Who are Talibans?
The word Taliban means “students”.
The Taliban which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) is a military organization in Afghanistan.
Since 2016, the Taliban’s leader has been Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada
In 2017, the Taliban was estimated to have 200,000 troops.
From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban held power over roughly three-quarters of Afghanistan, and enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Taliban largely consisted of students (talib) from the Pashtun (historically known as Afghans) areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan who had been educated in traditional Islamic schools, and fought during the Soviet–Afghan War.
Forming the Taliban
Mohammed Omar also known as Mullah Omar, was an Afghan mujahid commander who led the Taliban, and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996.
According to one legend, in 1994, he had a dream in which a woman told him: “We need your help; you must rise. You must end the chaos. Allah will help you.” Omar started his movement with less than 50 armed madrassah students who were simply known as the Taliban (Pashtun for ‘students’). His recruits came from madrassas located in Afghanistan and the Afghan refugee camps which were located across the border in Pakistan. They fought against the rampant corruption which had emerged during the civil war period and were initially welcomed by Afghans who were weary of warlord rule. Apparently, Omar became sickened by the abusive raping of children by warlords and turned against their authority in the mountainous country of Afghanistan from 1994 onwards.
The practice of bacha bazi by warlords was one of the key factors in Omar mobilizing the Taliban. Reportedly, in early 1994, Omar led 30 men armed with 16 rifles to free two young girls who had been kidnapped and raped by a warlord, hanging him from a tank gun barrel. Another instance arose when in 1994, a few months before the Taliban took control of Kandahar, two militia commanders confronted each other over a young boy whom they both wanted to sodomize. In the ensuing fight, Omar’s group freed the boy; appeals soon flooded in for Omar to intercede in other disputes. His movement gained momentum through the year and he quickly gathered recruits from Islamic schools totaling 12,000 by the year’s end with some Pakistani volunteers. By November 1994, Omar’s movement managed to capture the whole of the Kandahar Province and then captured the Herat Province in September 1995. Although some accounts estimated that by the spring of 1995 he had already taken 12 of the 31 provinces in Afghanistan.
Born into a poor family, Omar graduated from Darul Uloom Haqqania in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. During the 1980s, he joined the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Unionand the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.[21] He founded the Taliban movement in 1994, and by 1995 had captured much of southern and western Afghanistan; by September 1996, the Taliban also took the capital Kabul. During his tenure as the emir of Afghanistan, Omar seldom left the city of Kandahar and lived a reclusive life. He ordered the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyanin 2001.
He became wanted by the United States government after being accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda militants after the September 11 attacks against the US.
He secretly fled his residence in Kandahar after the US invasion of Afghanistan and then directed the Taliban insurgency against NATO-led forces and the new government of Afghanistan. According to sources, Omar then lived in Karachi, Pakistan until his death, but this claim was contradicted by journalist Bette Dam, who wrote that Omar continued living in Afghanistan near a US military base in Zabul. Omar died on 23 April 2013 of tuberculosis. His death was kept secret by the Taliban for two years until it was revealed in July 2015 by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security.
Under the leadership of Mohammed Omar, the movement spread throughout most of Afghanistan, shifting power away from the Mujahideen warlords. The totalitarian Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was established in 1996 and the Afghan capital was transferred to Kandahar. It held control of most of the country until being overthrown after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001 following the September 11 attacks.
At its peak, formal diplomatic recognition of the Taliban’s government was acknowledged by only three nations: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Taliban have been condemned internationally for the harsh enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, which has resulted in the brutal treatment of many Afghans. During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban and their allies committed massacres against Afghan civilians, denied UN food supplies to 160,000 starving civilians, and conducted a policy of scorched earth, burning vast areas of fertile land and destroying tens of thousands of homes.
While the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they banned activities and media including paintings, photography, and movies that depicted people or other living things. They also prohibited music using instruments, with the exception of the daf, a type of frame drum. The Taliban prevented girls and young women from attending school, banned women from working jobs outside of healthcare (male doctors were prohibited from treating women), and required that women be accompanied by a male relative and wear a burqa at all times when in public. If women broke certain rules, they were publicly whipped or executed.
The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and military are widely alleged by the international community and the Afghan government to have provided support to the Taliban during their founding and time in power, and of continuing to support the Taliban during the insurgency. Pakistan states that it dropped all support for the group after the 11 September attacks.
In 2001, reportedly 2,500 Arabs under command of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden fought for the Taliban.
Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1978–1992)
President Ronald Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office in 1983
After the Soviet Union intervened and occupied Afghanistan in 1979, Islamic mujahideen fighters engaged in war with those Soviet forces.
Pakistan’s President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq feared that the Soviets were planning to also invade Balochistan, Pakistan, so he sent Akhtar Abdur Rahman to Saudi Arabia to garner support for the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation forces. A while later, the US CIA and Saudi Arabian General Intelligence Directorate (GID) funnelled funding and equipment through the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI) to the Afghan mujahideen.
About 90,000 Afghans, including Mohammed Omar, were trained by Pakistan’s ISI during the 1980s.
In a bid to establish their rule over all Afghanistan, the Taliban expanded from their Kandahar base sweeping large territories. In early 1995 the movement moved towards Kabul, but they suffered a devastating defeat by government forces of the Islamic State of Afghanistan under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud. While retreating from Kabul, Taliban fighters started shelling the city, killing many civilians. The media reported in March 1995 that, following the Taliban’s shelling, they lost much respect from Afghans and were seen as just another “power-hungry” militia.
After a series of setbacks, the Taliban managed to take control of the western city of Herat on 5 September 1995. Following allegations by the recognised government that Pakistan was aiding the Taliban, a large mob of people attacked the Pakistani embassy in Kabul the day after.
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001)
The military goal of the Taliban during the period 1995 to 2001 was to return the order of Abdur Rahman (the Iron Emir) by the re-establishment of a state with Pashtun dominance within the northern areas. The Taliban sought to establish an Islamic government through law and order alongside a strict interpretation of Sharia law, in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the religious edicts of Mullah Omar, upon the entire land of Afghanistan. By 1998, the Taliban’s Emirate controlled 90% of Afghanistan.
In December 2000, the UNSC in Resolution 1333, recognising humanitarian needs of the Afghan people, condemning the use of Taliban territory for training of “terrorists” and Taliban providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden, issued severe sanctions against Afghanistan under Taliban control. In October 2001, the United States, with allies including the Afghan Northern Alliance, invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban regime. The Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan.
Afghan Civil War (1996–2001)
This part covers the Afghan history between the Taliban’s conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the U.S. and U.K. invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan civil war that had started in 1989, and also part of the war (in wider sense) in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
The Islamic State of Afghanistan government remained the recognized government of Afghanistan of most of the international community, the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan however received recognition from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
The defense minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) in opposition to the Taliban. The United Front included all Afghan ethnicities: Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens, some Pashtuns and others. During the conflict, the Taliban received military support from Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia. Pakistan militarily intervened in Afghanistan, deploying battalions and regiments of its Frontier Corps and Army against the United Front. Al Qaeda supported the Taliban with thousands of imported fighters from Pakistan, Arab countries, and Central Asia.
In April 1992, after the fall of the Soviet-backed regime of Mohammad Najibullah, many Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accord, which created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, Hizb-e Wahdat, and Ittihad-i Islami did not participate. The state was paralysed from the start, due to rival groups contending for total power over Kabul and Afghanistan.
Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin party refused to recognise the interim government, and in April infiltrated Kabul to take power for itself, thus starting this civil war. In May, Hekmatyar started attacks against government forces and Kabul. Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan’s ISI. With that help, Hekmatyar’s forces were able to destroy half of Kabul. Iran assisted the Hizb-e Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari. Saudi Arabia supported the Ittihad-i Islami faction. The conflict between these militias also escalated into war.
The Taliban emerged in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar around September 1994.
Due to this sudden initiation of civil war, working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability for the newly created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. Atrocities were committed by individuals inside different factions. Ceasefires, negotiated by representatives of the Islamic State’s newly appointed Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud, President Sibghatullah Mojaddedi and later President Burhanuddin Rabbani (the interim government), or officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commonly collapsed within days. The countryside in northern Afghanistan, parts of which were under the control of Defense Minister Massoud, remained calm and some reconstruction took place. The city of Herat under the rule of Islamic State ally Ismail Khan also witnessed relative calm.
Meanwhile, southern Afghanistan was neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local leaders such as Gul Agha Sherzai and their militias. The Taliban only first emerged on the scene in August 1994, announcing to liberate Afghanistan from its present corrupt leadership of warlords, and establish a pure Islamic society.
The conquest of Kandahar
On 3 November 1994, the Taliban, in a surprise attack, conquered Kandahar City. Before 4 January 1995, they controlled 12 Afghan provinces. Militias controlling the different areas often surrendered without a fight. Omar’s commanders were a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and madrassa teachers. At these stages, the Taliban were popular because they stamped out corruption, curbed lawlessness, and made the roads and area safe.
Pakistani involvement
Sources state that Pakistan was heavily involved, already in October 1994, in the “creating” of the Taliban.[122][123] Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), strongly supporting the Taliban in 1994, hoped for a new ruling power in Afghanistan favourable to Pakistan.
The conquest of Kandahar
On 3 November 1994, the Taliban, in a surprise attack, conquered Kandahar City. Before 4 January 1995, they controlled 12 Afghan provinces. Militias controlling the different areas often surrendered without a fight. Omar’s commanders were a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and madrassa teachers. At these stages, the Taliban were popular because they stamped out corruption, curbed lawlessness, and made the roads and area safe.
1995 — September 1996
Map showing political control in Afghanistan in late 1996, following the capture of Kabul by the Taliban
In a bid to establish their rule over all Afghanistan, the Taliban expanded from their Kandahar base sweeping large territories. In early 1995 the movement moved towards Kabul, but they suffered a devastating defeat by government forces of the Islamic State of Afghanistan under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud. While retreating from Kabul, Taliban fighters started shelling the city,[130] killing many civilians. The media reported in March 1995 that, following the Taliban’s shelling, they lost much respect from Afghans and were seen as just another “power-hungry” militia.
After a series of setbacks, the Taliban managed to take control of the western city of Herat on 5 September 1995. Following allegations by the recognised government that Pakistan was aiding the Taliban, a large mob of people attacked the Pakistani embassy in Kabul the day after.
On 26 September 1996, as the Taliban prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul to continue anti-Taliban resistance in the northeastern Hindu Kush mountains instead of engaging in street battles in Kabul. The Taliban entered Kabul on 27 September 1996 and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Analysts described the Taliban then as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan’s regional interests.
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001)
The military goal of the Taliban during the period 1995 to 2001 was to return the order of Abdur Rahman (the Iron Emir) by the re-establishment of a state with Pashtun dominance within the northern areas. The Taliban sought to establish an Islamic government through law and order alongside a strict interpretation of Sharia law, in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the religious edicts of Mullah Omar, upon the entire land of Afghanistan. By 1998, the Taliban’s Emirate controlled 90% of Afghanistan.
In December 2000, the UNSC in Resolution 1333, recognising humanitarian needs of the Afghan people, condemning the use of Taliban territory for training of “terrorists” and Taliban providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden, issued severe sanctions against Afghanistan under Taliban control. In October 2001, the United States, with allies including the Afghan Northern Alliance, invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban regime. The Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan.
Afghanistan during Taliban rule
When the Taliban took power in 1996, twenty years of continuous warfare had devastated Afghanistan’s infrastructure and economy. There was no running water, little electricity, few telephones, functioning roads or regular energy supplies. Basic necessities like water, food, housing and others were in desperately short supply. In addition, the clan and family structure that provided Afghans with a social/economic safety net was also badly damaged. Afghanistan’s infant mortality was the highest in the world. A full quarter of all children died before they reached their fifth birthday, a rate several times higher than most other developing countries.
International charitable and/or development organisations (non-governmental organisations or NGOs) were extremely important to the supply of food, employment, reconstruction, and other services, but the Taliban proved highly suspicious towards the ‘help’ those organisations offered (see § United Nations and NGOs). With over a million deaths throughout the years of war, the number of families headed by widows had reached 98,000 by 1998. In Kabul, where vast portions of the city had been devastated by rocket attacks, more than half of its 1.2 million people benefited in some way from NGO activities, even for drinking water. The civil war and its never-ending refugee stream continued throughout the Taliban’s reign. The Mazar, Herat, and Shomali valley offensives displaced more than three-quarters of a million civilians, using “scorched earth” tactics to prevent them from supplying the enemy with aid.
Taliban decision-makers, particularly Mullah Omar, seldom if ever talked directly to non-Muslim foreigners, so aid providers had to deal with intermediaries whose approvals and agreements were often reversed. Around September 1997 the heads of three UN agencies in Kandahar were expelled from the country after protesting when a female attorney for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was forced to talk from behind a curtain so her face would not be visible.
When the UN increased the number of Muslim women staff to satisfy Taliban demands, the Taliban then required all female Muslim UN staff travelling to Afghanistan to be chaperoned by a mahram or a blood relative. In July 1998, the Taliban closed “all NGO offices” in Kabul by force after those organisations refused to move to a bombed-out former Polytechnic College as ordered. One month later, the UN offices were also shut down. As food prices rose and conditions deteriorated, Planning Minister Qari Din Mohammed explained the Taliban’s indifference to the loss of humanitarian aid:
We Muslims believe God the Almighty will feed everybody one way or another. If the foreign NGOs leave then it is their decision. We have not expelled them.
The few organisations active in Kandahar were not subjected to the same demands and continued their operations.
Pakistani military’s role during Taliban rule
The Taliban were largely founded by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence beginning in 1994; the I.S.I. used the Taliban to establish a regime in Afghanistan which would be favourable to Pakistan, as they were trying to gain strategic depth. Since the creation of the Taliban, the ISI and the Pakistani military have given financial, logistical and military support.
According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, “between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan” on the side of the Taliban. Peter Tomsen stated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.
During 2001, according to several international sources, 28,000–30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000–15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000–3,000 Al-Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — then as Chief of Army Staff — was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals “know nothing regarding their child’s military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan”. A 1998 document by the US State Department confirms that “20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani.” According to the State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers, especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the army providing direct combat support.
On 1 August 1997, the Taliban launched an attack on Sheberghan, the main military base of Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum has said the reason the attack was successful was due to 1500 Pakistani commandos taking part and that the Pakistani air force also gave support.
In 1998, Iran accused Pakistan of sending its air force to bomb Mazar-i-Sharif in support of Taliban forces and directly accused Pakistani troops for “war crimes at Bamiyan”.
The same year, Russia said Pakistan was responsible for the “military expansion” of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan by sending large numbers of Pakistani troops, some of whom had subsequently been taken as prisoners by the anti-Taliban United Front.
Coalition invasion
The Taliban were removed from power in October 2001 by a unified effort of United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance) ground forces, small US Special Operations teams and US air support.
On 7 October 2001, less than one month after the 11 September attacks, the US, aided by the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries including several from the NATO alliance, initiated military action, bombing Taliban and Al-Qaeda-related camps. The stated intent of military operations was to remove the Taliban from power, and prevent the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations.
The CIA’s elite Special Activities Division (SAD) units were the first US forces to enter Afghanistan (many different countries’ intelligence agencies were on the ground or operating within theatre before SAD, and SAD are not technically military forces, but civilian paramilitaries). They joined with the Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) to prepare for the subsequent arrival of US Special Operations forces. The United Front (Northern Alliance) and SAD and Special Forces combined to overthrow the Taliban with minimal coalition casualties, and without the use of international conventional ground forces. The Washington Post stated in an editorial by John Lehman in 2006:
What made the Afghan campaign a landmark in the US Military’s history is that it was prosecuted by Special Operations forces from all the services, along with Navy and Air Force tactical power, operations by the Afghan Northern Alliance and the CIA were equally important and fully integrated. No large Army or Marine force was employed.[221]
On 14 October, the Taliban offered to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country in return for a bombing halt, but only if the Taliban were given evidence of bin Laden’s involvement. The US rejected this offer, and continued military operations. Mazar-i-Sharif fell to United Front troops of Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum on 9 November, triggering a cascade of provinces falling with minimal resistance.
In November 2001, before the capture of Kunduz by United Front troops under the command of Mohammad Daud Daud, thousands of top commanders and regular fighters of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agents and military personnel, and other volunteers and sympathizers in the Kunduz airlift, were evacuated and airlifted out of Kunduz by Pakistan Army cargo aircraft to Pakistan Air Force air bases in Chitral and Gilgit in Pakistan’s Northern Areas. This was dubbed the Airlift of Evil by US military forces around Kunduz, and subsequently used as a term in media reports.
On the night of 12 November, the Taliban retreated south from Kabul. On 15 November, they released eight Western aid workers after three months in captivity. By 13 November, the Taliban had withdrawn from both Kabul and Jalalabad. Finally, in early December, the Taliban gave up Kandahar, their last stronghold, dispersing without surrendering.