Muslims Afghanistan

JALUDEEN HAQQANI, THE CHIEF OF the Moujahedeen Command Council, sits barefoot on a small pillow at his palatial headquarters in the Pakistani border town of Miram Shah, one of the strategic strongholds of the Islamic forces waging holy war in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government's decision to destroy two ancient statues of Buddha has heightened debate within the art world about how Asia's most valued antiquities should be handled--and where they ultimately belong. There are already signs that the incident has altered the dynamic of the debate in ways that could affect public access to art treasures far beyond the rugged mountains of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The ultra-orthodox army of the Taliban, known for its draconian interpretations of Islamic law, appears headed for decisive victory in its four-year battle for control of Afghanistan. In the past two weeks, Taliban fighters have rolled over the last strongholds of rebel forces in the northern reaches of the country. The Taliban now have all but a few pockets in northeastern and central Afghanistan that the rebels, known as the Northern Alliance, still control.

In a growing intellectual challenge to Islamic practices abroad, leading Southern California Muslim scholars Thursday denounced the ruling Taliban's destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan as contrary to their faith's laws and traditions.

Muslims gathered in mosques throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan to pray for rain on the orders of the ruling Taliban militia. In a Radio Shariat broadcast, the supreme leader of the ruling Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered the faithful to the mosques for three days of prayer aimed at ending the worst drought in 30 years. The United Nations says drought and fighting have pushed more than 100,000 Afghans to flee to Pakistan in the last five months.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have jailed 22 barbers for giving men Leonardo DiCaprio-style haircuts that are deemed offensive to Islam because the long bangs interfere with the ability to bow and say prayers. The hairstyle, referred to among young men in Kabul as "the Titanic," mimics that of DiCaprio in the blockbuster movie.

The supreme leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement warned that any Afghan converting to Christianity or promoting other religions will be executed. In his decree, Mullah Mohammed Omar also warned booksellers that they face five years in prison if they sell material insulting Islam or promoting "wrong beliefs."

Afghanistan's armed rivals rang in 1994 with the heaviest fighting in Kabul in more than six months, showering hundreds of rocket and artillery shells onto the divided, battered capital Saturday despite a cease-fire signed a week ago. The two main hospitals in the city reported that eight dead and 250 injured had been brought in since the bombardment began at dawn, the British news agency Reuters reported.

A Taliban leader said restrictions on women that have prompted international condemnation could be lifted once the Islamic group has consolidated its hold over Kabul, the Afghan capital. The Taliban militia seized Kabul on Sept. 27, ousting the government in a campaign to install strict Islamic rule. The militia closed girls' schools and banned women from working. But the pledges to ease restrictions contrast with the Taliban's record elsewhere.

The legend says a poor , pious man who had lost an eye fighting foreign invaders had a startling vision: The Prophet Mohammed appeared and told him to act to stanch the seemingly endless bloodshed in this nation. Maulavi Mohammed Omar's revelation electrified boys and men studying in madrasas , or religious schools, in the southeastern city of Kandahar. They were tired of 15 years of warfare and increasing lawlessness.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have jailed 22 barbers for giving men Leonardo DiCaprio-style haircuts that are deemed offensive to Islam because the long bangs interfere with the ability to bow and say prayers. The hairstyle, referred to among young men in Kabul as "the Titanic," mimics that of DiCaprio in the blockbuster movie.

Muslims gathered in mosques throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan to pray for rain on the orders of the ruling Taliban militia. In a Radio Shariat broadcast, the supreme leader of the ruling Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered the faithful to the mosques for three days of prayer aimed at ending the worst drought in 30 years. The United Nations says drought and fighting have pushed more than 100,000 Afghans to flee to Pakistan in the last five months.

The supreme leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement warned that any Afghan converting to Christianity or promoting other religions will be executed. In his decree, Mullah Mohammed Omar also warned booksellers that they face five years in prison if they sell material insulting Islam or promoting "wrong beliefs."

A generation after the Soviet invasion launched Afghanistan into a vicious cycle of war, the strict Islamic movement known as the Taliban has scored a series of military victories in recent days that have given it control of more than 95% of the rugged Central Asian nation, according to senior Taliban officials and U.S. intelligence reports. The latest offensive could mark a turning point both politically and militarily for the Taliban, which seized power in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in 1996.

Four years after imposing one of the world's harshest Islamic regimes, the armed movement known as the Taliban is beginning to lose its grip. In villages across Afghanistan, families that once offered up their sons to fight in the country's long civil war are now refusing--and even battling to keep the clerics at bay. In the cities, Afghans are resisting the harsh edicts enforced by whip-wielding Taliban police.

Outside this remote mountain village languishes a group of self-styled Muslim warriors who carried their holy war into the ranks of Islam itself. More than 100 Pakistani fighters are being held captive at Lejdeh, in northeastern Afghanistan, by this nation's opposition government, which is locked in a civil war with the radical Islamic group known as the Taliban.

The Taliban movement and the opposition alliance in this war-torn nation exchanged artillery and rocket fire and bombed each other's positions near Kabul on Monday in some of the fiercest clashes of a 2-week-old battle for the capital. The opposition general controlling the front line at this already devastated village, about two miles from where the two sides were exchanging fire, said his alliance forces killed at least 40 troops of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement that holds Kabul.

For the first time since the 1978 Communist revolution that triggered Afghanistan's Islamic rebellion, the Nuristan bar in Kabul's state-owned Inter-Continental Hotel, the last bastion of Western civilization in this city, was ordered to close and all its liquor stocks sealed Monday.

The ultra-orthodox army of the Taliban, known for its draconian interpretations of Islamic law, appears headed for decisive victory in its four-year battle for control of Afghanistan. In the past two weeks, Taliban fighters have rolled over the last strongholds of rebel forces in the northern reaches of the country. The Taliban now have all but a few pockets in northeastern and central Afghanistan that the rebels, known as the Northern Alliance, still control.

The Taliban movement and the opposition alliance in this war-torn nation exchanged artillery and rocket fire and bombed each other's positions near Kabul on Monday in some of the fiercest clashes of a 2-week-old battle for the capital. The opposition general controlling the front line at this already devastated village, about two miles from where the two sides were exchanging fire, said his alliance forces killed at least 40 troops of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement that holds Kabul.