Book review: Peter Marsden's The Taliban: Religion And The New Order In Afghanistan

The Taliban: Religion And The New Order In AfghanistanBy Peter MarsdenZen BooksPages: 162; Price: (Pak) Rs 395It has been easy for the world to keep the Taliban off the global agenda. Its treatment of women, its medieval ways made it legitimate to say it was beyond the pale. But this Pushtun movement, however xenophobic and crude its version of Islam, is clearly the new ruler of Afghanistan. The recent blustering with Iran underlines how impossible it will be to ignore. This slim volume is among the first to try and hold the Taliban up to the light and consider how the world should handle it. Peter Marsden mildly suggests engagement. He argues the Taliban was a societal response to the mujahideen's failure to form even a semblance of a government after the Soviet withdrawal. The Talibs earned popular support by simply effacing banditry and corruption. Even their brand of Islam struck a chord: Afghans associate urban and western culture with their years of trauma..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Marsden makes half-hearted attempts to draw parallels with other fundamentalist groups like the Wahhabis. But the Talibs lack intellectual content and, the author believes, have no interests beyond Afghanistan. For him they are an extreme but traditional Afghan reaction to forcible modernisation.The book has flashes of insight, as when it reveals that the Taliban differs from most Islamic groups in lacking a political ideology. It has filled this gap by granting great authority to the ulema. But there is little on the Taliban's decision-making structure. The analysis of local influences, like Pakistan, is shallow.Reflecting Marsden's own years in Afghanistan with an NGO, he dwells overly long on Kandahar's interactions with aid agencies, including a pointless catalogue of how Taliban practices violate the UN human-rights convention. However, the NGO experience reveals the Taliban to be neither monolithic nor wholly unreasonable - the underlying message of this book.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 12, 1998--- ENDS ---

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Book review: Peter Marsden's The Taliban: Religion And The New Order In Afghanistan

Arguing the West can do business with the Taliban.

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