Contents: Introduction. 1. Taliban arrives/Sreedhar. 2. Taliban as I saw it/Rakesh Sinha. 3. Taliban arsenal/Nilesh Bhagat. 4. Pakistan's strategic calculus/Sreedhar. 5. The Iran factor/Sreedhar. 6. Troubled CIS/O.N. Mehrotra. 7. Indo-Afghan relations/Mahendra Ved. Appendix: Select chronology.
"In this volume an attempt has been made to put the Taliban phenomenon in perspective. Some questions it seeks to answer are: what is the Taliban? How did it originate? Who are its organizers? What is its support base-internal and external? What is it's agenda? How do the Afghans and the world at large perceive it? What is the response of Afghanistan's immediate neighbours to this phenomenon? Why is it that the Taliban has failed to gain acceptance from even the OIC, which represents the governments of Islamic nations? Why is it that NGOs and UN organizations like the UNDP and WHO may withdraw their operations from a Taliban-governed Afghanistan? What are the prospects of the Taliban's success? What would be the shape of the world like if groups similar to the Taliban gain the reins of power elsewhere?
It is generally not known that the Taliban took its birth on Pakistan soil for an agenda given to it by the military-bureaucratic combine in Islamabad. That there are mutually self-serving linkages between the narcotics traders in the golden crescent and the Taliban. That the majority of people within Afghanistan and most world governments dread the prospect of the Taliban succeeding in capturing power in Afghanistan. For those inside Afghanistan it would mean a society where cinema and music are banned, girl children are forbidden to attend school, women are debarred from working outside the home and men are compelled the grow beards. The world governments would be uncomfortable dealing with a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where the leadership does not represent the mainstream Pushtu leadership and where the traditional concept of consensus does not form the basis of administration.
With the onset of winter, the war in Afghanistan has taken temporary respite. In the interim, new alignments are being worked out. Both the citizens of Afghanistan and the world at large are uncertain what is in the offing for the summer of 1997.
The present volume, written by a group of experts watching these developments, including a first-hand account of Taliban-ruled Kabul, should enable the reader to understand the whole Taliban phenomenon and provide an Indian perspective?" (jacket)
