Jere Van Dyk: The Koran is the Glue That's Held Afghans Together
This post was written by CBS News terrorism analyst Jere Van Dyk
Two more American soldiers were shot and killed in Afghanistan yesterday. What has gone wrong? The U.S. military wants to stay the course, but the West must learn quickly, before it is too late, how important the Koran is in Afghanistan, and why.
It was November 1981. I was a young journalist living with Jalaladin Haqqani, a Mujahideen commander, at Shi-e-Khot, a mountain valley in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. Five times a day, Haqqani stood on the roof of our bombed-out compound, cupped his hands and called his men to prayer. They put their rifles down, lined up, and prayed, paying homage to God, who guided and protected them, and who led them in battle. One evening Haqqani stood on a rock and held the Koran out and his men walked under it on their way to attack an Afghan government fort. The Koran was the Word of God and would protect them and lead them to victory against the godless Communist government and the Soviet Red Army. As they dropped the shells down the mortar that night the Mujahideen shouted "God is great."
The next day, all we had to eat was rice and bread and tea. It was like that most days. The land was mostly empty. The homes had been bombed and the people had fled to Pakistan. The men had precious little to eat, but they had God, and the Koran, and that was enough.
When we hiked back out through the mountains, the Mujahideen put three camels in front to serve as mine sweepers. Soviet helicopters had seeded the passes with small green plastic mines that looked like leaves. Each camel stepped on a mine and it blew its foot off. The men slaughtered them in accordance with Islamic law. We continued on through the minefield. When we reached a safe area, the men bowed in prayer, thanking God for guiding them. I prayed too....
In the 19th Century, when the British ruled India, and what is today Pakistan, British soldiers fought but never conquered the Pashtun tribes along the border. The tribesmen were led by what the British called "Hindustani fanatics," who today we call "Wahhabis," outsiders from Arabia, the ardent followers of Abdul Wahhab Najdi (1703-92), a militant desert preacher from Saudi Arabia. There were few Wahhabis then, but they came in greater numbers a hundred years later, in the 1980s, seeking martyrdom against the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was a Wahhabi. Wahhabism is a harsh, Puritanical fiercely fundamentalist Islamic sect, alien to traditional Afghan culture but has now seeped into this culture and helped to turn Afghans, isolated, coarser, and edgy, the result of thirty years of war and suffering, against what they feel are Americans who do not respect their culture, or their religion....