Afghanistan’s shifting alliances and factions are intertwined with its diversity, though ethnic, linguistic, or tribal variation alone does not entirely explain these internecine struggles. Afghanistan in its modern form was shaped by the nineteenth-century competition between the British, Russian, and Persian empires for supremacy in the region. The resulting Kingdom of Afghanistan was and remains ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. Today, Pushtuns are the largest ethnic group within the country, but they represent only 38 percent of the population. An almost equal number of Pushtuns live across the border in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Ethnic Tajiks comprise one-quarter of the population. The Hazaras, who generally inhabit the centre of the country, represent another 19 percent. Other groups others comprise the rest.

Linguistic divisions parallel, and in some cases, overlap ethnic divisions. Tribal divisions further compound the Afghan vortex. The Pushtuns are divided among the Durrani, Ghilzai, Waziri, Khattak, Afridi, Mohmand, Yusufzai, Shinwari, and numerous smaller tribes. In turn, each of these tribes is divided into sub-tribes.

Many countries thrive on diversity. However, in the context of both Afghanistan and the civil war, the fact that most identifiable Afghan groups have co-linguists, co-ethnics, or co-religionists across national boundaries became a catalyst for the nation’s collapse, as well as a major determinant in the coalition-building during both the years of Soviet occupation and post-liberation struggle. For example, the Pushtuns of Kandahar have traditionally looked eastward toward their compatriots in Pakistan, while the Persian-speakers of Herat have looked westward into Iran.

As various Afghan constituencies looked toward their patrons across Afghanistan’s frontiers for support, they created an incentive for Afghanistan’s neighbours to involve themselves in internal Afghan affairs. The blame cannot be placed only on outside interference in Afghanistan, though, for the Afghan government has a long though often forgotten history of interfering with the ethnic minorities in surrounding countries and especially Pakistan.

Zahir Shah took the throne of Afghanistan in 1933 after the assassination of his father. In 1953, Zahir Shah’s first cousin, the 43-year-old Muhammad Daoud Khan became prime minister. During Daoud’s premiership Afghanistan’s relations with neighbouring Pakistan would irreversibly sour. Afghanistan increasingly saw in Pakistan both a competitor and a threat. It was Daoud’s support for a Pushtun nationalist movement in Pakistan that would have the greatest lasting repercussions.

Afghanistan (and many Pushtuns in Pakistan) argued that if Pakistan could be independent from India, then the Pushtun areas of Pakistan should likewise have the option for independence as an entity to be called "Pushtunistan." Once independent of Pakistan, Pushtunistan would presumably choose to unite with the Pushtun-dominated Afghanistan, to form a "Greater Pushtunistan".

Daoud, prime minister from 1953 to 1963, supported the Pushtun claims. The issue soon became caught up in Cold War rivalry. As Pakistan ensconced itself more firmly in the American camp, the Soviet Union increasingly supported Afghanistan’s Pushtunistan agitations.

In 1955, Pakistan reordered its administrative structure to merge all provinces in West Pakistan into a single unit. Daoud interpreted the move as an attempt to absorb and marginalise the Pushtuns of the Northwest Frontier Province. In March 1955, mobs attacked Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, and ransacked the Pakistani consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar. Pakistani mobs retaliated by sacking the Afghan consulate in Peshawar. Afghanistan mobilised its reserves for war.

Twice, in 1960 and in 1961, Daoud sent Afghan troops into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. In September 1961, Kabul and Islamabad severed diplomatic relations and Pakistan attempted to seal its border with Afghanistan. On March 9, 1963, Daoud stepped down. Two months later, Pakistan and Afghanistan re-established relations.

Nevertheless, the Pushtunistan issue did not disappear. Subsequent Afghan prime ministers continued to pay lip service to the issue. Even if Kabul’s support for Pushtun nationalist aspirations did not pose a serious challenge to Pakistan, the impact on Pakistan-Afghanistan relations was lasting.

In 1973, Daoud overthrew his cousin Zahir Shah and declared Afghanistan a republic. Pakistan, still reeling from the secession of Bangladesh in 1971, feared a return of the fierce Pushtun nationalism of Daoud’s first term. Meanwhile, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, embracing a strategy of Third World activism, sought to exploit Daoud’s coup to retrench Soviet regional interests.

While Pakistan had been founded on the basis of Islamic unity, the 1971 war reinforced the point that in Pakistan, ethnicity trumped religion. Accordingly, Pakistan viewed Daoud’s Pushtunistan rhetoric (and his simultaneous support for Baluchi separatists), as well as his generally pro-India foreign policy, as a serious threat to Pakistani security.

Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responded by supporting an Islamist movement in Afghanistan, a strategy that Islamabad would replicate two decades later with the Taliban. For Islamabad, the strategy was two-fold. Not only could Pakistan deter Afghan expansionism by pressuring Afghanistan from within, but also a religious opposition would have broad appeal in an overwhelmingly Muslim country without the implicit territorial threat of an ethnic-nationalist opposition. It was from this Islamist movement that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), would introduce the United States to such important later mujahideen figures as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmed Shah Masoud, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

In 1974, the Islamists plotted a military coup, but Daoud’s regime discovered the plot and imprisoned the leaders-at least those who did not escape to Pakistan. The following year, the Islamists attempted an uprising in the Panjshir Valley. Again they failed, and again the Islamist leaders fled to Pakistan. Islamabad found that supporting an Afghan Islamist movement both gave Pakistan short-term leverage against Daoud, and also a long-term card to play should Afghanistan again seek to strategically challenge its neighbour to the East. It was thus in the mid-1970s, while both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to ply the Kabul regime with aid, that Pakistani intelligence-with financial support from Saudi Arabia-first began their ties to the Islamist opposition in Afghanistan.

Under Daoud, Afghanistan became increasingly polarised. The Islamists were by no means the only opposition seeking to reshape the status quo. The Soviet Union threw its encouragement behind the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), sometimes referred to by either of its two constituent factions, the Khalq and the Parcham.

Why did the Soviet Union shift its support from Daoud, with whom it previously had a good relationship? Soviet policy toward the Third World underwent a fundamental shift in the 1970s. The ouster of President Sukarno in Indonesia and Anwar Sadat’s decision to expel Soviet advisers from Egypt convinced Moscow that it could no longer rely on non-communist nationalists.

In 1978, a leading Parcham official fell to an assassin’s bullet. Massive demonstrations erupted against Daoud and the CIA, which Parcham blamed for the killing. Daoud responded by arresting the PDPA leadership, spurring military officers sympathetic to the PDPA to move against his government. On April 27, 1978, they seized power in a bloody coup.

The Soviet Union welcomed the new regime with a massive influx of aid. However, the old rivalries between the Khalqis, who dominated the new government, and the Parchamis, crippled the regime. Hafizullah Amin sought to implement the Khalq’s program through brute force and terror. The Soviet Union, witnessing the disintegration of state control, sought to salvage their influence in Afghanistan through a change of leadership, but Hafizullah Amin refused to accept Soviet dictates.

In December 1979, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, not willing to lose the tenuous Soviet advantage in Afghanistan, sent the Red Army pouring into the country. When Hafizullah Amin still refused to relinquish power, Soviet units stormed his palace and executed him. While the Red Army and its client regime in Kabul controlled the city, the Soviets were never fully able to gain control over the countryside.

Despite the oversimplifications of some, the mujahideen was not simply created by the CIA in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion. Rather, a cadre for the enlargement of the Afghan mujahideen already existed. This cadre had remained in Pakistani exile since their failed uprising four years before. However, it was the occupation of a foreign power that caused the mujahideen movement to grow exponentially as disaffected Afghans flocked to what had become the only viable opposition movement.

The US decision to arm the Afghan resistance came within two weeks of the Soviet invasion, and quickly gained momentum. In 1980, the Carter administration allocated only $30 million for the Afghan resistance, though under the Reagan administration this amount grew steadily. In 1985, Congress earmarked $250 million for Afghanistan, while Saudi Arabia contributed an equal amount. Two years later, with Saudi Arabia still reportedly matching contributions, annual American aid to the mujahideen reportedly reached $630 million. Many commentators cite the huge flow of American aid to Afghanistan as if it occurred in a vacuum; it did not. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, the Soviet Union contributed approximately $5 billion per year into Afghanistan in an effort to prop up the puppet government in Kabul.

Initially, the CIA refused to provide American arms to the resistance, seeking to maintain plausible deniability. Only in March 1985, did Reagan’s national security team formally decide to switch their strategy from mere harassment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan to driving the Red Army completely out of the country. It was not until September 1986, that the Reagan administration decided to supply Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahideen, thereby breaking the embargo on "Made-in-America" arms.

The CIA may have coordinated purchase of weapons and the initial training, but Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) controlled their distribution and their transport to the war zone. The CIA attempted to limit CIA interaction with the mujahideen. Even at the height of American involvement in Afghanistan, very few CIA operatives were allowed into the field.

The ISI used its coordinating position to promote Pakistani interests as it saw them (within Pakistan, the ISI is often described as "a state within a state"). The ISI refused to recognise any Afghan resistance group that was not religiously based. The ISI did recognise seven groups, but insisted on contracting directly with each individual group in order to maintain maximum leverage. Pakistani intelligence was therefore able to reward compliant factions. Indeed, the ISI tended to favour Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, perhaps the most militant Islamist of the mujahideen commanders, largely because Hekmatyar was also a strong proponent of the Pakistani-sponsored Islamist insurgency in Kashmir. Masoud, the most effective Mujahid commander, but a Tajik, received only eight Stingers from the ISI during the war.

While beneficial to Pakistani national interests in the short-term, the ISI’s strategy had long-term consequences in promoting the Islamism and fractiousness of the mujahideen.

Afghanistan was a bleeding wound for the Soviet Union. Each year, the Red Army suffered thousands of casualties. Numerous Soviets died of disease and drug addiction. In 1988, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev announced his intention to withdraw Soviet troops. Despite continued military and economic assistance to Najibullah, Afghanistan’s communist president, most analysts believed the Najibullah would quickly collapse.

However, Najibullah proved the sceptics wrong. Mujahideen offensives in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal failed. Washington had only budgeted money to support the mujahideen for one year following the Soviet withdrawal, but Saudi and Kuwaiti donors provided emergency aid, much of which went to Hekmatyar and other Wahhabi commanders.

Many Afghan specialists criticised the United States for merely walking away from Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed, Washington’s lack of engagement created a policy void in which radical elements in the ISI eagerly filled. However, to consider Afghanistan in a vacuum ignores the crisis that developed when, on August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. Washington’s attention and her resources shifted to a different type of conflict.

Islamist commanders like Hekmatyar, upset with the US-led coalition in the Persian Gulf, broke with their Saudi and Kuwait patrons and found new backers in Iran, Libya, and Iraq. It was only in this second phase of the Afghan war, a phase that developed beyond much of the Western world’s notice, that Afghan Arabs first became a significant political, if not military, force in Afghanistan.

One of the greatest criticisms of US policy, especially after the rise of the Taliban, has been that the CIA directly supported Arab volunteers who came to Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviets, but eventually used those American arms to engage in terrorist war against the West. However, the so-called "Afghan Arabs" only emerged as a major force in the 1990s. During the resistance against the Soviet occupation, Arab volunteers played at best a cursory role. The Arab volunteers seldom took part in fighting and often raised the ire of local Afghans who felt they got in the way.

Milton Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, was blunt, writing:

Bearden continued to explain though that while the Afghan Arabs were "generally viewed as nuisances by mujahideen commanders…the work of Arab fundraisers was appreciated."

In 1995, Ali Ahmed Jalali, a former Afghan Army Colonel and top military planner on the directing staff of the Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen, along with Lt. Col. Lester W. Grau, US Army, ret., a career Soviet Foreign Area Officer, published a collection of essays by mujahideen commanders explaining their tactics in various engagements. Throughout their essays, various commanders make reference to the presence of Afghan Arabs, often in ways which indicate their combat role was marginal at best.

So where did the Afghan Arabs come from? Many of the volunteers originated in the Muslim Brotherhood or other radical Islamist organisations. The Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Coordination Council organized both the new recruits, and disbursement of assistance. In Pakistan, Arab volunteers staffed numerous Saudi Red Crescent offices near the Afghan frontier.

Even without a central role in the jihad, though, Afghan Arabs did establish a well-financed presence in Afghanistan (and the border regions of Pakistan). Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid estimated that between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Islamists would serve in Afghanistan.

Is the United States responsible for creating the Afghan Arab phenomenon? It would be a gross over-simplification to ascribe the rise of the Taliban to mere "blowback" from Washington’s support of radical Islam as a Cold War tool. After all, while many mujahideen groups are fiercely religious, few adhere to the combative radicalism of the Arab mercenaries. Nor can one simply attribute the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to US involvement, for this ignores the very real fact that a country preaching official atheism occupied Afghanistan. Nevertheless, by delegating responsibility for arms distribution to the ISI, the United States created an environment in which radical Islam could flourish. And, with the coming of the Taliban, radical Islam did just that.

The Taliban seemingly arose from thin air. Newspapers like The New York Times only deemed the Taliban worthy of newsprint months after it had become the dominant presence in southern Afghanistan. The rise of the Taliban was accompanied by heady optimism. Just as many Iranian opponents of the Islamic Republic freely admit to having initially supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a wide variety of Afghans from various social classes and cities told me in March 2000 that they too were initially willing to give the Taliban a chance. Teachers, merchants and gravediggers all said that the Taliban promised two things: Security and an end to the conflict between rival mujahideen groups that continued to wrack Afghanistan.

Following the 1989 withdrawal of the Soviet military, Afghan president Najibullah managed to maintain power for three years. In 1992, ethnic Tajik mujahideen forces captured Kabul and unseated the communist president. However, Rabbani, Ahmed Shah Masoud, and ethnic Uzbek commander General Rashid Dostum could not control the prize. Hekmatyar immediately contested the new government that, for the first time in more than three centuries, had put Tajiks in a predominant position. Hekmatyar’s forces took up positions in the mountains surrounding Kabul proceeded to shell the city mercilessly. Meanwhile, Ismail Khan controlled Herat and much of Western Afghanistan, while several Pushtun commanders held eastern Afghanistan.

Kandahar and southern Afghanistan was in a state of chaos, with numerous warlords and other "barons" dividing not only the south, but also Kandahar city itself into numerous fiefdoms. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid argued that the internecine fighting, especially in Kandahar, had virtually eliminated the traditional leadership, leaving the door open to the Taliban.

It was in the backdrop to this fighting that the Taliban arose, not only in Afghanistan, but also among Afghan refugees and former mujahideen studying in the madaris (religious colleges) of Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid conducted interviews with many of the founders of the movement in which they openly discussed their distress at the chaos afflicting Afghanistan. After much discussion, they created their movement based on a platform of restoration of peace, disarmament of the population, strict enforcement of the shari’a, and defence of the "Islamic character" of Afghanistan. Mullah Muhammad Omar, an Afghan Pushtun who had been wounded toward the end of the conflict with the Soviet army, became the movement’s leader.

The beginning of the Taliban’s activity in Afghanistan is shrouded in myth. Ahmed Rashid recounted what he deemed the most credible: Neighbours of two girls kidnapped and raped by Kandahar warlords asked the Taliban’s help in freeing the teenagers. The Taliban attacked a military camp, freed the girls, and executed the commander. A Robin Hood myth grew up around Mullah Omar resulting in victimized Afghans increasingly appealing to the Taliban for help against local oppressors.

Territorial conquest began on October 12, 1994, when 200 Taliban seized the Afghan border post of Spin Baldak. Less than a month later, the Taliban attacked Kandahar. Within 48 hours, the city was theirs. Each conquest brought the Taliban new equipment and munitions for their continued advance. The Taliban maintained their momentum and quickly seized large swathes of Afghanistan. By February 1995, they controlled 9 of Afghanistan’s 30 provinces. On September 26, 1996, the Taliban took Kabul.

On May 24, 1997, the Taliban seized Mazar-i Sharif, the last major city held by the mujahideen. However, after just 18 hours, a rebellion forced the Taliban from the city. When the Taliban again took the refugee-swollen city in August 1998, they took no chances, brutally massacring thousands. The only major mujahideen commander remaining was Ahmed Shah Masoud, nicknamed ‘the Lion of the Panjshir’ for his heroism during the war against the Soviets.

While supported materially by Pakistan, the Taliban relied heavily upon momentum in its near-complete conquest of Afghanistan. Following the fall of Kandahar, thousands of Afghan refugees, madrassa students, and Pakistani Jamiat-i Ulama supporters rushed to join the movement. Each subsequent Taliban victory resulted in thousands of new recruits. Often these victories were less a result of military prowess than co-option of opposing warlords into the Taliban movement.

Stalemate ensued as the Taliban were unable to gain significant ground against Masoud, who retained between 5 and 10 percent of Afghan territory.

The Taliban became the latest incarnation of Pakistan’s desire to support Islamist rather than nationalist rule in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Taliban arose in madaris on Pakistani territory. Upon the capture of Spin Baldak, mujahideen commanders in Kandahar immediately accused Pakistan of supporting the new group.

Even after the stalemate ensued between the Taliban and Ahmed Shah Masoud, Pakistan provided the Taliban with a constant flow of new recruits. Former Defence Intelligence Agency analyst Julie Sirrs gained access to Taliban prisoners held by Ahmed Shah Masoud; among them were several Pakistani mercenaries.

While politicians in Islamabad repeatedly denied that Pakistan supported the Taliban, the reality was quite the opposite. While some Taliban trade occurred with Turkmenistan and even Iran, and the Taliban benefited from the supply of opium to all of its neighbours, Pakistan remained the effective diplomatic and economic lifeline for the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate. Senior ISI veterans functioned as district advisors to the regional Taliban leadership. Pakistan also supplied a constant flow of munitions and recruits for the Taliban’s war with the Northern Alliance, and provided crucial technical infrastructure support to allow the Taliban state to function.

Taliban volunteers, interviewed by Human Rights Watch, described Pakistani instructors at Rish Khor which, according to Afghans I interviewed, also served as a training camp for the Harakat ul-Mujahideen, the violent Kashmiri separatist group engaged in terrorist operations against India. Guarding ministries in Kabul in March 2000 were Taliban officials who only spoke Urdu, (a common language in Pakistan) and did not speak any Afghan language. The Pakistani government did not dispute reports that thousands of trained Pakistani volunteers served with the Taliban.

While the Pakistani government was directly complicit in support for the Taliban, just as important was its indirect support. In 1971, there were only 900 madaris (religious seminaries) in Pakistan, but by the end of President Zia ul Haq’s administration in 1988, there were over 8,000 official madaris, and more than 25,000 unregistered religious schools. By January 2000, these religious seminaries were educating at least one-half million children according to Pakistan’s own estimates.

Ahmed Rashid comments that the mullahs running most of the religious schools were but semi-literate themselves, and blindly preached the religious philosophy adopted by the Taliban. Visiting one such religious seminary in the aftermath of the World Trade Centre attacks, students told a Western reporter that, "We are happy many kaffirs [infidels] were killed in the World Trade Centre." Regarding Muslim casualties in the World Trade Centre, one student responded, "If they were faithful to Islam, they will be martyred and go to paradise. If they were not good Muslims, they will go to hell." The seminary students generally learn only Islam, tainted with strong strain of anti-Westernism and antisemitism.

Where does Osama bin Laden fit into the picture? The Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network retained distinct identities. Indeed, only in 1996 did Osama bin Laden relocate from refuge with the Sudanese government to the Taliban’s Afghanistan

As the media turned its attention to Afghanistan after September 11, many commentators sought answers as to why the Taliban continued to host Osama bin Laden, despite the international ire that he brought to the regime. CNN’s correspondent even went so far as to postulate that the Taliban could not turn over Osama bin Laden because of Afghanistan’s tradition of hospitality (something which did not stop Afghans from killing nearly 17,000 British men, women, and children evacuating Kabul under a truce in 1842.)

The answer to the paradox is actually much more mundane, and also a result of the discrepancy in the fighting ability of the Taliban versus the mujahideen commanders like Ahmed Shah Masoud. Masoud remained undefeated against the Red Army and, lacking both men and material, he managed to stubbornly hold back the Taliban from the last five percent of Afghanistan not under their control. Masoud’s secret was superior training and a fiercely loyal cadre of fighters. While the Taliban’s rank-and-file may have talked jihad, more often than not they would flee or hide when the bullets began to fly.

Bin Laden brought with him to Afghanistan a well-equipped and fiercely loyal division of fighters-perhaps numbering only 2,000. While many of these trained in al-Qaeda’s camps for terrorism abroad or protected bin Laden and his associates at their various safe-houses, bin Laden made available several hundred for duty on the Taliban’s frontline with Masoud. While the Taliban suffered a high international cost for hosting bin Laden, this was offset by the domestic benefits the regime gained. The war with the Northern Alliance was the Taliban’s chief priority.

In hindsight, and especially after the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks, it is easy to criticise Washington’s short-sightedness. But American policymakers had a very stark choice in the 1980s: Either the United States could support an Afghan opposition, or they could simply cede Afghanistan to Soviet domination, an option that might result in an extension of Soviet influence into Pakistan.

Contrary to the beliefs of many critics of American foreign policy, the United States is not able to dictate its desires even to foreign clients. Washington needed Pakistan’s cooperation, but Pakistan was very mindful of its own interests. Islamabad considered Afghanistan, especially with successive Afghan government’s Pushtunistan claims, to pose a direct challenge to Pakistani national security. Accordingly, Islamabad only allowed religiously based rather than nationalist opposition groups to operate on Pakistani territory. If American policymakers wanted to oppose Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan, then they simply would have to accede to Pakistani interests.

The United States is not without fault, however. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Washington could have more effectively pressured Pakistan to tone down the support for Islamic fundamentalism, especially after the rise of the Taliban. Instead, Washington ceded her responsibility and gave Pakistan a sphere of influence in Afghanistan unlimited by any other foreign pressure.