NYTimes.com Article: Trucks of the Taliban: Durable, Not Discreet

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Trucks of the Taliban: Durable, Not Discreet

November 23, 2001 

By JOHN F. BURNS


 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- They hanged television sets, and
draped trees with videotape pulled in fury from cassettes.
Computers were "executed" on the spot, with rifle butts to
the monitors. The Taliban and technology were enemies from
the start, as Afghanistan's former rulers sought to drag
the country back across centuries to their own medieval,
village-culture form of Islam. 

But four-wheel-drive trucks? That was something else. From
their appearance as a ragtag village militia to their
heyday as the puritanical masters of 90 percent of
Afghanistan, and through to their helter-skelter flight
last week from all but two cities, the Taliban had their
own signature vehicles - and these seemed at odds with the
rulers' theological commitment to a no-tech world. 

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader,
co-equal on America's most-wanted list with Osama bin
Laden, is partial to Chevrolet Suburbans with darkened
windows. Mr. bin Laden, like many of the sheiks and princes
of Saudi Arabia among whom he grew up, likes Toyota Land
Cruisers, as did his military commander, Muhammad Atef, a
former Egyptian policeman who is believed to have been
killed by American bombing last week. 

There is a hierarchy of vehicles among the more important
lieutenants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's
terrorist organization. Not for them anything discreet and
durable, to go with the austerity of their faith: nothing
but a Land Cruiser will serve. For ordinary fighters, men
with long beards and longer barrels on their ubiquitous
Kalashnikovs, the vehicle of choice is the Toyota Hilux, a
compact pickup truck popular throughout the developing
world. 

Mullah Omar, a man so elusive that he has not been
photographed in years, and has only granted one interview,
was spotted in early October in his Suburban, a white
vehicle with no outside embellishments. This was according
to villagers outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, who
reported seeing him stepping out of the vehicle,
accompanied by Mr. bin Laden, in an area near an Al Qaeda
training camp two days after the American bombing began on
Oct. 7. 

But automotive modesty has not inhibited the general run of
Taliban and Al Qaeda men, and not Mr. bin Laden, either.
When he appeared in a videotape released through Al Jazeera
television in October, in a desert setting with Mr. Atef
and Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian who completed Al
Qaeda's ruling triumvirate, it was in a fleet of Land
Cruisers with police-style emergency lights on the roofs. 

Other extras visible on the tape, made earlier this year,
were the smokestack-like air inductors running up the
windshield pillars; Toyota distributes these on vehicles
that operate mostly in the sand-choked air of desert
regions. The Al Qaeda leaders' vehicles appeared to be free
of the side-door graphics favored by many of their
followers, whose tastes run to trucks in flame red or
electric blue with words like "Rodeo" or "Pick Up" lettered
on the sides, with fancy wheels and chromed roll bars. 

The presence of these vehicles raises questions, given that
the Taliban have been subjected for three years to one of
the strictest economic sanctions ever applied by the United
Nations. And Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest
countries. How can thousands of men who produce nothing of
economic value afford vehicles that cost $50,000 or, in the
case of luxuriously equipped Land Cruisers, significantly
more? 

Part of the answer is that Afghanistan, until two years
ago, was the world's largest supplier of the raw opium that
was processed into heroin, a traffic that earned hundreds
of millions of dollars and, American investigators say,
went partly to finance terrorism. But after Mullah Omar
responded to international pressure by banning the growing
of poppies, that source of revenue dried up. 

But very few of the mullahs' big, powerful vehicles had to
be bought at all, at least not for anything like the
sticker price. Most, according to the export licenses they
bear, were acquired through an import-export scam that
operated here in Pakistan. 

Part of the evidence for this comes from the Toyota Motor
Corporation in Japan, which issued a statement after images
of the Taliban driving Land Cruisers began to appear on
television after Sept. 11. Only one of the company's
vehicles - a Land Cruiser, in 1997 - had been officially
exported to Afghanistan in the previous five years, Toyota
said. "Any other Toyota products presently in the country
have probably arrived from neighboring countries via
unofficial channels" - that is, they were smuggled. 

Toyota's unease at being associated with the Taliban and Al
Qaeda is evident. In its September statement, the company
said, "Toyota does not have a sales or distribution channel
in Afghanistan, and we do not export vehicles to that
country." 

Somewhat less laconic was Wade Hoyt, Toyota's spokesman in
New York, who put the best corporate spin on the situation
this week. "It is not our proudest product placement," he
said. "But it shows that the Taliban are looking for the
same qualities as any truck buyer: durability and
reliability." 

How the warriors of Islam came by their vehicles works like
this: Corrupt importers in Pakistan order vehicles by the
hundreds, mostly from distributors in Dubai or Kuwait, and
register them for transit to Afghanistan. In practice, the
vehicles "fall off the back" of transporters along the way,
in provinces of Pakistan adjacent to the border. There,
free of duty and tax, they are sold at a fraction of the
official price. 

In the case of the vehicles used by the Taliban and Al
Qaeda, the purchasers of first record - or no record, since
most of the vehicles have no registration papers - are
often the madrassahs, or religious schools. 

The clerics who run the madrassahs pass the vehicles on to
their faith-brothers in Afghanistan. In some cases,
according to Pakistani officials, who lose an estimated $1
billion a year in duties in such scams, the vehicles are
stolen from the people who obtained them illegally in the
first place. 

As for why the Islamic warriors of Afghanistan have so
favored Suburbans, Land Cruisers and Hiluxes, the answers
are simple. Suburbans and Land Cruisers are comfortable,
air-conditioned and reliable, and they have large fuel
tanks, all qualities much sought-after in this harsh
environment. Both vehicles, as well as the Hilux trucks,
are good for carrying large numbers of people and weapons. 

And the pickups provided ideal platforms for intimidation
and enforcement. From their Land Cruisers and Hiluxes, the
Taliban were ready to leap down and beat women for showing
a glimpse of ankle or to lock a man in a shipping container
for three weeks until his beard grew to the approved
length. Or, most dismal, to drag an accused adulterer or
blasphemer to the soccer stadium for execution. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/automobiles/23CARS.html?ex=1007597645&ei=1&en=3e9587e2804040f8



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