The Taliban is a terrorist organization that is associated mainly with the country of Afghanistan. The name Taliban is itself an Arabic loanword into the Pashto language and means students the singular being Talib they were founded after the 1979 soviet invasion of Afghanistan. which set up a communist system inside the country many afghans were unhappy with this and fought back against the soviets they were known as the mujahedeen, another Arabic word which means along the lines of the defenders of the faith as they were fighting the Russians. They became natural allies with the Americans who were in the grip of the cold war who aided financed and armed the mujahedeen to fight against the Soviets. As the years went on the violence only worsened and while the men fought against the soviets many of the women and children fled to neighboring Pakistan where they were destitute and the only way out for many of the young men or the children at the time was to go into madrasa religious schools. It’s here that the ISI which is the inter-services intelligence saw a way of using the situation to their advantage and this is where in 1994 they started to train some of these boys in religious schools in combat tactics and radical forms of Islam. This would be the origin of the Taliban.

In the meantime, the soviet-backed government was left on its own by the Russians. As they pulled out and this was soon replaced by a mujahedeen government. Although this didn't last long and soon by 1992 there was a civil war going on and by 1994 the Taliban had entered the scene by this time the Taliban seemed almost foreign to Afghanistan speaking a strange dialect of the Pashto language.  They had picked up in Pakistan as well as adhering to a different form of Islam but what they did bring was order and ruthless efficiency which was something that the Afghan people needed after decades of war. So in 1996 the Taliban were able to establish control over much of Afghanistan and captured the capital Kabul setting up the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan.

The Taliban followed an incredibly strict rule of law imposing the death penalty for certain crimes as well as amputation and an implementation of sharia. They also banned higher education for women and imposed stricter laws on them such as wearing the full-face veil the sect of Islam followed by the Taliban leadership was called Deo-Bandism which had been started in India but after its partition, it had become largely isolated in Pakistan, and thanks to radicals from Saudi Arabia who founded the madrasa in which the Taliban were formed it became an increasingly radical form of Islam which they adhered to at the same time, they also followed Pashtun Wali which is essentially being Pashtun which is one of the larger ethnic groups in Afghanistan. It’s largely among the Pashtun that they have their support their radical Islamism brought them in connection with Al-Qaeda. They allowed the group to use Afghanistan for training bases. this is when after the September 11th attacks in 2001 Taliban controlled Afghanistan was invaded by the united states who refused to give up the al-Qaeda training camps that were stationed in the country this of course would bring down to the downfall of the Taliban. Although many of them were able to escape into neighboring Pakistan with the help of their intelligence service who had founded the group in 1994.

From 2002 onwards the Taliban created an insurgency inside the country and slowly regained control over large parts of the countryside several factors contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban in these years one of which was the small number of NATO troops thinking that their enemy had been defeated the drug trade, which allowed them to pump money through the opium seeds in Afghanistan. As well as the continued support from tribal and other religious leaders throughout the country all allow the Taliban to go from strength to strength as did the general feeling of the Afghan population that they had been invaded once again the Taliban also upgraded their tactics using improvised explosive devices and Korean tactics as well as suicide bombings which a shift occurred in 2006 to great effect and made it very hard for the NATO troops to fight against them. The attempt to create a state of Afghanistan was marred by corruption and its army has proved to be incredibly poor at fighting back against the Taliban.

It was estimated in 2016 that around 20 percent of Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban particularly in the south and this led to the United States entering direct negotiations with the group in Qatar and in 2020. It led to the signing of what was called a peace deal between the two that did not involve the government of Afghanistan and as such with the United States and NATO forces rapidly pulling out of the country in 2021. The Taliban have been on their most deadly and successful offensive since 2001 and they now control around 60 percent of Afghanistan and just today when I’ve been writing this blog the news has reached us that Kabul which is the capital city in the country today has fallen to the Taliban. So many are now asking themselves how long the modern state of Afghanistan will continue without NATO support and whether there will be another state emerging like the one that was seen from 1996 with all the ruthlessness that the Taliban showed then but I sincerely hope that this is not what we'll see.