This series of articles is not a propaganda of extremism, as well as of any possible form of xenophobia, and does not attempt to offend religious feelings. All the events mentioned here are an analysis of the book "The Taliban. Islam, oil and the new Great Game in Central Asia "by a journalist named Ahmed Rashid.
In addition to Bamyan, the Hazaras controlled Mazar-i-Sharif, in whom the overstraining in the relationship was felt. Various Hazara factions clung to each other for the territory and assistance of foreign states. Strictly speaking, they turned Mazar-i-Sharif into a battlefield and coped with it no worse than Uzbeks.
Uzbeks themselves experienced a deep crisis, and therefore the officers of Iran and Russia tried to bring the parties to unity. But neither the Hazaras nor the Uzbeks of the Northern Alliance made a compromise. Ahmad Shah Massoud flew to Tehran to somehow influence the situation, which got out of control in February 1998, when Uzbeks and Hazaras began to gut each other more than the Taliban did.
Meanwhile, the Taliban spent the winter fairly calmly, as far as possible. They watched with tenderness as their enemies tear each other apart and strengthen the siege of Hazarajat (Bamiyan and the surrounding provinces). But they did not abandon the usual lessons. Fighting in the Faryab province, the Taliban once again massacred, killing 600 Uzbek farmers. The UN investigation will show that these people were dragged out of houses, placed in a line and shot.
Inside the territories controlled by the Taliban, life went on as usual. The Taliban brought to life an increasingly rigid version of the Shari'ah - amputation of limbs, stone stoning of women and banal executions became regular. This caused a reaction in the world, in connection with which the day of March 8, 1998 was devoted to the fate of women under the rule of the Taliban.
Sharia law became more personal and very cynical. One must assume that the public order suited them, and they began issuing insane decrees, such as a list of names that can be called newborns and the obligatory length of a man's beard. Also, all the home schools for girls were closed, the women were driven home and ordered to hang all the windows tightly.
But the Taliban would not have been a Taliban if he had not been a freak to the whole world, hardliners still wanted to drive out the UN and all the foreigners from the country. For example, on February 24, 1998, the UN mission left Kandahar after one of their employees, after a series of threats, was beaten by one of the Taliban leaders. Mullah Mohammad Hassan, quite soft in communication governor of Kandahar, who lost his foot in battle and moved like a pirate on a wooden stump, somehow managed to run a table and chair in a UN employee for refusing to repair the road to his native village.
The head of the UN humanitarian assistance program was denied the right to visit Kabul for talks. The international mission was embarrassed by the blockade in which the Hazaras were in Hazarajat, but the Taliban did not care. Despite such a relationship, Lakhdar Brahimi tried to organize a meeting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, but the Taliban offered to hold a bilateral meeting of clergy worthy of the ulama for a meeting they chose two months (!).
The United Nations called for US assistance, and on April 17, 1998, Bill Richardson arrived in Afghanistan. He is an expert on foreign policy issues under the Clinton administration, who still managed to agree on a summit of the clergy. He was greeted as an expensive guest, everyone wanted to draw the US to his side. Richardson was gifted with presents, accompanying his journalists allowed to shoot the leaders of the Taliban (for the first time!), Agreed to lift the blockade from the Hazaras and to discuss the issue of women with the UN, and even postponed the planned amputation on the football field, but as soon as he left, within two hours Mulla Omar said , that this will not happen. Inadequate from the word at all!
But hell does not happen much. At the end of April, a meeting of the Ulema took place in the capital of Pakistan under the aegis of the UN. There they agreed to elect 20 representatives each to negotiate the exchange of prisoners and a cease-fire. But the Taliban later refused to call people on their side, and the initiative for a peaceful settlement broke up in May.
In fact, the Taliban was preparing for a new offensive to the north, and part of this plan was the final deterioration in relations with the UN, as outside observers, with their international laws and regulations, spoiled the whole picture. They demanded that all Muslim women working for the UN move around Afghanistan, accompanied by a blood relative. Since such women were recruited there for the convenience of the Taliban in the first place, all the employees could not move. Then they ordered to move non-governmental organizations to the destroyed building of the Polytechnic College, 22 out of 30 organizations said they would leave Kabul if the Taliban did not change the decision. The Taliban replied that this is not discussed.
On July 20, the Taliban began to forcibly close down the offices of all non-governmental organizations. On the same day, bodies of two previously missing Afghans working in the UN mission were found in Jalalabad. The Taliban refused to give explanations about this. The population of Kabul is 1.2 million people, half of which depended on international donors. With the withdrawal of donors and the water pipes that were broken from the war, the population began to starve and thirst.
Passed by pickup trucks, the Taliban, demonstrating indifference, looked at the people who were handing empty pails and bottles to them. Taliban Planning Minister Kari Din Mohammad said: