A00115 - Taliban

Taliban, Pashto Ṭālebān (“Students”), also spelled Taleban, is an ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. The faction took its name from its membership, which consisted largely of students trained in madrasas (Islamic religious schools) that had been established for Afghan refugees in the 1980s in northern Pakistan.

The Taliban emerged as a force for social order in 1994 in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar and quickly subdued the local warlords who controlled the south of the country. By late 1996, popular support for the Taliban among Afghanistan’s southern Pashtun ethnic group, as well as assistance from conservative Islamic elements abroad, had enabled the faction to seize the capital, Kabul, and gain effective control of the country. Resistance to the Taliban continued, however, particularly among non-Pashtun ethnic groups—namely, the Tajik, the Uzbek, and the Hazara —in the north, west, and central parts of the country, who saw the power of the predominantly Pashtun Taliban as a continuation of the traditional Pashtun hegemony of the country. 

Nevertheless, by 2001, the Taliban controlled all but a small section of northern Afghanistan.  World opinion, however, largely disapproved of the Taliban's social policies -- including the near-total exclusion of women from public life (including employment and education), the systematic destruction of non- Islamic artistic relics (as occurred in the town of  Bamiyan), and the implementation of harsh criminal punishments—and only Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates ever recognized the regime. More significant was the fact that the Taliban allowed Afghanistan to be a haven for Islamic militants from throughout the world, including an exiled Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden, who, as leader of al-Qaeda, stood accused of organizing numerous terrorist attacks against American interests. The Taliban’s refusal to extradite bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, prompted a military confrontation with the United States and allied powers. The Taliban was subsequently driven from power.

Taliban insurgency against United States and NATO forces continued in the years following the Taliban’s ouster. The Taliban funded its efforts in large part through a thriving opium trade, which reached record levels several years after the fall of the Taliban. Although expelled from Kandahār by the invasion, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar reportedly continued to direct the insurgency from an unknown location; he was thought to have been in Pakistan, although the Taliban denied that, claiming that Mullah Omar had never left Afghanistan. In July 2015 the Afghan government discovered that Omar had died in 2013 in a hospital in Pakistan. Mullah Akhtar Mansour was appointed as his successor, and he was killed in a U.S. air strike in Pakistan in May 2016. Haibatullah Akhundzada took leadership later that month, though his role remained largely confined to the political and religious spheres. The militant wing of the Taliban came increasingly under the direction of the Haqqani network, whose leader Sirajuddin served as deputy leader of the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Taliban’s continued resilience and the inability of Afghanistan’s central government to exert control throughout the country prompted the central government to seek reconciliation with the Taliban. Officials under President Hamid Karzai had met informally with Taliban leaders, and the first formal contact was made under President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban continued to see the central government as fundamentally illegitimate, however, and insisted on talks with the foreign power that had installed it: the United States.

The Taliban and the United States began meeting in 2018, with the help of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, the only countries to have a diplomatic relationship with both parties. The discussions focused on the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan, although the United States hoped to eventually push the Taliban to negotiate with the central government. In July 2019 the discussions included central government officials for the first time, who agreed with representatives of the Taliban on general principles for future reconciliation talks. The Taliban’s representatives were not authorized by the organization to negotiate in an official capacity, but observers considered the meeting a successful icebreaker.

By early September the United States and the Taliban had reportedly come to an agreement in principle and were narrowing in on the details of a signed deal when an attack by the Taliban in Kabul killed a United States service member. Days later a secret meeting between top United States and Taliban officials was called off by the United States; the cancellation was blamed on the attack.

A deal was finally struck in late February 2020. The Taliban agreed to begin talks with the central government within 10 days of signing the agreement and to prevent al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]) from operating in Afghanistan. The United States, for its part, would phase out its troop presence in the country over a 14-month period; it began reducing troop levels in March. After a delay caused by the central government’s reluctance to carry out a prisoner swap promised to the Taliban by the United States, negotiations between the Taliban and the central government began on September 12. By April 2021, however, little progress had been made in the negotiations. Nevertheless, the United States reiterated its commitment to complete the withdrawal of its troops, although it delayed its deadline from May to September.

Emboldened by the withdrawal, the Taliban rapidly captured dozens of districts by late June and targeted provincial capitals. Although the group appeared to lack the manpower and firepower to hold its gains against the larger and better-equipped armed forces of the Afghan central government, the latter’s lack of coordination and lack of responsiveness to the insurgency allowed the Taliban to overrun the country within months. By mid-August the Taliban had captured nearly all of the country, including Kabul.