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Gevechten zijn deze week aan de grens tussen Afghanistan en Iran uitgebroken. Taliban machthebbers in Afghanistan dreigen op social media met oorlog. Onduidelijk waar het conflict over gaat. Maar vast staat dat beide partijen al langer in conflict zijn. Taliban zijn soennis die de sji’a in Iran, Afghanistan en Pakistan nauwelijks als moslims erkennen. In de nieuwe publicatie “The Caliph and the Imam” is een geschiedenis door de eeuwen heen te lezen van de twee belangrijkste stromingen binnen de islam. Een overzicht van de gebeurtenissen in de laatste 20 jaar:
“The massive military and political interventions that followed the attacks of 9/1I, however, set in motion processes that repolarised Saudi-Iranian and wider Sunni-Shia relations. That fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and were directed by Usama bin Laden, whose family formed part of the Saudi elite, puzzled many. Sunnis not Shia were now portrayed as potentially 'radical' Muslims, susceptible to the ideology of al-Qaeda. The 'Neocons' around George W. Bush argued that the region's authoritarianism was in part to blame, and military interventions were supposed to usher in a 'New Middle East' of pro-Western democracies (that would make peace with Israel).
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda had its bases in Afghanistan, where they were tolerated by the Taliban. When the US asked the Taliban to expel al-Qaeda, they refused. That refusal, and the conflation of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the minds of NATO officials, contributed to the decision to not just carry out air strikes, as the US initially did, but launch a ground invasion and full scale military occupation of the country, one that was to last for twenty years.The Taliban were one of the Sunni Islamist rebel factions that had emerged out of the Afghan War, and had side-lined other factions in a civil war after the Soviet withdrawal. When the Taliban officially took over power in 1996 and declared an Islamic Emirate, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognised it (Pakistan had played a key role in their race to power). The Taliban were heirs to the Sunni Revivalist tradition on the Indian subcontinent, of a Hanafism linked to the Deobandi school. They were anti-Shii, though not as uncompromisingly as some of the Salafi Wahhabi groups in Afghanistan (Deobandis at times considered Shia to be Muslims, with the respective protections afforded to them, something beyond the pale for Wahhabis). And they had had significant ideological differences with al-Qaeda when it came to Shiism, and other issues.
The Taliban's backers in the Gulf and Pakistani intelligence had hoped its anti-Shiism would foreclose any cooperation with Iran. After the fall of the Afghan Communist government in 1992, the Shii Hazara party, Hezb-e Wahdat, emerged as a powerful military force, controlling large parts of Kabul and other areas. Faced with a successful Taliban campaign, some Hazara politicians negotiated with the Taliban, while others vowed to resist. The Taliban's stance oscillated between pragmatism to solidify their military conquests (such as by the acceptance of Shii defectors into their ranks), and the occasional assertion that Shia are heretics.34 After the Taliban cook Herat and Kabul in 1996, Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan city home to an Ali shrine and a Hazara stronghold, and then under Hezb-e Wahdat control, became the scene of intense fighting. In 1997, when the Taliban moved into the town, Hezb-e Wahdat fighters killed hundreds of them. Partly in response, the Taliban massacred several thousand Shia Hazara there in 1998, including women and children. When they assassinated several Iranian diplomats a year later, Iran almost invaded. Despite the violence, some Afghan Shii Islamists hoped to play a part in the Taliban's Islamic Emirate, but the latter were not interested in sharing power with a group they had defeated militarily, and despised doctrinally and ethnically.
Mean while, in Pakistan, the end of the Afghan Jihad had seen a dramatic rise of Sunni Shia violence, with Sunni militants, often returnees from Afghanistan, attacking Shia. These veterans, who had lost their sense of purpose, started to see the fight against Shia at home as a continuation of the Jihad. In fact, in the 1990s tit-for-tat assassinations of communal leaders and ordinary citizens and bombings of civilians became commonplace. Sunni militants started this campaign, but the Shii movements, which in the preceding decade had focused on Shii rights and juridical recognition, swiftly established military wings, and retaliated.
Sunni-Shia violence contributed to a breakdown of public order that in turn paved the way for the 1999 coup in which General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Benazir Bhutto. Presenting himself as a secularist hardliner, Musharraf initially tried not to ally too closely with Sunni Islamists, and after 9/11 cooperated in the US war on terror. This caused much popular resentment, however, as did the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, with their historic ties to Pakistani madrasas, fellow Islamists, and the intelligence services. Throughout the 2000s, Pakistan saw even more Sunni-Shia violence, which had local causes, but where tensions increased due to the American interventions and sectarian violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Suicide bombings of Shii mosques and mourning houses, and Shii Ashura processions, became common, and Shii militants retaliated. The Sunni extremist movements detested Musharraf, and tried to assassinate him. Tensions between the state and Sunni extremists escalated, as did Sunni-Shia violence.After the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their local allies founded the strongly anti-Shii Taliban Movement in Pakistan. Under US pressure, Musharraf broke with the Taliban. That the details of Pakistan's support for Sunni militants remain murky is most famously illustrated by the fact that Bin Laden would move there from Afghanistan.
At the start of the Allied campaign against the Taliban in 2001, Iran, no friend of the Taliban, given that they had killed Shii Hazara and Iranian diplomats, provided limited support to the US near the border with Afghanistan. In November, Secretary of State Colin Powell shook hands with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, at the UN headquarters in New York.Many Hazara, who had suffered heavily from the war, and often had to find refuge abroad, hoped that the intervention could improve their lot. At a December 2001 conference held in Bonn under UN auspices to plan a post-invasion political future for Afghanistan, Hazara demands for political representation and a separate Shii personal status law were granted. Hazara were strongly represented in the transitional government, and Twelver Shiism recognised independently of Sunnism, a concession no previous Afghan government had ever made.
Imperial knowledge production that dated back to the British invasions of Afghanistan in the nineteenth century, and that saw tribal and ethnosectarian division as a key feature of Afghan society and politics, shaped NATO's 'nation-building'. While not officially based on ethnic power sharing, Afghan politics became characterised by a contest between ethnic groups. The Hazara started to function more as one such ethnic group, rather than being represented by Shii Islamist or Leftist movements, as in the past. The Taliban's repression of women and Hazara was used as moral argument to justify the intervention. The ascent of the Hazara then contributed to a sense that the intervention was empowering Shia and undermining Sunnis (and Pashtus), a narrative the Taliban and other groups furthered. When the Aga Khan and other donors refurbished sites associated with Afghanistan's ecumenical and Shii legacy, this raised the visibility not just of Hazara but also of lsmailis and Qizilbash.”
Toby Mathiesen: The Caliph and the Imam. The making of sunnism and shiism.
Oxford University Press, 2023. PP. 359-361.
“The massive military and political interventions that followed the attacks of 9/1I, however, set in motion processes that repolarised Saudi-Iranian and wider Sunni-Shia relations. That fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and were directed by Usama bin Laden, whose family formed part of the Saudi elite, puzzled many. Sunnis not Shia were now portrayed as potentially 'radical' Muslims, susceptible to the ideology of al-Qaeda. The 'Neocons' around George W. Bush argued that the region's authoritarianism was in part to blame, and military interventions were supposed to usher in a 'New Middle East' of pro-Western democracies (that would make peace with Israel).
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda had its bases in Afghanistan, where they were tolerated by the Taliban. When the US asked the Taliban to expel al-Qaeda, they refused. That refusal, and the conflation of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the minds of NATO officials, contributed to the decision to not just carry out air strikes, as the US initially did, but launch a ground invasion and full scale military occupation of the country, one that was to last for twenty years.The Taliban were one of the Sunni Islamist rebel factions that had emerged out of the Afghan War, and had side-lined other factions in a civil war after the Soviet withdrawal. When the Taliban officially took over power in 1996 and declared an Islamic Emirate, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognised it (Pakistan had played a key role in their race to power). The Taliban were heirs to the Sunni Revivalist tradition on the Indian subcontinent, of a Hanafism linked to the Deobandi school. They were anti-Shii, though not as uncompromisingly as some of the Salafi Wahhabi groups in Afghanistan (Deobandis at times considered Shia to be Muslims, with the respective protections afforded to them, something beyond the pale for Wahhabis). And they had had significant ideological differences with al-Qaeda when it came to Shiism, and other issues.
The Taliban's backers in the Gulf and Pakistani intelligence had hoped its anti-Shiism would foreclose any cooperation with Iran. After the fall of the Afghan Communist government in 1992, the Shii Hazara party, Hezb-e Wahdat, emerged as a powerful military force, controlling large parts of Kabul and other areas. Faced with a successful Taliban campaign, some Hazara politicians negotiated with the Taliban, while others vowed to resist. The Taliban's stance oscillated between pragmatism to solidify their military conquests (such as by the acceptance of Shii defectors into their ranks), and the occasional assertion that Shia are heretics.34 After the Taliban cook Herat and Kabul in 1996, Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan city home to an Ali shrine and a Hazara stronghold, and then under Hezb-e Wahdat control, became the scene of intense fighting. In 1997, when the Taliban moved into the town, Hezb-e Wahdat fighters killed hundreds of them. Partly in response, the Taliban massacred several thousand Shia Hazara there in 1998, including women and children. When they assassinated several Iranian diplomats a year later, Iran almost invaded. Despite the violence, some Afghan Shii Islamists hoped to play a part in the Taliban's Islamic Emirate, but the latter were not interested in sharing power with a group they had defeated militarily, and despised doctrinally and ethnically.
Mean while, in Pakistan, the end of the Afghan Jihad had seen a dramatic rise of Sunni Shia violence, with Sunni militants, often returnees from Afghanistan, attacking Shia. These veterans, who had lost their sense of purpose, started to see the fight against Shia at home as a continuation of the Jihad. In fact, in the 1990s tit-for-tat assassinations of communal leaders and ordinary citizens and bombings of civilians became commonplace. Sunni militants started this campaign, but the Shii movements, which in the preceding decade had focused on Shii rights and juridical recognition, swiftly established military wings, and retaliated.
Sunni-Shia violence contributed to a breakdown of public order that in turn paved the way for the 1999 coup in which General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Benazir Bhutto. Presenting himself as a secularist hardliner, Musharraf initially tried not to ally too closely with Sunni Islamists, and after 9/11 cooperated in the US war on terror. This caused much popular resentment, however, as did the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, with their historic ties to Pakistani madrasas, fellow Islamists, and the intelligence services. Throughout the 2000s, Pakistan saw even more Sunni-Shia violence, which had local causes, but where tensions increased due to the American interventions and sectarian violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Suicide bombings of Shii mosques and mourning houses, and Shii Ashura processions, became common, and Shii militants retaliated. The Sunni extremist movements detested Musharraf, and tried to assassinate him. Tensions between the state and Sunni extremists escalated, as did Sunni-Shia violence.After the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their local allies founded the strongly anti-Shii Taliban Movement in Pakistan. Under US pressure, Musharraf broke with the Taliban. That the details of Pakistan's support for Sunni militants remain murky is most famously illustrated by the fact that Bin Laden would move there from Afghanistan.
At the start of the Allied campaign against the Taliban in 2001, Iran, no friend of the Taliban, given that they had killed Shii Hazara and Iranian diplomats, provided limited support to the US near the border with Afghanistan. In November, Secretary of State Colin Powell shook hands with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, at the UN headquarters in New York.Many Hazara, who had suffered heavily from the war, and often had to find refuge abroad, hoped that the intervention could improve their lot. At a December 2001 conference held in Bonn under UN auspices to plan a post-invasion political future for Afghanistan, Hazara demands for political representation and a separate Shii personal status law were granted. Hazara were strongly represented in the transitional government, and Twelver Shiism recognised independently of Sunnism, a concession no previous Afghan government had ever made.
Imperial knowledge production that dated back to the British invasions of Afghanistan in the nineteenth century, and that saw tribal and ethnosectarian division as a key feature of Afghan society and politics, shaped NATO's 'nation-building'. While not officially based on ethnic power sharing, Afghan politics became characterised by a contest between ethnic groups. The Hazara started to function more as one such ethnic group, rather than being represented by Shii Islamist or Leftist movements, as in the past. The Taliban's repression of women and Hazara was used as moral argument to justify the intervention. The ascent of the Hazara then contributed to a sense that the intervention was empowering Shia and undermining Sunnis (and Pashtus), a narrative the Taliban and other groups furthered. When the Aga Khan and other donors refurbished sites associated with Afghanistan's ecumenical and Shii legacy, this raised the visibility not just of Hazara but also of lsmailis and Qizilbash.”
Toby Mathiesen: The Caliph and the Imam. The making of sunnism and shiism.
Oxford University Press, 2023. PP. 359-361.