Introduction: Afghanistan

Understanding Islam today inevitably takes place in a politically charged and fragile world environment. This volume was written as the Taliban swept through Afghanistan with disastrous consequences for its citizens who were caught in the fighting. The Afghan government collapsed, and President Ashraf Ghani fled to a safe haven in the United Arab Emirates. There was a terrible bomb attack by ISIS-K militants on Kabul airport in August 2021 with a significant loss of life. The new government contained men who were identified by the UN and the United States as terrorists. However, unlike Al Qaeda, the Taliban are basically an Islamist nationalist movement who are at odds with the radical Islamic State Khorasan group.

To understand these events, we need, as a minimum condition, to pay attention to history. Alexander the Great (356–323 bc), in his struggle to free the Greeks from Persian control, invaded Asia and fought various disastrous battles in Bactria, now Afghanistan, in 330–327 along the Khyber Pass. The British invaded Afghanistan twice in the nineteenth century with their own version of ‘regime change’. In the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1839–42, designed to block Russian influence, the British lost over 16,000 troops in a retreat from Kabul. The second campaign in 1878–80 was equally problematic (Dupree 1980: 377–413).

Russian involvement in Central Asia has a long history especially after the October Revolution in 1917. The Soviet period had devastating consequences for Islam as ‘patterns of the transmission of Islamic knowledge were damaged, if not destroyed; Islam was driven from the public realm; the physical markings of Islam, such as mosques and seminaries, disappeared’(Khalid 2007: 2). Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to support a communist state following a coup in 1978 (Roy 1986: 84–109), to stabilise the internal political situation, and to counter American influence. In response the United States supplied arms to the Mujahideen to undermine the Russian presence. The Russian army prepared to withdraw in 1988 having suffered around 18,000 casualties in ‘a long goodbye’ (Kalinovsky 2011). The United States became involved after 9/11 and twenty years later President Biden decided to withdraw American troops to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11 as the Taliban took over many regional cities with mounting civilian casualties.