关于塔利班，你应该了解的六个问题
Who Are the Taliban, and What Do They Want?
ERIC NAGOURNEY
2021年8月18日
In the winter of 1995, a New York Times correspondent visiting Afghanistan reported that after years of brutal civil strife, a big change seemed to be afoot.
1995年冬天，一名访问阿富汗的《纽约时报》记者报道称，经过多年残酷的内乱，重大改变似乎即将发生。
A “new force of professed Islamic purists and Afghan patriots” had quickly taken military control of more than 40 percent of the country.
一支“由公开宣称的伊斯兰纯粹主义者和阿富汗爱国者组成的新势力”迅速控制了该国40%以上的地区。
It was surprising, because until taking up arms just a year before, many of the fighters had been little more than religious pupils.
这令人感到惊讶，因为许多战士拿起武器的前一年还只是宗教学生。
Their very name meant “students.” The Taliban, they called themselves.
他们自称塔利班，意思正是“学生”。
A quarter-century later, after outlasting an international military coalition in a war that cost tens of thousands of lives, the onetime students are now rulers of the land. Again.
25年后，他们在一场夺去数万人生命的战争中熬过了国际军事联盟驻扎的时间，曾经的学生们现在再次成为了这片土地的统治者。
Here is a look at the origin of the Taliban; how they managed to take over Afghanistan not once, but twice; what they did when they first took control — and what that might reveal about their plans for this time.
下面我们来看看塔利班的起源；他们是如何成功接管阿富汗的，不是一次，而是两次；他们第一次取得控制时做了什么——对于他们这次的计划，会给我们带来什么样的启示。
When did the Taliban first emerge?
塔利班最早出现在什么时候？
The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. The group was rooted in rural areas of Kandahar Province, in the country’s ethnic-Pashtun heartland in the south.
在苏联军队于1989年从阿富汗撤出后，1994年，塔利班在动荡中兴起。该组织扎根于坎大哈省的农村地区，该省位于阿富汗南部的普什图族中心地带。
The Soviet Union had invaded in 1979 to prop up the Communist government in Afghanistan, and eventually met the fate of big powers past and present that have tried to impose their will on the country: It was driven out.
苏联于1979年入侵阿富汗，以支持阿富汗的共产主义政府。无论是过去还是现在，试图将本国意志强加于阿富汗的大国最终的结局都是被赶了出去。
The Soviets were defeated by Islamic fighters known as the mujahedeen, a patchwork of insurgent factions supported by a U.S. government only too happy to wage a proxy war against its Cold War rival.
苏联被称为圣战者的伊斯兰战士打败了，这是一个由美国政府支持的叛乱派别拼凑成的组织，美国非常乐意对其冷战对手发动一场代理战争。
But the joy over that victory was short-lived, as the various factions fell out and began fighting for control. The country fell into warlordism, and a brutal civil war.
但胜利的喜悦昙花一现，各派相继闹翻，开始抢夺控制权。该国陷入军阀统治以及残酷的内战。
Against this backdrop, the Taliban, with their promise to put Islamic values first and to battle the corruption that drove the warlords’ fighting, quickly attracted a following. Over months of intense fighting, they took over most of the country.
在此背景下，塔利班很快吸引了追随者，它承诺将伊斯兰价值观放在首位，并与推动军阀混战的腐败作斗争。经过数月的激烈战斗，他们占领了该国的大部分地区。
How did the Taliban rule?
塔利班是如何统治的？
In 1996, the Taliban declared an Islamic Emirate, imposing a harsh interpretation of the Quran and enforcing it with brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions. And they strictly curtailed the role of women, keeping them out of schools.
1996年，塔利班宣告建立伊斯兰酋长国，对《古兰经》进行严厉的解释，并通过残酷的公开惩罚来强制执行，包括鞭笞、截肢和大规模处决。他们严格限制女性的地位，不让她们上学。
They also made clear that rival religious practices would not be tolerated: In early 2001, the Taliban destroyed towering 800-year-old statues known as the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan, objects of awe around the globe. The Taliban considered them blasphemous, and boasted that their destruction was holy. “It is easier to destroy than to build,” observed the militants’ minister of information and culture.
他们还明确表示，不会容忍与之竞争的宗教：2001年初，塔利班摧毁了在世界各地令人敬畏的、有着800年历史的巴米扬大佛像。塔利班认为它们亵渎神明，并吹嘘他们毁灭佛像是神圣的行为。“摧毁比建造更容易，”武装分子的信息和文化部长说。
There was a framework of a modern government, including ministries and a bureaucracy. But at the street level, it was religious edict, and the whim of individual commanders, that dictated everyday life for Afghans.
塔利班有一个现代政府的框架，包括部委和官僚机构。但在基层，阿富汗人的日常生活由宗教法令和各个指挥官的随心所欲来决定。
They did not control the entire country, however. The north, where many of the mujahedeen commanders had taken up occupancy, remained a bastion of resistance.
然而，他们并没有控制整个国家。许多圣战者指挥官占领的北部仍然是抵抗的堡垒。
What does Taliban rule mean for women?
塔利班统治对女性意味着什么？
The Taliban were founded in an ideology dictating that women should play only the most circumscribed roles in society.
塔利班建立在一种意识形态的基础上，即女性在社会上只能扮演最受约束的角色。
The last time they ruled, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or even going to school. And women caught outside the home with their faces uncovered risked severe punishment. Unmarried women and men seen together also faced punishment.
他们上一次执政时禁止女人和女孩从事大部分工作，甚至禁止她们上学。出门在外的女性被抓到没有遮面可能会受到严厉的惩罚。未婚男女被看到在一起也面临惩罚。
After the Taliban government was toppled by an American-led coalition, women made many gains in Afghanistan. But two decades later, as the U.S. negotiated a troop withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, many Afghan women feared that all of that ground would be lost.
塔利班政府被美国领导的联盟推翻后，女性在阿富汗得到了许多权利。但20年后，随着美国与塔利班谈判达成撤军协议，许多阿富汗女性担心会失去所有这些成果。
And as the militants take power, there have been ample signs that those fears are well-grounded.
随着武装分子掌权，有充分的迹象表明这些担忧是有根据的。
In just one example, Taliban fighters entered a bank in Kandahar during fighting in July and ordered nine women working there to leave and said that male relatives should take their place, Reuters reported. And in the northern city of Kunduz this month, the city’s new Taliban rulers ordered women who had worked for the government to leave their jobs and never return.
仅举一个例子，据路透社报道，塔利班武装分子在7月的战斗中进入坎大哈的一家银行，命令在那里工作的九名女性离开，并称应该由男性亲属代替她们的位置。本月在北部城市昆都士，新上台的塔利班统治者下令让为政府工作的女性离职，永远不要回来。
“It’s really strange to not be allowed to get to work, but now this is what it is,” one of the bank workers in Kandahar said.
坎大哈的一名银行工作人员说：“不被允许上班真的很奇怪，但现在就是这样。”
Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan?
美国为什么要入侵阿富汗？
When they were in power, the Taliban made Afghanistan a safe harbor for Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabia-born former mujahedeen fighter, while he built up a terrorist group with global designs: Al Qaeda.
塔利班掌权期间让阿富汗成了沙特阿拉伯出生的前圣战战士奥萨马·本·拉登(Osama bin Laden)的避风港，他在这段时间里建立了一个有全球计划的恐怖组织：基地组织(Al Qaeda)。
On Sept. 11, 2001, the group struck a blow that rattled the world, toppling the World Trade Center towers in New York and damaging the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands were killed.
2001年9月11日，该组织发动了一场震惊世界的袭击，摧毁了纽约的世贸中心大楼，重创了华盛顿的五角大楼。数千人因此丧生。
President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. When the Taliban balked, the United States invaded. Unleashing a heavy airstrike campaign, and joined by former mujahedeen groups within the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance coalition, the U.S. and its allies soon toppled the Taliban government. Most of the Qaeda and Taliban officials who survived fled to Pakistan.
乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)总统要求塔利班交出基地组织和本·拉登。在塔利班不予配合后，美国入侵了阿富汗。美国及其盟友发动了猛烈的空袭，并在反塔利班北方联盟里的前圣战组织帮助下，很快推翻了塔利班政府。大部分幸存的基地组织和塔利班官员逃到了巴基斯坦。
Twenty years later, some of those same Taliban officials were among the delegation that struck a deal for the United States to leave Afghanistan, and they will number among the country’s new rulers.
20年后，这些塔利班官员中的一些人也出现在为美国离开阿富汗达成协议的代表团中，他们将成为该国的新统治者。
What happened to the Taliban after their 2001 defeat?
塔利班在2001年战败后发生了什么？
With the shelter and assistance of Pakistan’s military — the same force receiving heavy financial aid from the United States to help hunt down Al Qaeda — the Taliban reformed as a guerrilla insurgency.
在巴基斯坦军方的庇护和援助下，塔利班改头换面，转变成了一支打游击的叛乱武装。巴基斯坦军队曾经从美国得到了大量的经济援助，以帮助追捕基地组织。
The U.S. began pouring resources into a new war in Iraq, and American officials told the world that Afghanistan was well on its way to becoming a Western-style democracy with modern institutions. But many Afghans were coming to feel that those foreign institutions were just another way for corrupt leaders to steal money.
美国开始向伊拉克的新战争投入大量资源，美国官员告诉世界，阿富汗正朝着拥有现代制度的西方式民主的方向前进。但许多阿富汗人开始觉得，这些外国制度只是腐败领导人窃取资金的另一种方式。
In the countryside, the Taliban began gaining ground, and support, particularly in rural areas. Their numbers grew — some fighters were intimidated into joining, others happy to volunteer, almost all of them better paid than local policemen. And the group found a rich recruiting vein among the Afghan diaspora in Pakistan, from families who had fled previous violence as refugees and were brought up in religious schools.
在农村地区，塔利班开始获得地盘和支持，尤其是在边远地区。他们的人数越来越多——一些战士是被胁迫加入的，也有人自愿加入，几乎所有人的工资都比当地警察高。该组织在巴基斯坦的阿富汗侨民中找到了丰富的招募渠道，这些人来自之前逃离暴力的难民家庭，在宗教学校中长大。
“Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm,” The Times reported in 2008, noting that “a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world’s most powerful armies at bay.”
《纽约时报》在2008年报道，“被赶下台六年后，塔利班展现出的韧性和凶猛令人担忧”。该报道还指出，“一个相对零散的叛乱组织成功地让世界上最强大的军队无法近身。”
The Taliban weathered the storm when President Barack Obama vastly expanded the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, up to around 100,000 troops in 2010. And when the Americans began drawing down a few years later, the insurgents began gaining ground again. It was a campaign of persistence, with the Taliban betting that the United States would lose patience and leave.
贝拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)总统大幅扩大美国在阿富汗的军事存在，在2010年达到约10万名士兵，塔利班安然度过了这场风暴。几年后，当美军开始撤军时，叛乱分子又开始卷土重来。这是一场坚持不懈的战役，塔利班把赌注押在美国将失去耐心并离开。
They were right. More than 2,400 American lives later, $2 trillion later, tens of thousands of Afghan civilian and security forces deaths later, President Donald J. Trump made a deal with the Taliban and declared that American forces would leave Afghanistan by mid-2021. President Biden endorsed the approach, and presided over an uncompromising troop withdrawal even as the Taliban began gobbling up whole districts, and then cities.
他们是对的。逾2400名美国人丧生，2万亿美元的损失，数万名阿富汗平民和安全部队死亡之后，唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)总统与塔利班达成了协议，宣布美国军队将在2021年中期离开阿富汗。拜登总统支持这一做法，并主持了毫不妥协的撤军行动，即使塔利班开始占领整个地区，然后是城市。
This week, just nine days after the Taliban seized their first provincial capital, the insurgents walked into the capital, Kabul. Taliban rule of Afghanistan has resumed.
本周，就在塔利班占领第一个省会城市九天之后，叛乱分子进入了首都喀布尔。塔利班恢复了对阿富汗的统治。
What will the Taliban do next?
塔利班接下来会做什么？
Taliban leaders have so far seemed to avoid inflammatory rhetoric, and have called on commanders to rule fairly and avoid reprisals and abuse. They have issued assurances that people will be safe.
到目前为止，塔利班领导人似乎一直在避免煽动性的言论，呼吁指挥官们公平统治，避免报复和虐待。他们发出保证，人民将是安全的。
The early days of Taliban control have, in fact, seemed restrained in some places. But enough reports of brutality and intimidation have surfaced to send waves of refugees to Kabul ahead of the group’s advance. And now, the capital’s airport has become a scene of desperation and chaos, as thousands of Afghans try to flee the country at any cost.
事实上，在塔利班控制的早期，在一些地方似乎很克制。但有关暴行和恐吓的报道已经浮出水面，在该组织推进之前，一波又一波的难民涌向喀布尔。现在，首都的机场已经呈现出一片绝望和混乱的景象，成千上万的阿富汗人试图不惜一切代价逃离这个国家。
In Kunduz, the first major provincial capital to fall to the Taliban, residents were unconvinced by promises of peace from their new rulers.
昆都士是塔利班占领的第一个主要省会城市，当地居民并不相信新统治者的和平承诺。
“I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they will do,” one resident said. “We have to smile at them, because we are scared, but deeply we are unhappy.”
“我很害怕，因为我不知道会发生什么，也不知道他们会做什么，”一位居民说。“我们不得不对他们微笑，因为我们害怕，但内心深处我们并不快乐。”
