Many of its members had studied in conservative religious schools in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. The Taliban militia emerged as a substantial player in 1994. At the time, the Soviets were backing the communist leaders who had staged a bloody coup against the nation’s first president, Mohammad Daoud Khan, in 1978.Īfter the Soviets pulled out in 1989, things turned chaotic, and by 1992, there was a full-blown civil war with mujahideen commanders fighting for power and dividing the capital city of Kabul, which would be showered with hundreds of rockets each day coming from different directions. The US provided weapons and money to the mujahideen as part of its policy against the Cold War foe, the erstwhile USSR. The Taliban, which means “students” in the Pashto language, fought alongside the Mujahideen, Afghan rebels fighting the nine-year Soviet occupation. On the evening of August 15, after taking over the presidential palace, the group said it will form an inclusive government drawn from Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic groups. The government had accelerated the push to arm local civilians to take on the Taliban Įarlier, the group’s spokesman based in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, said the Taliban “did not believe in the monopoly of power”, and its chief Haibatullah Akhunzada called for a “political settlement”.īut the fighters from the group retook power by force. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced due to the fighting, as the aid agencies warned against an impending humanitarian crisis. “This is going to be a test now, of the will and leadership of the Afghan people, the Afghan security forces and the government of Afghanistan,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley told reporters at the Pentagon. On July 21, the top US military general said the Taliban appeared to have “strategic momentum” on the battlefield. The group is believed to have 85,000 full-time fighters across the country, and exert control over more than half of the country’s roughly 400 districts. The armed group first took control of crucial border crossings with Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan after it launched a sweeping offensive against government forces in May.
But the Doha talks have failed to make headway as violence continued on the ground. The US-Taliban agreement paved the way for peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan leadership. Though the armed group largely kept its promise not to target US security interests, it continued to carry out deadly attacks against Afghan forces and civilians, saying the Western-backed Kabul administration was not a party to the February 2020 agreement signed in the Qatari capital, Doha. However, in July, he again revised that deadline to August 31. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, did not reverse the troop withdrawal decision, instead, delaying it until September 11 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It managed to win some sort of international legitimacy after the US under then-President Donald Trump signed an agreement with the armed group on February 29, 2020, to withdraw foreign forces in exchange for security guarantees.
The armed group was removed from power in a US-led invasion in 2001 following the September 11 attacks on US soil, but it gradually regained strength, carrying out numerous attacks on foreign as well as Afghan forces in the past 20 years.
The group has won 26 of the country’s 34 provincial capitals since it launched a military offensive in May as the United States-led foreign forces started to pull out from Afghanistan after 20 years. The Taliban entered the Afghan presidential palace in the capital Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country following the armed group’s stunning military victories in recent weeks.
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