Mujahideen In A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mujahid: “Someone who struggles for the sake of Allah and Islam.” In the late 1970’s a group of “rebels” rose in Afghanistan. These rebels took upon the name Mujahideen in reference to the Arabic word Mujahid. The rise of the Mujahideen came from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Over the course of twenty years the Mujahideen developed and eventually splintered into various groups, one of which we know now as the Taliban. The evolution and downfall of the Mujahideen is accurately expounded upon in Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1797 their goal was to spread the ideologies of Marxism and Communism into the Middle East. The rebel group Mujahideen was formed due to the

“The movement attracted popular support in the initial post-Soviet eta by promising to impose stability and rule of law after four years of conflict (1992-1996) among rival Mujahideen groups” (Laub). The Taliban began marauding cities after Rabbani refused to step down. Laila tells us about this escapade in the novel, she depicts “for two years now, the Taliban had been making their way toward Kabul, taking cities from the Mujahideen, ending factional war wherever they’d settled” (Hosseini 274). The ultimate reason the Taliban was able to gain so much support was because they were united, much like Hosseini illuminates in his novel, “the Taliban had one thing the Mujahideen did not, Rasheed said. They were united” (Hosseini 275). The Taliban fighters were ultimately united in one goal, to send the unsavory people out of Afghanistan. Most people were propitious of the Taliban when they first entered into Kabul. The people were zealous for the civil wars to be over and to finally have one leader, who shared the ideologies of their religion. In the novel Laila describes a sight she witnesses when the Taliban first arrives: “on it, someone had painted three words in big, black, letters: ZENDA BAAD TALIBAN! Long live the Taliban!” (Hosseini 275). However once Mullah Omar the leader of Taliban ruled Afghanistan granted Osama Bin Laden, known terrorist and martinet, and Al-Qaeda territory in Afghanistan things began to change. The name Mujahideen was no longer an icon of pride and freedom, but a name associated with international terrorist. Tarzi affirms this in his work, “Since 1992, however, the term Mujahideen became associated with international terrorist figures who had once fought in their ranks, such as Osama Bin