The Taliban was formed in Kandahar in September 1994 during the Second Afghan Civil War (1992–1996) under the leadership of Umar Mujahid. With the support of Pakistan, the Taliban captured Kandahar from the forces of Naqibullah Akhund in November 1994 and proceeded to seize all of southern Afghanistan by September 1995. In the spring of 1996, the Taliban held a meeting of over a thousand religious clerics, in the course of which Mujahid was declared the ("commander of the believers") and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was declared. Although initially dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, the Taliban began recruiting Tajiks and Uzbeks into its ranks in order to seize northern regions of Afghanistan. After the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, their principal opponent Ahmad Shah Massoud founded the Northern Alliance to resist the Taliban, triggering the Third Afghan Civil War (1996–2001).
During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban implemented a strict interpretation of Sharia law, under which women's rights were restricted, forms of art such as photography, paintings, movies, television and music were banned, a cultural genocide was carried out among other severe regulations. The Taliban's Islamic Emirate was recognized only by three countries, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates while the Northern Alliance-led Islamic State of Afghanistan was internationally recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. After the United States-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban were ousted from power and most of their leadership fled to Pakistan.
By 2002, the Taliban began regrouping in parts of Pakistan, especially in the city of Quetta where formed its leadership formed the so-called "Quetta Shura" while Taliban groups in Afghanistan operated without the leadership. In 2004, they launched an insurgency and began conducting guerilla attacks against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and coalition forces. After the successful 2006 offensive, the Taliban regained a considerable amount of territory in southeastern and southwestern provinces where they re-established their own administration based on Sharia law, operating independently from the Afghan government. Following Mujahid's death in 2013, his successor Akhtar Mansur was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the Balochistan province of Pakistan in 2016. The Taliban and the United States signed the Doha Accord in 2020, under which the U.S. agreed to withdrew all its troops and NATO troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban pledge to not attack U.S. forces and prevent al-Qaeda from operating in areas under Taliban control. Under the command of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban launched its 2021 offensive, which concluded with the fall of Kabul on 15 August. This also marked the start of the Republican insurgency against the Taliban.
, the Taliban's re-established Islamic Emirate is only recognized by Russia and remains unrecognized by the international community. It has re-introduced many of its former strict policies, such as restricting women's education above the 6th grade and mandatory veiling; albeit, the emirate has toned down on violence.
Background
, whose name in Pashto literally means the 'students [of Islam]' or the 'seekers of knowledge', have been part of Kandahar's 'Quran Belt' for centuries. They were teachers, dispute mediators, and comforters of the dying. They would also study in madrasas, living off donations. After they completed their religious studies, they could become mullahs, the 'givers' of knowledge. This provided a form of Islamic civil service in absence of state.
In 1978, the Saur Revolution brought the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan into power. Backed by the Soviet Union, the new regime subsequently unleashed a Marxist campaign against religious leaders. Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution was spreading militant Islamism from the neighbouring country through underground networks. Supporters of it started spreading their ideas across the desert, especially to the accessible Herat, which, like Iran, had many Shia Muslims.
Nevertheless, the communist government continued to campaign against traditional and Islamic practices. In March 1979, the Herat uprising began in response to the announcement of a compulsory literacy program for girls. This gave rise to a spreading rebellion in the western countryside. Eventually, a larger insurgency by the mujahideen began. After the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, Islamic mujahideen fighters engaged in war with those Soviet forces.
Foreign influence
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) soon began to support the insurgency through Pakistan. Although no documentation which proves that the CIA directly supported the Taliban has surfaced, it has been argued that military support was indirectly provided to the Taliban because, in the 1980s, the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Pakistani president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq pursued a religious and political agenda in Afghanistan. Zia believed that political Islam should be embraced, saying that religion and ideology were the main sources of the country's strength. He also saw jihad as a political weapon. Zia insisted that all CIA support to the mujahideen go through Pakistani hands. Pakistani support for them was overseen by the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Zia and Akhtar Abdur Rahman, the leader of ISI, supported the construction of madrasas along the border to educate young Afghans, with their number in all of Pakistan increasing from 900 in 1971 to about 33,000 by 1988. Many of these had been financed by patrons from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Saudi religious ideology was introduced in these institutions. Many senior leaders of the Afghanistan Taliban had attended the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Akora Khattak in Pakistan, and it supported the Taliban. The seminary was run by Sami-ul-Haq of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), who is often referred to as the "Father of the Taliban". It blended Islamist politics with the teachings of the Deoband movement.
During the power vacuum which was created by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the country was torn apart by warring mujahideen groups. President Mohammad Najibullah warned that "Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism". The Pakistani intelligence initially supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's forces, with former Afghan military officers directly under its command. However, he failed when Ahmad Shah Massoud captured Kabul in 1992. Javed Nasir, the new head of ISI, was an open preacher of Islamic values and the most religious leader of the Pakistani intelligence in a generation.
The new Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto wanted to develop Pakistan's economy through overland trading in Central Asia. Her interior minister Naseerullah Babar was a Pashtun notable who had organised guerrilla training for Afghans in the 1970s. He supported using the Pashtun belt to reach the Central Asian markets. In October 1994, Babar organised a trial convoy of Pakistani exports being delivered to Turkmenistan. As the convoy arrived at the Pakistani border, the Taliban had just begun operating in the area. The ISI grasped the chance to wield power in the region by fostering a previously unknown Kandahari student movement. They continued to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Emergence in Afghanistan, 1994–1996
Kandahar had traditionally been the center of Pashtun power and culture, as well as one of the major centres of political power in the country, but by 1994, it had fallen into disarray. Hekmatyar's forces, trucking mafias and local warlords, such as Naqibullah Akhund, dominated the city and freely traveled around it, with hundreds of roadblocks on its main roads and at the same time, widespread acts of violence and sexual crimes were also occurring inside the city. The rise of the Taliban was subsequently portrayed as creating Islamic order against crime and chaos. This connected popular Islamic values with the restoration of the glory of the Durrani Pashtuns. This happened as wealthy Pashtun leaders in Kandahar were looking for a common cause.
Military campaign
Beginnings After the fall of the Najibullah regime, local mullahs who knew each other around Kandahar, including Umar Mujahid, Mohammad Ghous, Hasan Akhund, and Mohammad Rabbani, who knew each other since they had fought together and because all of them were from Uruzgan Province, began to hold discussions about the bad situation which existed in the area. An agenda was agreed to, which included restoring peace, disarming the population, enforcing Sharia law, and advancing Islamist politics in Afghanistan. Since they were mostly students of madrasas, the name was considered appropriate. This also had the advantage of distancing them from the political maneuvering of the mujahideen.
A small Taliban militia first emerged near Kandahar in the spring and summer of 1994, committing vigilante acts against minor warlords, with a fund of US$250,000 being supplied to it by local businessmen. They soon began to receive backing from local Durrani Pashtun leaders. These included Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, Hamid Karzai, and the Popalzai. Their backing gave legitimacy to the militia in its early moment. Their aim was to bring back the exiled former King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Mohammed Omar began to meet Pashtun delegations and was made the head of the movement's supreme council.
The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and most of them were ethnically Pashtun from the Durrani tribal confederation. The Taliban were initially treated with an enormous amount of goodwill by Afghans who were weary of the corruption, the brutality, and the incessant fighting among Mujahideen warlords. One story is that the rape and murder of boys and girls who were members of a family which was traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mohammed Omar (Mullah Omar) and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals. Another motivation was that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the "Afghanistan Transit Trade" and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed, and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.
Around 20,000 Afghan students who decided to join the Taliban came from madrasas which were located in Pakistani refugee camps, and thousands more joined the march on the way. The students were mainly between the ages of 14 and 24, with little education other than Islamic subjects which were taught by "barely literate" teachers who were hired by mullahs or members of Pakistani fundamentalist political parties. They also lacked knowledge of their country's history, including the history of the war against the Soviets. Furthermore, they were ignorant of the tribal and cultural context of their country and community, its traditions and its ethnic groups, having been orphaned and made rootless by the continuous war with little economic prospects, warfare, and puritanical Islam being the only sources of purpose which were available to them. Growing up in Islamic schools or segregated refugee camps or with few female relatives, they had little contact with women when mullahs told them women were a temptation. The Taliban offered the young men a way of life that gave it meaning.
Military operations