil war—as in Afghanistan.

Whereas religiously based acts of terror did not play a large role in the Afghan conflict at first, they became an integral part of that civil war over time. Religious terrorism did not simply arise naturally from Afghan soil; rather it was taken up by religious people who very much believed that it would help them to advance their political objectives. Religious terrorism then became part and parcel of the civil war, contributing to a death toll of 1.5-to-2 million civilians—one of the deadliest any society has ever sustained in a civil war—as well as to the country’s general instability.

Exactly when did terrorism become a problem for Afghanistan? Groups including “Muslim guerrillas” perpetrated one attack in 1973 on Afghan soil and three more in 1979, as the civil war began in earnest.1 After that, Afghanistan experienced a lull in terrorist violence. But significant attacks began again in March 1988 and have continued with fervor ever since. What is more, terrorism in Afghanistan has had a distinctly religious tinge. For instance, of 143 attacks carried out in 2003 and 2004, 77 of these had a known perpetrator, and in each of these cases the responsible group embraced religion as a central motivation.2

The occurrence of 83 attacks in 2003 and only 60 incidents in 2004 suggested that terrorism was on the wane. However, “the Taliban-led insurgency remained strong and resilient in the South and East”3 in 2007 and has continued to pose a grave threat to Afghanistan since that time.4

In an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2007, Afghan President Hamid Karzai argued for the necessity of tackling Afghan terrorism with an eye to global considerations:

May I emphasize, ladies and gentlemen, that we were the prime victim of terrorism and terrorism was never, nor is it today, a homegrown phenomenon in Afghanistan. Therefore, this threat can only be overcome if addressed appropriately across its regional international dimensions. . . .5

Karzai is correct. Afghanistan exemplifies a pattern in which a local civil war becomes intertwined with regional and global dynamics.6 As religion exercised a growing power in international affairs, Afghanistan was not immune. As its civil war raged, regional and global ideas entered its borders and contributed to the war’s continuation.

Religion was not an important element in the Afghan civil war initially, but as in so many other cases, it eventually grew to be a significant factor. The beginning of the Afghanistan civil war is traced to a 1978 socialist uprising.

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