title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: In October 2001, the United States, with allies including the Afghan Northern Alliance, invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban régime. The Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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. The historical Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed on Omar Mujahid's orders.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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:


title: Taliban

text: The few organisations active in Kandahar were not subjected to the same demands and continued their operations.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban were largely founded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence beginning in 1994; the I.S.I. used the Taliban to establish a régime 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: During 2000, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo against military support to the Taliban, with UN officials explicitly singling out Pakistan. The UN secretary-general implicitly criticised Pakistan for its military support and the Security Council stated it was "deeply distress[ed] over reports of involvement in the fighting, on the Taliban side, of thousands of non-Afghan nationals". In July 2001, several countries, including the United States, accused Pakistan of being "in violation of U.N. sanctions because of its military aid to the Taliban". The Taliban also obtained financial resources from Pakistan. In 1997 alone, after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, Pakistan gave $30 million in aid and a further $10 million for government wages.


title: Taliban

text: During 2000, MI6 reported that the ISI was taking an active role in several Al-Qaeda training camps. The ISI helped with the construction of training camps for both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. From 1996 to 2001 the Al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab and Central Asian Al-Qaeda militants to join the fight against the United Front, among them his Brigade 055.


title: Taliban

text: The role of the Pakistani military has been described by international observers as well as by the anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud as a "creeping invasion".


title: Taliban

text: In late 1996, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, former enemies, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban that were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and those under the control of Dostum. The United Front included beside the dominantly Tajik forces of Massoud and the Uzbek forces of Dostum, Hazara troops led by Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadir. Notable politicians and diplomats of the United Front included Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai, Abdullah Abdullah and Massoud Khalili. From the Taliban conquest of Kabul in September 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.


title: Taliban

text: After longstanding battles, especially for the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Abdul Rashid Dostum and his Junbish forces were defeated by the Taliban and their allies in 1998. Dostum subsequently went into exile. Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only major anti-Taliban leader inside Afghanistan who was able to defend vast parts of his territory against the Taliban.


title: Taliban

text: In the areas under his control Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Declaration. In the area of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa. They were allowed to work and to go to school. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage.


title: Taliban

text: Afghan traditions would need a generation or more to overcome and could only be challenged by education, he said. Humayun Tandar, who took part as an Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask a Christian friend Jean-José Puig or the Jewish Princeton University Professor Michael Barry: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."


title: Taliban

text: Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. 400,000 to one million Afghans fled from the Taliban to the area of Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary "Inside the Taliban": "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud."


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined. He explained in one interview:


title: Taliban

text: The United Front in its Proposals for Peace demanded the Taliban to join a political process leading towards nationwide democratic elections. In early 2001, Massoud employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society, including the Pashtun areas. Massoud publicised their cause of "popular consensus, general elections and democracy" worldwide. At the same time he was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999, he started the training of police forces which he trained specifically in order to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful. Massoud stated:


title: Taliban

text: From 1999 onwards, a renewed process was set into motion by the Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Pashtun Abdul Haq to unite all the ethnicities of Afghanistan. While Massoud united the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks as well as some Pashtun commanders under his United Front command, the famed Pashtun commander Abdul Haq received increasing numbers of defecting Pashtun Taliban as "Taliban popularity trended downward". Both agreed to work together with the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah. International officials who met with representatives of the new alliance, which Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll referred to as the "grand Pashtun-Tajik alliance", said, "It's crazy that you have this today ... Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara ... They were all ready to buy in to the process ... to work under the king's banner for an ethnically balanced Afghanistan." Senior diplomat and Afghanistan expert Peter Tomsen wrote: "The 'Lion of Kabul' [Abdul Haq] and the 'Lion of Panjshir' [Ahmad Shah Massoud] ... Haq, Massoud, and Karzai, Afghanistan's three leading moderates, could transcend the Pashtun–non-Pashtun, north–south divide." The most senior Hazara and Uzbek leader were also part of the process. In late 2000, Massoud officially brought together this new alliance in a meeting in Northern Afghanistan to discuss, among other things, "a Loya Jirga, or a traditional council of elders, to settle political turmoil in Afghanistan". That part of the Pashtun–Tajik–Hazara–Uzbek peace plan did eventually materialise. An account of the meeting by author and journalist Sebastian Junger says: "In 2000, when I was there ... I happened to be there in a very interesting time. ... Massoud brought together Afghan leaders from all ethnic groups. They flew from London, Paris, the USA, all parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. He brought them all into the northern area where he was. He held a council of ... prominent Afghans from all over the world, brought there to discuss the Afghan government after the Taliban. ... we met all these men and interviewed them briefly. One was Hamid Karzai; I did not have any idea who he would end up being".


title: Taliban

text: In early 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud with ethnic leaders from all of Afghanistan addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on US soil being imminent. The president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine, called him the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan".


title: Taliban

text: On 9 September 2001, Massoud, then aged 48, was the target of a suicide attack by two Arabs posing as journalists at Khwaja Bahauddin, in the Takhar Province of Afghanistan. Massoud, who had survived countless assassination attempts over a period of 26 years, died in a helicopter taking him to a hospital. The first attempt on Massoud's life had been carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975, when Massoud was only 22 years old. In early 2001, Al-Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory. The funeral, though in a rather rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of mourning people.


title: Taliban

text: The assassination of Massoud is believed to have a connection to the September 11 attacks on US soil, which killed nearly 3000 people, and which appeared to be the terrorist attack that Massoud had warned against in his speech to the European Parliament several months earlier. John P. O'Neill was a counter-terrorism expert and the assistant director of the FBI until late 2001. He retired from the FBI and was offered the position of director of security at the World Trade Center (WTC). He took the job at the WTC two weeks before 9/11. On 10 September 2001, O'Neill told two of his friends, "We're due. And we're due for something big. ... Some things have happened in Afghanistan. [referring to the assassination of Massoud] I don't like the way things are lining up in Afghanistan. ... I sense a shift, and I think things are going to happen ... soon." O'Neill died on 11 September 2001, when the South Tower collapsed.


title: Taliban

text: After 9/11, Massoud's United Front troops and United Front troops of Abdul Rashid Dostum (who returned from exile) ousted the Taliban from power in Kabul with American air support in Operation Enduring Freedom. From October to December 2001, the United Front gained control of much of the country and played a crucial role in establishing the post-Taliban interim government under Hamid Karzai.


title: Taliban

text: On 20 September 2001, US president George W. Bush, speaking to a joint session of Congress, tentatively blamed Al-Qaeda for the 11 September attacks, stating that the "leadership of Al Qaeda ha[d] great influence in Afghanistan and support[ed] the Taliban régime in controlling most of that country". Bush said, "We condemn the Taliban régime", and went on to state, "Tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban", which he said were "not open to negotiation or discussion":


title: Taliban

text: The US petitioned the international community to back a military campaign to overthrow the Taliban. The UN issued two resolutions on terrorism after the 11 September attacks. The resolutions called on all states to "[increase] cooperation and full implementation of the relevant international conventions relating to terrorism" and specified consensus recommendations for all countries. According to a research briefing by the House of Commons Library, although the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not authorise the US-led military campaign, it was "widely (although not universally) perceived to be a legitimate form of self-defense under the UN Charter", and the council "moved quickly to authorize a military operation to stabilize the country" in the wake of the invasion. Moreover, on 12 September 2001, NATO approved a campaign against Afghanistan as self-defense against armed attack.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salem Zaeef, responded to the ultimatum by demanding "convincing evidence" that Bin Laden was involved in the attacks, stating "our position is that if America has evidence and proof, they should produce it". Additionally, the Taliban insisted that any trial of Bin Laden be held in an Afghan court. Zaeef also claimed that "4,000 Jews working in the Trade Center had prior knowledge of the suicide missions, and 'were absent on that day'." This response was generally dismissed as a delaying tactic, rather than a sincere attempt to cooperate with the ultimatum.


title: Taliban

text: On 22 September, the United Arab Emirates, and later Saudi Arabia, withdrew recognition of the Taliban as Afghanistan's legal government, leaving neighbouring Pakistan as the only remaining country with diplomatic ties. On 4 October, the Taliban agreed to turn bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial in an international tribunal that operated according to Islamic "Sharia" law, but Pakistan blocked the offer as it was not possible to guarantee his safety. On 7 October, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan offered to detain bin Laden and try him under Islamic law if the US made a formal request and presented the Taliban with evidence. A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, rejected the Taliban offer, and stated that the US would not negotiate their demands.


title: Taliban

text: 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 terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base of operations.


title: Taliban

text: 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 they were already operating within the theatre before the SAD units arrived, because technically, the SAD units are composed of civilian paramilitaries rather than military forces). They joined the Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) in order 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:


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: 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.


title: Taliban

text: The United States has conducted targeted killings against Taliban leaders, mainly using Special Forces, and sometimes unmanned aerial vehicles. British forces also used similar tactics, mostly in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. During Operation Herrick, British special forces carried out targeted killings against at least fifty high and local Taliban commanders in Helmand Province.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban have also used targeted killings. In 2011 alone, they killed notable anti-Taliban leaders, such as former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the police chief in northern Afghanistan, the commander of the elite anti-Taliban 303 Pamir Corps, Mohammad Daud Daud, and the police chief of Kunduz, Abdul Rahman Saidkhaili. All of them belonged to the Massoud faction of the United Front. According to Guantanamo Bay charge sheets, the United States Department of Defense believes the Taliban may maintain a 40-man undercover unit called "Jihad Kandahar", which is used for undercover operations, including targeted killings.


title: Taliban

text: After the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the United States, Pakistan has been accused of continuing to support the Taliban, an allegation Pakistan denies. In mid-2002 exiled Taliban leaders in Pakistan began reconnecting with each other. They formed the Quetta Shura in the Pakistani city of Quetta.


title: Taliban

text: With the fall of Kabul to anti-Taliban forces in November 2001, ISI forces worked with and helped Taliban militias who were in full retreat. In November 2001, Taliban, Al-Qaeda combatants and ISI operatives were evacuated from Kunduz on Pakistan Army cargo aircraft to Pakistan Air Force bases in Pakistan's Northern Areas. Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf wrote in his memoirs that Richard Armitage, the former US deputy secretary of state, said Pakistan would be "bombed back to the stone-age" if it continued to support the Taliban, although Armitage has since denied using the "stone age" phrase.


title: Taliban

text: Pashtun tribal chief Hamid Karzai was elected as the national interim leader, and the Taliban had surrendered Kandahar following an offer of amnesty by Karzai. However the US rejected a part of the amnesty in which Taliban leader Mullah Omar could "live in dignity" in his native Kandahar. The Taliban were not invited to the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, which many cite has been the cause of the Taliban's battlefield resurgence and the continuation of conflict. This was partly due to the Taliban's apparent defeat but also a US condition that the Taliban would not be allowed to participate. By 2003 the Taliban showed signs of a comeback and not long afterwards their insurgency was underway. UN negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi admitted in 2006 that not inviting the Taliban to Bonn was "our original sin".


title: Taliban

text: In May and June 2003, high Taliban officials proclaimed the Taliban regrouped and ready for guerrilla war to expel US forces from Afghanistan. In late 2004, the then hidden Taliban leader Mohammed Omar announced an insurgency against "America and its puppets" (i.e. transitional Afghan government forces) to "regain the sovereignty of our country".


title: Taliban

text: On 29 May 2006, while according to American website "The Spokesman-Review" Afghanistan faced "a mounting threat from armed Taliban fighters in the countryside", a US military truck of a convoy in Kabul lost control and plowed into twelve civilian vehicles, killing one and injuring six people. The surrounding crowd got angry and a riot arose, lasting all day ending with 20 dead and 160 injured. When stone-throwing and gunfire had come from a crowd of some 400 men, the US troops had used their weapons "to defend themselves" while leaving the scene, a US military spokesman said. A correspondent for the "Financial Times" in Kabul suggested that this was the outbreak of "a ground swell of resentment" and "growing hostility to foreigners" that had been growing and building since 2004, and may also have been triggered by a US air strike a week earlier in southern Afghanistan killing 30 civilians, where she assumed that "the Taliban had been sheltering in civilian houses".


title: Taliban

text: The continued support from tribal and other groups in Pakistan, the drug trade, and the small number of NATO forces, combined with the long history of resistance and isolation, indicated that Taliban forces and leaders were surviving. Suicide attacks and other terrorist methods not used in 2001 became more common. Observers suggested that poppy eradication, which hurt the livelihoods of those Afghans who had resorted to their production, and civilian deaths caused by airstrikes, abetted the resurgence. These observers maintained that policy should focus on "hearts and minds" and on economic reconstruction, which could profit from switching from interdicting to diverting poppy production—to make medicine.


title: Taliban

text: Other commentators viewed Islamabad's shift from war to diplomacy as an effort to appease growing discontent. Because of the Taliban's leadership structure, Mullah Dadullah's assassination in May 2007 did not have a significant effect, other than to damage incipient relations with Pakistan.


title: Taliban

text: Negotiations had long been advocated by then-Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, as well as reportedly the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by the American government. Karzai offered peace talks with the Taliban in September 2007, but this was swiftly rejected by the insurgent group citing the presence of foreign troops.


title: Taliban

text: On 8 February 2009, US commander of operations in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal and other officials said that the Taliban leadership was in Quetta, Pakistan.


title: Taliban

text: By 2009, a strong insurgency had coalesced, known as Operation Al Faath, the Arabic word for "victory" taken from the Koran, in the form of a guerrilla war. The Pashtun tribal group, with over 40 million members (including Afghans and Pakistanis) had a long history of resistance to occupation forces, so the Taliban may have comprised only a part of the insurgency. Most post-invasion Taliban fighters were new recruits, mostly drawn from local madrasas.


title: Taliban

text: In December 2009, "Asia Times Online" reported that the Taliban had offered to give the US "legal guarantees" that it would not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries, and that the US had given no response.


title: Taliban

text: As of July 2016, the US "Time" magazine estimated 20% of Afghanistan to be under Taliban control with southernmost Helmand Province as their stronghold, while US and international Resolute Support coalition commander General Nicholson in December 2016 likewise stated that 10% was in Taliban hands while another 26% of Afghanistan was contested between the Afghan government and various insurgency groups.


title: Taliban

text: On 7 August 2015, the Taliban killed about 50 people in Kabul. In August 2017, reacting to a hostile speech by US President Trump, a Taliban spokesman retorted that they would keep fighting to free Afghanistan of "American invaders".


title: Taliban

text: In January 2018, a Taliban suicide bomber killed over 100 people in Kabul using a bomb in an ambulance.


title: Taliban

text: By 2020, after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had lost almost all of its conquered territory and committed less terrorist acts, the global think tank called the Institute for Economics & Peace considered the Taliban to have overtaken ISIL as the most dangerous terrorist group in the world due to their recent campaigns for territorial expansion.


title: Taliban

text: On 29 May 2020, it was reported that Mullah Omar's son Mullah Yaqoob was now acting as leader of the Taliban after numerous Quetta Shura members were infected with COVID-19. It was previously confirmed on 7 May 2020 that Yaqoob had become head of the Taliban military commission, making him the insurgents' military chief. Among those infected in the Quetta Shura, which continued to hold in-person meetings, were Hibatullah Akhundzada and Sirajuddin Haqqani, then commanders of the Taliban and Haqqani network respectively.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban's co-founder and then-second-in-command, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was one of the leading Taliban members who favored talks with the US and Afghan governments. Karzai's administration reportedly held talks with Baradar in February 2010; however, later that month, Baradar was captured in a joint US-Pakistani raid in the city of Karachi in Pakistan. The arrest infuriated Karzai and invoked suspicions that he was seized because the Pakistani intelligence community was opposed to Afghan peace talks. Karzai declared after his re-election in the 2009 Afghan presidential election that he would host a "Peace Jirga" in Kabul in an effort for peace. The event, attended by 1,600 delegates, took place in June 2010, however the Taliban and the Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin, who were both invited by Karzai as a gesture of goodwill did not attend the conference.


title: Taliban

text: A mindset change and strategy occurred within the Obama administration in 2010 to allow possible political negotiations to solve the war. The Taliban themselves had refused to speak to the Afghan government, portraying them as an American "puppet". Sporadic efforts for peace talks between the US and the Taliban occurred afterward, and it was reported in October 2010 that Taliban leadership commanders (the "Quetta Shura") had left their haven in Pakistan and been safely escorted to Kabul by NATO aircraft for talks, with the assurance that NATO staff would not apprehend them. After those talks concluded, it emerged that the leader of this Taliban delegation, who claimed to be Akhtar Mansour, the second-in-command of the Taliban, was actually an imposter who had duped NATO officials.


title: Taliban

text: Karzai confirmed in June 2011 that secret talks were taking place between the US and the Taliban, but these collapsed by January 2012. Further attempts to resume talks were canceled in March 2012, and June 2013 following a dispute between the Afghan government and the Taliban regarding the latter's opening of a political office in Qatar. President Karzai accused the Taliban of portraying themselves as a government in exile. In July 2015, Pakistan hosted the first official peace talks between Taliban representatives and the Afghan government. U.S. and China attended the talks brokered by Pakistan in Murree as two observers. In January 2016, Pakistan hosted a round of four-way talks with Afghan, Chinese and American officials, but the Taliban did not attend. The Taliban did hold informal talks with the Afghan government in 2016.


title: Taliban

text: On 27 February 2018, following an increase in violence, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani proposed unconditional peace talks with the Taliban, offering them recognition as a legal political party and the release of the Taliban prisoners. The offer was the most favorable to the Taliban since the war started. It was preceded by months of national consensus building, which found that Afghans overwhelmingly supported a negotiated end to the war. Two days earlier, the Taliban had called for talks with the US, saying "It must now be established by America and her allies that the Afghan issue cannot be solved militarily. America must henceforth focus on a peaceful strategy for Afghanistan instead of war."


title: Taliban

text: US President Donald Trump twice accused Pakistan of harboring the Taliban and of inaction against terrorists, first in August 2017 then again in January 2018.


title: Taliban

text: On 29 February 2020, the US–Taliban deal, officially titled Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, was signed in Doha, Qatar. The provisions of the deal included the withdrawal of all American and NATO troops from Afghanistan, a Taliban pledge to prevent al-Qaeda from operating in areas under Taliban control, and talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.


title: Taliban

text: Despite the peace agreement between the US and the Taliban, insurgent attacks against Afghan security forces were reported to have surged in the country. In the 45 days after the agreement (between 1 March and 15 April 2020), the Taliban conducted more than 4,500 attacks in Afghanistan, which showed an increase of more than 70% as compared to the same period in the previous year. Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban began in Doha on 12 September 2020. The negotiations were set for March but have been delayed over a prisoner exchange dispute. Mawlavi Abdul Hakim led the initial negotiations for the Taliban. Abdullah Abdullah was one of the leading figures for the Afghan republic's negotiating team. The Afghan government team also comprised women's rights activists.


title: Taliban

text: In mid 2021, the Taliban led a major offensive in Afghanistan during the withdrawal of US troops from the country, which gave them control of over half of Afghanistan's 421 districts as of 23 July 2021.


title: Taliban

text: By mid-August 2021, the Taliban controlled every major city in Afghanistan; following the near seizure of the capital Kabul, the Taliban occupied the Presidential Palace after the incumbent President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan to the United Arab Emirates. Ghani's Asylum was confirmed by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on 18 August 2021. Remaining Afghan forces under the leadership of Amrullah Saleh, Ahmad Massoud, and Bismillah Khan Mohammadi retreated to Panjshir to continue resistance.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban had "seized power from an established government backed by some of the world's best-equipped militaries"; and as an ideological insurgent movement dedicated to "bringing about a truly Islamic state" its victory has been compared to that of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1940s or Iranian Revolution of 1979, with their "sweeping" remake of society. However, as of 2021–2022, senior Taliban leaders have emphasized the "softness" of their revolution and how they desired "good relations" with the United States, in discussions with American journalist Jon Lee Anderson.


title: Taliban

text: Anderson notes that the Taliban's war against any "graven images", so vigorous in their early rule, has been abandoned, perhaps made impossible by smartphones and Instagram. One local observer (Sayed Hamid Gailani) has argued the Taliban have not killed "a lot" of people after returning to power. Women are seen out on the street, Zabihullah Mujahid (acting Deputy Minister of Information and Culture) noted there are still women working in a number of government ministries, and claimed that girls will be allowed to attend secondary education when bank funds are unfrozen and the government can fund "separate" spaces and transportation for them.


title: Taliban

text: When asked about the slaughter of Hazara Shia by the first Taliban régime, Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban nominee for Ambassador to the U.N. told Anderson "The Hazara Shia for us are also Muslim. We believe we are one, like flowers in a garden." In late 2021, journalists from "The New York Times" embedded with a six-man Taliban unit tasked with protecting the Shi'ite Sakhi Shrine in Kabul from the Islamic State, noting "how seriously the men appeared to take their assignment." The unit's commander said that "We do not care which ethnic group we serve, our goal is to serve and provide security for Afghans." In response to "international criticism" over lack of diversity, an ethnic Hazara was appointed deputy health minister, and an ethnic Tajik appointed deputy trade minister.


title: Taliban

text: On the other hand, the Ministry of Women's Affairs has been closed and its building is the new home of Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. According to Anderson, some women still employed by the government are "being forced to sign in at their jobs and then go home, to created the illusion of equity"; and the appointment of ethnic minorities has been dismissed by an "adviser to the Taliban" as tokenism.


title: Taliban

text: "Hazara farmers being forced from their land by ethnic Pashtuns, of raids of activists' homes, and of extrajudicial executions of former government soldiers and intelligence agents".


title: Taliban

text: According to a Human Rights Watch's report released in November 2021, the Taliban killed or forcibly disappeared more than 100 former members of the Afghan security forces in the three months since the takeover in just the four provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, and Kunduz. According to the report, the Taliban identified targets for arrest and execution through intelligence operations and access to employment records that were left behind. Former members of the security forces were also killed by the Taliban within days of registering with them to receive a letter guaranteeing their safety.


title: Taliban

text: Despite Taliban claims that the ISIS has been defeated, IS carried out suicide bombings in October 2021 at Shia mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar, killing over 115 people. As of late 2021, there were still "sticky bomb" explosions "every few days" in the capital Kabul.


title: Taliban

text: Explanations for the relative moderation of the new Taliban government and statements from its officials such as – “We have started a new page. We do not want to be entangled with the past,”—include that it did not expect to take over the country so quickly and still had "problems to work out among" their factions”; that $7 billion in Afghan government funds in US banks has been frozen, and that the 80% of the previous government's budget that came from "the United States, its partners, or international lenders", has been shut off, creating serious economic crisis; according to the U.N. World Food Program country director, Mary Ellen McGroarty, as of late 2021, early 2022 "22.8 million Afghans are already severely food insecure, and seven million of them are one step away from famine"; and that the world community has "unanimously" asked the Taliban "to form an inclusive government, ensure the rights of women and minorities and guarantee that Afghanistan will no more serve as the launching pad for global terrorist operations", before it recognizes the Taliban government. In conversation with journalist Anderson, senior Taliban leaders implied that the harsh application of sharia during their first era of rule in the 1990s was necessary because of the "depravity" and "chaos" that remained from the Soviet occupation, but that now "mercy and compassion" were the order of the day. This was contradicted by former senior members of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, one of which who told Anderson, "they will do anything to convince the international community to give them financing, but eventually I'll be forced to wear the burqa again. They are just waiting."


title: Taliban

text: On 1 December 2021, clashes erupted between the Taliban and Iran leading to casualties on both sides.


title: Taliban

text: In September 2021, the government ordered primary schools to reopen for both sexes and announced plans to reopen secondary schools for male students, without committing to do the same for female students.<ref name="Graham-Harrison 09/17/21"></ref> While the Taliban states that female college students will be able to resume higher education provided that they are segregated from male students (and professors, when possible),<ref name="Reuters 09/12/21"></ref> "The Guardian" notes that "if the high schools do not reopen for girls, the commitments to allow university education would become meaningless once the current cohort of students graduated." Higher Education Minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani said that female university students will be required to observe proper hijab, but did not specify if this required covering the face.


title: Taliban

text: Kabul University reopened in February 2022, with female students attending in the morning and males in the afternoon. Other than the closure of the music department, few changes to the curriculum were reported. Female students were officially required to wear an abaya and a hijab to attend, although some wore a shawl instead. Attendance was reportedly low on the first day.


title: Taliban

text: In March 2022, the Taliban abruptly halted plans to allow girls to resume secondary school education even when separated from males. Apart from current university students, "sixth is now the highest grade girls may attend" according to "The Washington Post". The Afghan Ministry of Education cited the lack of an acceptable design for female student uniforms.


title: Taliban

text: Following the Taliban's ascension to power, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's model of governance has been widely criticized by the international community, despite the government's repeated calls for international recognition and engagement. Acting Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund stated that his interim administration has met all conditions required for official recognition. In a bid to gain recognition, the Taliban sent a letter in September 2021 to the UN to accept Suhail Shaheen as Permanent Representative of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – a request that had already been rejected by the UN Credentials Committee in 2021.


title: Taliban

text: On 10 October 2021, Russia hosted the Taliban for talks in Moscow in an effort to boost its influence across Central Asia. Officials from 10 different countries- Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran and five formerly Soviet Central Asian states- attended the talks, which were held during the Taliban's first official trip to Europe since their return to power in mid-August 2021. The Taliban won backing from the 10 regional powers for the idea of a United Nations donor conference to help the country stave off economic collapse and a humanitarian catastrophe, calling for the UN to convene such a conference as soon as possible to help rebuild the country. Russian officials also called for action against Islamic State (IS) fighters, who Russia said have started to increase their presence in Afghanistan since the Taliban's takeover. The Taliban delegation, which was led by Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, said that "Isolating Afghanistan is in no one's interests," arguing that the extremist group did not pose any security threat to any other country. The Taliban asked the international community to recognize its government, but no country has yet recognized the new Afghan government.


title: Taliban

text: On 23 January 2022, a Taliban delegation arrived in Oslo, and closed-door meetings were held during the Taliban's first official trip to Western Europe and second official trip to Europe since their return to power. Western diplomats told the Taliban that humanitarian aid to Afghanistan would be tied to an improvement in human rights. The Taliban delegation, led by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, met senior French foreign ministry officials, Britain's special envoy Nigel Casey, EU Special Representative for Afghanistan and members of the Norwegian foreign ministry. This followed the announcement by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee that the committee would extend a travel ban exemption until 21 March 2022 for 14 listed Taliban members to continue attending talks, along with a limited asset-freeze exemption for the financing of exempted travel. However, the Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said that the international community's call for the formation of an inclusive government was a political “excuse" after the 3-day Oslo visit.


title: Taliban

text: At the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on 26 January 2022, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said the Oslo talks appeared to have been “serious” and “genuine”. Norway says the talks do “not represent a legitimisation or recognition of the Taliban”. In the same meeting, the Russian Federation's delegate said attempts to engage the Taliban through coercion are counter-productive, calling on Western states and donors to return frozen funds. China's representative said the fact that aid deliveries have not improved since the adoption of UNSC 2615 (2021) proves that the issue has been politicized, as some parties seek to use assistance as a bargaining chip.


title: Taliban

text: Turkmenistan, the Russian Federation, and China were the first countries to accept the diplomatic credentials of Taliban-appointed envoys, although this is not equivalent to official recognition.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban's ideology has been described as combining an "innovative" form of "Sharia" Islamic law which is based on Deobandi fundamentalism and militant Islamism, combined with Pashtun social and cultural norms which are known as Pashtunwali, because most Taliban are Pashtun tribesmen.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban's ideology has been described as an "innovative form of "sharia" combining Pashtun tribal codes", or Pashtunwali, with radical Deobandi interpretations of Islam favoured by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and its splinter groups. Their ideology was a departure from the Islamism of the anti-Soviet mujahideen rulers and the radical Islamists inspired by the Sayyid Qutb (Ikhwan). The Taliban have said they aim to restore peace and security to Afghanistan, including Western troops leaving, and to enforce "Sharia", or Islamic law, once in power.


title: Taliban

text: According to journalist Ahmed Rashid, at least in the first years of their rule, the Taliban adopted Deobandi and Islamist anti-nationalist beliefs, and they opposed "tribal and feudal structures," removing traditional tribal or feudal leaders from leadership roles.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban strictly enforced their ideology in major cities like Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar. But in rural areas, the Taliban had little direct control, and as a result, they promoted village jirgas, so in rural areas, they did not enforce their ideology as stringently as they enforced it in cities.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban's religious/political philosophy, especially during its first régime from 1996 to 2001, was heavily advised and influenced by Grand Mufti Rashid Ahmed Ludhianvi and his works. Its operating political and religious principles since its founding however was modelled on those of Abul A'la Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami movement.


title: Taliban

text: Written works published by the group's Commission of Cultural Affairs including "Islami Adalat", "De Mujahid Toorah— De Jihad Shari Misalay, and Guidance to the Mujahideen" outlined the core of the Taliban Islamic Movement's philosophy regarding jihad, sharia, organization, and conduct. The Taliban régime interpreted the "Sharia" law in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the religious edicts of Mullah Omar. The Taliban forbade the consumption of pork and alcohol, the use of many types of consumer technology such as music, television, filming, and the Internet, as well as most forms of art such as paintings or photography, participation in sports, including football and chess; Recreational activities such as Kite-flying and the keeping of pigeons and other pets were also forbidden, and the birds were killed according to the Taliban's rules. Movie theatres were closed and repurposed as mosques. The celebration of the Western and Iranian New Years was also forbidden. Taking photographs and displaying pictures and portraits were also forbidden, because the Taliban considered them forms of idolatry. This extended even to "blacking out illustrations on packages of baby soap in shops and painting over road-crossing signs for livestock.


title: Taliban

text: Women were banned from working, girls were forbidden to attend schools or universities, were required to observe "purdah" (physical separation of the sexes) and "awrah" (concealing the body with clothing), and to be accompanied by male relatives outside their households; those who violated these restrictions were punished. Men were forbidden to shave their beards and they were also required to let them grow and keep them long according to the Taliban's rules, and they were also required to wear turbans outside their households. Prayer was made compulsory and those men who did not respect the religious obligation after the "azaan" were arrested. Gambling was banned, and the Taliban punished thieves by amputating their hands or feet. In 2000, the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar officially banned opium cultivation and drug trafficking in Afghanistan; the Taliban succeeded in nearly eradicating the majority of the opium production (99%) by 2001. During the Taliban's governance of Afghanistan, drug users and dealers were both severely persecuted.


title: Taliban

text: Afghan Shiites were persecuted during the first Taliban rule. Most Afghan Shiites are members of the Hazara ethnic group, which accounts for almost 10% of Afghanistan's entire population. However, a few Shiite Islamists supported the Taliban rule, such as Ustad Muhammad Akbari. In recent years, the Taliban have attempted to court Shiites, appointing a Shia cleric as a regional governor and recruiting Hazaras to fight against ISIL-KP, in order to distance themselves from their past sectarian reputation and improve their relations with the Shia government of Iran. Following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, reports of the marginalization and persecution of Hazaras and Tajiks began surfacing. On 3 July 2022, in the rural areas around Balkhab District, the Taliban committed a series of attacks against the local Shia Hazara population, those include the execution of 150 civilians after long torture, playing music and dancing in Shia Mosques, Shia seminaries, and schools before turning them into military bases, killing Hazaras due to their ethnicity, seizing homes and vehicles belonging to Hazara civilians, causing hundreds of families to flee to the mountains, and not allowing aid workers to reach them - which led to the deaths of three infants.


title: Taliban

text: Along with Shia Muslims, the small Christian community was also persecuted by the Taliban. The Taliban announced in May 2001 that it would force Afghanistan's Hindu population to wear special badges, which has been compared to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. In general, the Taliban treated the Sikhs and Jews of Afghanistan better than Afghan Shiites, Hindus and Christians. During the first period of Taliban rule, only two known Jews were left in Afghanistan, Zablon Simintov and Isaac Levy (c. 1920–2005). Levy relied on charity to survive, while Simintov ran a store selling carpets and jewelry until 2001. They lived on opposite sides of the dilapidated Kabul synagogue. They kept denouncing each other to the authorities, and both spent time in jail for continuously "arguing." The Taliban also confiscated the synagogue's Torah scroll. However, the two men were later released from prison when Taliban officials became annoyed by their arguing.


title: Taliban

text: In January 2005, Levy died of natural causes, leaving Simintov as the sole known Jew in Afghanistan. He cared for the only synagogue in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. He was still trying to recover the confiscated Torah. Simintov, who does not speak Hebrew, claimed that the man who stole the Torah is now in US custody in Guantanamo Bay. Simintov has a wife and two daughters, all of whom emigrated to Israel in 1998, and he said he was considering joining them. However, when he was asked if he would go to Israel during an interview, Simintov retorted, "Go to Israel? What business do I have there? Why should I leave?" In April 2021, Simintov announced that he would emigrate to Israel after the High Holy Days of 2021, due to the fear that the planned withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would result in the Taliban's return to power.


title: Taliban

text: Throughout August 2021, Simintov remained in Kabul, despite having had a chance to escape. Despite initially stating that he would put up with the Taliban for the second time, it has been reported that Simintov emigrated to a presently undisclosed country before the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah on 6 September 2021 after he received death threats from the Taliban or ISIS-KP, taking 30 other refugees with him, including 28 women and children. Ami Magazine, an Orthodox Jewish publication which is based in New York City, reported that Simintov was en route to the United States. Simintov stated that it was not the Taliban but rather the possibility of other, more radical Islamist groups like IS-KP taking him hostage that resulted in his exit from the country. After leaving Afghanistan, Simintov granted his wife a divorce. It was then discovered that an unbeknownst distant cousin of Simintov, Tova Moradi, fled the country sometime in October following Simintov's departure. Contrary to official reports which stated that "no Jewish" person was living in the country, it is believed that Moradi was the last Jew who lived in Afghanistan.


title: Taliban

text: Unlike other Islamic fundamentalist organizations, the Taliban are not Salafists. Although wealthy Arab nations had brought Salafist Madrasas to Afghanistan during the Soviet war in the 1980s, the Taliban's strict Deobandi leadership suppressed the Salafi movement in Afghanistan after it first came to power in the 1990s. Following the 2001 US invasion, the Taliban and Salafists joined forces in order to wage a common war against NATO forces, but Salafists were relegated to small groups which were under the Taliban's command.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban are averse to debating doctrine with other Muslims and "did not allow even Muslim reporters to question [their] edicts or to discuss interpretations of the Qur'an."


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban, being largely Pashtun tribesmen, frequently follow a pre-Islamic cultural tribal code which is focused on preserving the honour. Pashtunwali, usually takes desciion in regards to other social matters. Its besr described a subconscious social values and attutude which promotes various qualities such as Bravery, preserving honour, being hospitable to all guests, seeking revenge and justice is one has been wronged, Providing sancaturium to anyone who seeks refuge, even if its an enemy, however non Pashtuns and others usually criticize some of the values such as the Pashtun practice of equally dividing inheritances among sons, even though the Qur'an clearly states that women are supposed to receive one-half of a man's share.


title: Taliban

text: According to Ali A. Jalali and Lester Grau, the Taliban "received extensive support from Pashtuns across the country who thought that the movement might restore their national dominance. Even Pashtun intellectuals in the West, who differed with the Taliban on many issues, expressed support for the movement on purely ethnic grounds."


title: Taliban

text: In 1999, Mullah Omar issued a decree in which he called for the protection of the Buddha statues at Bamyan, two 6th-century monumental statues of standing buddhas which were carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan. But in March 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues, following a decree by Mullah Omar which stated: "all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed."


title: Taliban

text: Yahya Massoud, brother of the anti-Taliban and resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, recalls the following incident after the destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamyan:


title: Taliban

text: The Afghan custom of "bacha bazi", a form of pederastic sexual slavery and pedophilia which is traditionally practiced in various provinces of Afghanistan, was also forbidden under the six-year rule of the Taliban régime. Under the rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, "bacha bazi", a form of child sexual abuse between older men and young adolescent "dancing boys", has carried the death penalty.


title: Taliban

text: The practice remained illegal during the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's rule, but the laws were seldom enforced against powerful offenders and police had reportedly been complicit in related crimes. A controversy arose during the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's rule, after allegations surfaced that US government forces in Afghanistan after the invasion of the country deliberately ignored "bacha bazi". The US military responded by claiming the abuse was largely the responsibility of the "local Afghan government".<ref name="Washington Post 09/15"></ref> The Taliban has criticized the US role in the abuse of Afghan children.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban's ideology is not static. Before its capture of Kabul, members of the Taliban talked about stepping aside once a government of "good Muslims" took power and once law and order were restored. The decision-making process of the Taliban in Kandahar was modelled on the Pashtun tribal council ("jirga"), together with what was believed to be the early Islamic model. Discussion was followed by the building of a consensus by the believers.


title: Taliban

text: As the Taliban's power grew, Mullah Omar made decisions without consulting the "jirga" or visiting other parts of the country. He visited the capital, Kabul, only twice while he was in power. Taliban spokesman Mullah Wakil explained:


title: Taliban

text: Decisions are based on the advice of the "Amir-ul Momineen". For us consultation is not necessary. We believe that this is in line with the "Sharia". We abide by the Amir's view even if he alone takes this view. There will not be a head of state. Instead there will be an Amir al-Mu'minin. Mullah Omar will be the highest authority and the government will not be able to implement any decision to which he does not agree. General elections are incompatible with "Sharia" and therefore we reject them.


title: Taliban

text: Another sign that the Taliban's ideology was evolving was Mullah Omar's 1999 decree in which he called for the protection of the Buddha statues at Bamyan and the destruction of them in 2001.


title: Taliban

text: The author Ahmed Rashid suggests that the devastation and hardship which resulted from the Soviet invasion and the period which followed it influenced the Taliban's ideology. It is said that the Taliban did not include scholars who were learned in Islamic law and history. The refugee students, brought up in a totally male society, not only had no education in mathematics, science, history or geography, but also had no traditional skills of farming, herding, or handicraft-making, nor even knowledge of their tribal and clan lineages. In such an environment, war meant employment, peace meant unemployment. Dominating women simply affirmed manhood. For their leadership, rigid fundamentalism was a matter not only of principle, but also of political survival. Taliban leaders "repeatedly told" Rashid that "if they gave women greater freedom or a chance to go to school, they would lose the support of their rank and file."


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban have been criticised for their strictness towards those who disobeyed their imposed rules, and Mullah Omar has been criticized for titling himself Amir al-Mu'minin.


title: Taliban

text: Mullah Omar was criticised for calling himself Amir al-Mu'minin on the grounds that he lacked scholarly learning, tribal pedigree, or connections to the Prophet's family. Sanction for the title traditionally required the support of all of the country's ulema, whereas only some 1,200 Pashtun Taliban-supporting Mullahs had declared that Omar was the Amir. According to Ahmed Rashid, "no Afghan had adopted the title since 1834, when King Dost Mohammed Khan assumed the title before he declared jihad against the Sikh kingdom in Peshawar. But Dost Mohammed was fighting foreigners, while Omar had declared jihad against other Afghans."


title: Taliban

text: Another criticism was that the Taliban called their 20% tax on truckloads of opium "zakat", which is traditionally limited to 2.5% of the zakat-payers' disposable income (or wealth).


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban have been compared to the 7th-century Kharijites who developed extreme doctrines which set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shiʿa Muslims. The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to "takfir", whereby they declared that other Muslims were unbelievers and deemed them worthy of death.


title: Taliban

text: In particular, the Taliban have been accused of "takfir" towards Shia. After the August 1998 slaughter of 8,000 mostly Shia Hazara non-combatants in Mazar-i-Sharif, Mullah Niazi, the Taliban commander of the attack and the new governor of Mazar, declared from Mazar's central mosque:


title: Taliban

text: Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. The Hazaras are not Muslims and now have to kill Hazaras. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan. Wherever you go we will catch you. If you go up we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair.Carter Malkasian, in one of the first comprehensive historical works on the Afghan war, argues that the Taliban are oversimplified in most portrayals. While Malkasian thinks that "oppressive" remains the best word to describe them, he points out that the Taliban managed to do what multiple governments and political players failed to: bring order and unity to the "ungovernable land". The Taliban curbed the atrocities and excesses of the Warlord period of the civil war from 19921996. Malkasian further argues that the Taliban's imposing of Islamic ideals upon the Afghan tribal system was innovative and a key reason for their success and durability. Given that traditional sources of authority had been shown to be weak in the long period of civil war, only religion had proved strong in Afghanistan. In a period of 40 years of constant conflict, the traditionalist Islam of the Taliban proved to be far more stable, even if the order they brought was "an impoverished peace".


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban have been internationally condemned for their harsh enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic "Sharia" law, which has resulted in their brutal treatment of many Afghans. During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of "Sharia", or Islamic law. 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 Taliban harshly discriminated against religious and ethnic minorities during their rule and they have also committed a cultural genocide against the people of Afghanistan by destroying numerous monuments, including the famous 1500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan. According to the United Nations, the Taliban and their allies were responsible for 76% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010, and 80% in 2011 and 2012. The group is internally funded by its involvement in the illegal drug trade which it participates in by producing and trafficking in narcotics such as heroin, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom. They also seized control of mining operations in the mid-2010s that were illegal under the previous government.


title: Taliban

text: According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." "These are the same type of war crimes as were committed in Bosnia and should be prosecuted in international courts", one UN official was quoted as saying. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes "eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people". The Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, in late 2011 stated that cruel behaviour under and by the Taliban had been "necessary".


title: Taliban

text: In 1998, the United Nations accused the Taliban of denying emergency food by the UN's World Food Programme to 160,000 hungry and starving people "for political and military reasons". The UN said the Taliban were starving people for their military agenda and using humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war.


title: Taliban

text: On 8 August 1998, the Taliban launched an attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. Of 1500 defenders only 100 survived the engagement. Once in control the Taliban began to kill people indiscriminately. At first shooting people in the street, they soon began to target Hazaras. Women were raped, and thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate. This ethnic cleansing left an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people dead. At this time ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist were killed. Iran assumed the Taliban had murdered them, and mobilised its army, deploying men along the border with Afghanistan. By the middle of September there were 250,000 Iranian personnel stationed on the border. Pakistan mediated and the bodies were returned to Tehran towards the end of the month. The killings of the diplomats had been carried out by Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Pakistani Sunni group with close ties to the ISI. They burned orchards, crops and destroyed irrigation systems, and forced more than 100,000 people from their homes with hundreds of men, women and children still unaccounted for.


title: Taliban

text: In a major effort to retake the Shomali Plains to the north of Kabul from the United Front, the Taliban indiscriminately killed civilians, while uprooting and expelling the population. Among others, Kamal Hossein, a special reporter for the UN, reported on these and other war crimes. In Istalif, a town famous for handmade potteries and which was home to more than 45,000 people, the Taliban gave 24 hours' notice to the population to leave, then completely razed the town leaving the people destitute.


title: Taliban

text: In 1999, the town of Bamian was taken, hundreds of men, women and children were executed. Houses were razed and some were used for forced labour. There was a further massacre at the town of Yakaolang in January 2001. An estimated 300 people were murdered, along with two delegations of Hazara elders who had tried to intercede.


title: Taliban

text: By 1999, the Taliban had forced hundreds of thousands of people from the Shomali Plains and other regions conducting a policy of scorched earth burning homes, farm land and gardens.


title: Taliban

text: Several Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders ran a network of human trafficking, abducting ethnic minority women and selling them into sex slavery in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Time" magazine writes: "The Taliban often argued that the restrictions they placed on women were actually a way of revering and protecting the opposite sex. The behavior of the Taliban during the six years they expanded their rule in Afghanistan made a mockery of that claim."


title: Taliban

text: The targets for human trafficking were especially women from the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other non-Pashtun ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Some women preferred to commit suicide over slavery, killing themselves. During one Taliban and al-Qaeda offensive in 1999 in the Shomali Plains alone, more than 600 women were kidnapped. Arab and Pakistani al-Qaeda militants, with local Taliban forces, forced them into trucks and buses. "Time" magazine writes: "The trail of the missing Shomali women leads to Jalalabad, not far from the Pakistan border. There, according to eyewitnesses, the women were penned up inside Sar Shahi camp in the desert. The more desirable among them were selected and taken away. Some were trucked to Peshawar with the apparent complicity of Pakistani border guards. Others were taken to Khost, where bin Laden had several training camps." Officials from relief agencies say, the trail of many of the vanished women leads to Pakistan where they were sold to brothels or into private households to be kept as slaves.


title: Taliban

text: Not all Taliban commanders engaged in human trafficking. Many Taliban were opposed to the human trafficking operations conducted by al-Qaeda and other Taliban commanders. Nuruludah, a Taliban commander, is quoted as saying that in the Shomali Plains, he and 10 of his men freed some women who were being abducted by Pakistani members of al-Qaeda. In Jalalabad, local Taliban commanders freed women that were being held by Arab members of al-Qaeda in a camp.


title: Taliban

text: Brutal repression of women was widespread under the Taliban and it received significant international condemnation. Abuses were myriad and violently enforced by the religious police. For example, the Taliban issued edicts forbidding women from being educated, forcing girls to leave schools and colleges. Women who were leaving their houses were required to be accompanied by a male relative and were obligated to wear the "burqa", a traditional dress covering the entire body except for a small slit out of which to see. Those women who were accused of disobedience were publicly beaten. In one instance, a young woman named Sohaila was charged with adultery after she was caught walking with a man who was not a relative; she was publicly flogged in Ghazi Stadium, receiving 100 lashes. Female employment was restricted to the medical sector, where male medical personnel were prohibited from treating women and girls. This extensive ban on the employment of women further resulted in the widespread closure of primary schools, as almost all teachers prior to the Taliban's rise had been women, further restricting access to education not only to girls but also to boys. Restrictions became especially severe after the Taliban took control of the capital. In February 1998, for instance, religious police forced all women off the streets of Kabul and issued new regulations which ordered people to blacken their windows so that women would not be visible from outside.


title: Taliban

text: According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.


title: Taliban

text: According to Human Rights Watch, the Taliban's bombings and other attacks which have led to civilian casualties "sharply escalated in 2006" when "at least 669 Afghan civilians were killed in at least 350 armed attacks, most of which appear to have been intentionally launched at non-combatants."


title: Taliban

text: The United Nations reported that the number of civilians killed by both the Taliban and pro-government forces in the war rose nearly 50% between 2007 and 2009. The high number of civilians killed by the Taliban is blamed in part on their increasing use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), "for instance, 16 IEDs have been planted in girls' schools" by the Taliban.


title: Taliban

text: In 2009, Colonel Richard Kemp, formerly Commander of British forces in Afghanistan and the intelligence coordinator for the British government, drew parallels between the tactics and strategy of Hamas in Gaza to those of the Taliban. Kemp wrote:


title: Taliban

text: Hindus and Sikhs have lived in Afghanistan since historic times and they were prominent minorities in Afghanistan, well-established in terms of academics and businesses. After the Afghan Civil War they started to migrate to India and other nations. After the Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, they imposed strict "Sharia" laws which discriminated against Hindus and Sikhs and caused the size of Afghanistan's Hindu and Sikh populations to fall at a very rapid rate because they emigrated from Afghanistan and established diasporas in the Western world. The Taliban issued decrees that forbade non-Muslims from building places of worship but allowed them to worship at existing holy sites, forbade non-Muslims from criticizing Muslims, ordered non-Muslims to identify their houses by placing a yellow cloth on their rooftops, forbade non-Muslims from living in the same residence as Muslims, and required that non-Muslim women wear a yellow dress with a special mark so that Muslims could keep their distance from them (Hindus and Sikhs were mainly targeted).


title: Taliban

text: On several occasions between 2008 and 2012, the Taliban claimed that they assassinated Western and Afghani medical or aid workers in Afghanistan, because they feared that the polio vaccine would make Muslim children sterile, because they suspected that the 'medical workers' were really spies, or because they suspected that the medical workers were proselytizing Christianity.


title: Taliban

text: In August 2008, three Western women (British, Canadian, US) who were working for the aid group 'International Rescue Committee' were murdered in Kabul. The Taliban claimed that they killed them because they were foreign spies. In October 2008, the British woman Gayle Williams working for Christian UK charity 'SERVE Afghanistan' – focusing on training and education for disabled persons – was murdered near Kabul. Taliban claimed they killed her because her organisation "was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan". In all 2008 until October, 29 aid workers, 5 of whom non-Afghanis, were killed in Afghanistan.


title: Taliban

text: In August 2010, the Taliban claimed that they murdered 10 medical aid workers while they were passing through Badakhshan Province on their way from Kabul to Nuristan Province — but the Afghan Islamic party/militia Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin has also claimed responsibility for those killings. The victims were six Americans, one Briton, one German and two Afghanis, working for a self-proclaimed "non-profit, Christian organization" which is named 'International Assistance Mission'. The Taliban stated that they murdered them because they were proselytizing Christianity and possessing which were translated into the Dari language when they were encountered. IAM contended that they "were not missionaries".


title: Taliban

text: In December 2012, unidentified gunmen killed four female UN polio-workers in Karachi in Pakistan; the Western news media suggested that there was a connection between the outspokenness of the Taliban and objections to and suspicions of such 'polio vaccinations'. Eventually in 2012, a Pakistani Taliban commander in North Waziristan in Pakistan banned polio vaccinations, and in March 2013, the Afghan government was forced to suspend its vaccination efforts in Nuristan Province because the Taliban was extremely influential in the province. However, in May 2013, the Taliban's leaders changed their stance on polio vaccinations, saying that the vaccine is the only way to prevent polio and they also stated that they will work with immunization volunteers as long as polio workers are "unbiased" and "harmonized with the regional conditions, Islamic values and local cultural traditions."


title: Taliban

text: Before the Taliban came to power, education was highly regarded in Afghanistan and Kabul University attracted students from Asia and the Middle East. However, the Taliban imposed restrictions on modern education, banned the education of females, only allowed Islamic religious schools to stay open and only encouraged the teaching of the Qur'an. Around half of all of the schools in Afghanistan were destroyed. The Taliban have carried out brutal attacks on teachers and students and they have also threatened parents and teachers.


title: Taliban

text: As per a 1998 UNICEF report, 9 out of 10 girls and 2 out of 3 boys did not enroll in schools. By 2000, fewer than 4–5% of all Afghan children were being educated at the primary school level and even fewer of them were being educated at higher secondary and university levels.


title: Taliban

text: Attacks on educational institutions, students and teachers and the forced enforcement of Islamic teachings have even continued after the Taliban were deposed from power. In December 2017, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that over 1,000 schools had been destroyed, damaged or occupied and 100 teachers and students had been killed by the Taliban.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban have committed a cultural genocide against the Afghan people by destroying their historical and cultural texts, artifacts and sculptures.


title: Taliban

text: In the early 1990s, the National Museum of Afghanistan was attacked and looted numerous times, resulting in the loss of 70% of the 100,000 artifacts of Afghan culture and history which were then on display.


title: Taliban

text: On 11 August 1998, the Taliban destroyed the Puli Khumri Public Library. The library contained a collection of over 55,000 books and old manuscripts, one of the most valuable and beautiful collections of Afghanistan's cultural works according to the Afghan people.


title: Taliban

text: On 2 March 2001, the Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed with dynamite, on orders from the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar.


title: Taliban

text: In October of the same year, the Taliban "took sledgehammers and axes to thousands of years’ worth of artifacts" in the National Museum of Afghanistan, destroying at least 2,750 ancient works of art.


title: Taliban

text: Afghanistan has a rich musical culture, where music plays an important part in social functions like births and marriages and it has also played a major role in uniting an ethnically diverse country. However, since it came to power and even after it was deposed, the Taliban has banned all music, including cultural folk music, and it has also attacked and killed a number of musicians.


title: Taliban

text: During their first rule of Afghanistan which lasted from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned many recreational activities and games, such as association football, kite flying, and chess. Mediums of entertainment such as televisions, cinemas, music, VCRs and satellite dishes were also banned. It has been reported that when children were caught kite flying, a popular activity among Afghan children, they were beaten.


title: Taliban

text: Also included on the list of banned items were "musical instruments and accessories" and all visual representation of living creatures. However, the daf, a type of frame drum, wasn't banned.


title: Taliban

text: According to the testimony of Guantanamo captives before their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the Taliban, in addition to conscripting men to serve as soldiers, also conscripted men to staff its civil service – both done at gunpoint.


title: Taliban

text: According to a report from Oxford University the Taliban made widespread use of the conscription of children in 1997, 1998 and 1999.


title: Taliban

text: The report states that during the civil war that preceded the Taliban régime thousands of orphaned boys joined various militia for "employment, food, shelter, protection and economic opportunity."


title: Taliban

text: The report said that during its initial period the Taliban "long depended upon cohorts of youth". Witnesses stated that each land-owning family had to provide one young man and $500 in expenses. In August of that year 5000 students aged between 15 and 35 left madrassas in Pakistan to join the Taliban.


title: Taliban

text: According to Jon Lee Anderson the Taliban government is "said to be profoundly divided" between the Kandahar faction and the Haqqani network, with a mysterious dispearance of deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar for "several days" in mid-September 2021 explained by rumours of injury after a brawl with other Taliban. The Kandahar faction is named for the city that Mullah Mohammed Omar came from and where he founded the Taliban, and is described as "insular" and "rural", interested "primarily" with "ruling its home turf". It includes Haibatullah Akhundzada, Mullah Yaqoob, Abdul Ghani Baradar (see below).


title: Taliban

text: All the top leadership of the Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns, more specifically those belonging of the Ghilzai confederation.


title: Taliban

text: Until his death in 2013, Mullah Mohammed Omar was the supreme commander of the Taliban. Mullah Akhtar Mansour was elected as his replacement in 2015, and following Mansour's killing in a May 2016 US drone strike, Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada became the group's leader.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban initially enjoyed goodwill from Afghans weary of the warlords' corruption, brutality, and incessant fighting.


title: Taliban

text: In 2001, the Taliban, "de jure", controlled 85% of Afghanistan. "De facto" the areas under its direct control were mainly Afghanistan's major cities and highways. Tribal khans and warlords had "de facto" direct control over various small towns, villages, and rural areas.


title: Taliban

text: Rashid described the Taliban government as "a secret society run by Kandaharis ... mysterious, secretive, and dictatorial." They did not hold elections, as their spokesman explained:


title: Taliban

text: They modelled their decision-making process on the Pashtun tribal council ("jirga"), together with what they believed to be the early Islamic model. Discussion was followed by a building of a consensus by the "believers". Before capturing Kabul, there was talk of stepping aside once a government of "good Muslims" took power, and law and order were restored.


title: Taliban

text: As the Taliban's power grew, decisions were made by Mullah Omar without consulting the "jirga" and without consulting other parts of the country. He visited the capital, Kabul, only twice while in power. Instead of an election, their leader's legitimacy came from an oath of allegiance ("Bay'ah"), in imitation of the Prophet and the first four Caliphs. On 4 April 1996, Mullah Omar had "the Cloak of the Prophet Mohammed" taken from its shrine for the first time in 60 years. Wrapping himself in the relic, he appeared on the roof of a building in the center of Kandahar while hundreds of Pashtun mullahs below shouted "Amir al-Mu'minin!" (Commander of the Faithful), in a pledge of support. Taliban spokesman Mullah Wakil explained:


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban were very reluctant to share power, and since their ranks were overwhelmingly Pashtun they ruled as overlords over the 60% of Afghans from other ethnic groups. In local government, such as Kabul city council or Herat, Taliban loyalists, not locals, dominated, even when the Pashto-speaking Taliban could not communicate with the roughly half of the population who spoke Dari or other non-Pashtun tongues. Critics complained that this "lack of local representation in urban administration made the Taliban appear as an occupying force."


title: Taliban

text: Consistent with the governance of the early Muslims was the absence of state institutions and the absence of "a methodology for command and control", both of which are standard today, even in non-Westernized states. The Taliban did not issue press releases or policy statements, nor did they hold regular press conferences. The basis for this structure was Grand Mufti Rashid Ahmed Ludhianvi’s "Obedience to the Amir," as he served as a mentor to the Taliban's leadership. The outside world and most Afghans did not even know what their leaders looked like, because photography was banned. The "regular army" resembled a lashkar or traditional tribal militia force with only 25,000 men (of whom 11,000 were non-Afghans).


title: Taliban

text: Cabinet ministers and deputies were mullahs with a "madrasah education." Several of them, such as the Minister of Health and the Governor of the State bank, were primarily military commanders who left their administrative posts and fought whenever they were needed. Military reverses that trapped them behind enemy lines or led to their deaths increased the chaos in the national administration. At the national level, "all senior Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara bureaucrats" were replaced "with Pashtuns, whether qualified or not." Consequently, the ministries "by and large ceased to function."


title: Taliban

text: The Ministry of Finance did not have a budget nor did it have a "qualified economist or banker." Mullah Omar collected and dispersed cash without bookkeeping.


title: Taliban

text: The Kabul money markets responded positively during the first weeks of the Taliban occupation (1996). But the Afghani soon fell in value. They imposed a 50% tax on any company operating in the country, and those who failed to pay were attacked. They also imposed a 6% import tax on anything brought into the country, and by 1998 had control of the major airports and border crossings which allowed them to establish a monopoly on all trade. By 2001, the per capita income of the 25 million population was under $200, and the country was close to total economic collapse. As of 2007 the economy had begun to recover, with estimated foreign reserves of three billion dollars and a 13% increase in economic growth.


title: Taliban

text: Under the Transit treaty between Afghanistan and Pakistan a massive network for smuggling developed. It had an estimated turnover of 2.5 billion dollars with the Taliban receiving between $100 and $130 million per year. These operations along with the trade from the Golden Crescent financed the war in Afghanistan and also had the side effect of destroying start up industries in Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid also explained that the Afghan Transit Trade agreed on by Pakistan was "the largest official source of revenue for the Taliban."


title: Taliban

text: Between 1996 and 1999, Mullah Omar reversed his opinions on the drug trade, apparently as it only harmed kafirs. The Taliban controlled 96% of Afghanistan's poppy fields and made opium its largest source of taxation. Taxes on opium exports became one of the mainstays of Taliban income and their war economy. According to Rashid, "drug money funded the weapons, ammunition and fuel for the war." In "The New York Times", the Finance Minister of the United Front, Wahidullah Sabawoon, declared the Taliban had no annual budget but that they "appeared to spend US$300 million a year, nearly all of it on war." He added that the Taliban had come to increasingly rely on three sources of money: "poppy, the Pakistanis and bin Laden."


title: Taliban

text: In an economic sense it seems he had little choice, as the war of attrition continued with the Northern Alliance the income from continued opium production was all that prevented the country from starvation. By 2000, Afghanistan accounted for an estimated 75% of the world's supply and in 2000 grew an estimated 3276 tonnes of opium from poppy cultivation on 82,171 hectares. At this juncture Omar passed a decree banning the cultivation of opium, and production dropped to an estimated 74 metric tonnes from poppy cultivation on 1,685 hectares. Many observers say the ban – which came in a bid for international recognition at the United Nations – was only issued in order to raise opium prices and increase profit from the sale of large existing stockpiles. 1999 had yielded a record crop and had been followed by a lower but still large 2000 harvest. The trafficking of accumulated stocks by the Taliban continued in 2000 and 2001. In 2002, the UN mentioned the "existence of significant stocks of opiates accumulated during previous years of bumper harvests." In September 2001 – before the 11 September attacks against the United States – the Taliban allegedly authorised Afghan peasants to sow opium again.


title: Taliban

text: There was also an environmental toll to the country, heavy deforestation from the illegal trade in timber with hundreds of acres of pine and cedar forests in Kunar Province and Paktya being cleared. Throughout the country millions of acres were denuded to supply timber to the Pakistani markets, with no attempt made at reforestation, which has led to significant environmental damage. By 2001, when the Afghan Interim Administration took power the country's infrastructure was in ruins, Telecommunications had failed, the road network was destroyed and Ministry of Finance buildings were in such a state of disrepair some were on the verge of collapse. On 6 July 1999, then president Bill Clinton signed into effect executive order 13129. This order implemented a complete ban on any trade between America and the Taliban régime and on 10 August they froze £5,000,000 in Ariana assets. On 19 December 2000, UN resolution 1333 was passed. It called for all assets to be frozen and for all states to close any offices belonging to the Taliban. This included the offices of Ariana Afghan Airlines. In 1999, the UN had passed resolution 1267 which had banned all international flights by Ariana apart from preapproved humanitarian missions.


title: Taliban

text: According to the lawsuit, filed in December 2019 in the D.C. District Court on behalf of Gold Star families, some US defense contractors involved in Afghanistan made illegal "protection payments" to the Taliban, funding a "Taliban-led terrorist insurgency" that killed or wounded thousands of Americans in Afghanistan. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the "protection money" was "one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban."


title: Taliban

text: It is estimated that in 2020 the Taliban had an income of $1.6 billion, mostly from drugs, mining, extortion and taxes, donations and exports.


title: Taliban

text: On 2 November 2021, the Taliban required that all economic transactions in Afghanistan use Afghanis and banned the use of all foreign currency.


title: Taliban

text: The Taliban are supported by several militant outfits which include the Haqqani network, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Several countries like China, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia allegedly support the Taliban. However, all of their governments deny providing any support to the Taliban. Likewise, the Taliban also deny receiving any foreign support from any country. At its peak, formal diplomatic recognition of the Taliban's government was acknowledged by three nations: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In the past, the United Arab Emirates and Turkmenistan were also alleged to have provided support to the Taliban. It is designated by some countries as a terrorist organization.


title: Taliban

text: During its time in power (1996–2001), at its height ruling 90% of Afghanistan, the Taliban régime, or "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, all of which provided substantial aid. The most other nations and organizations, including the United Nations, recognised the government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (1992–2002) (parts of whom were part of the United Front, also called Northern Alliance) as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Regarding its relations with the rest of the world, the Taliban's Emirate of Afghanistan held a policy of isolationism: "The Taliban believe in non-interference in the affairs of other countries and similarly desire no outside interference in their country's internal affairs".


title: Taliban

text: Traditionally, the Taliban were supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, while Iran, Russia, Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan formed an anti-Taliban alliance and supported the Northern Alliance. After the fall of the Taliban régime at the end of 2001, the composition of the Taliban supporters changed. According to a study by scholar Antonio Giustozzi, in the years 2005 to 2015 most of the financial support came from the states Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and Qatar, as well as from private donors from Saudi Arabia, from al-Qaeda and, for a short period of time, from the Islamic State. About 54 percent of the funding came from foreign governments, 10 percent from private donors from abroad, and 16 percent from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In 2014, the amount of external support was close to $900 million.


title: Taliban

text: Former: , but never on the United States Department of State list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.


title: Taliban

text: Despite the aid of United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) given (see § Afghanistan during Taliban rule), the Taliban's attitude in 1996–2001 toward the UN and NGOs was often one of suspicion. The UN did not recognise the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, most foreign donors and aid workers were non-Muslims, and the Taliban vented fundamental objections to the sort of 'help' the UN offered. As the Taliban's Attorney General Maulvi Jalil-ullah Maulvizada put it in 1997:


title: Taliban

text: In July 1998, the Taliban closed "all NGO offices" 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.


title: Taliban

text: Around 2000, the UN drew up sanctions against officials and leaders of Taliban, because of their harbouring Osama bin Laden. Several of the Taliban leaders have subsequently been killed.


title: Taliban

text: In 2009, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and US Secretary Hillary Clinton had called for talks with 'regular Taliban fighters' while bypassing their top leaders who supposedly were 'committed to global jihad'. Kai Eide, the top UN official in Afghanistan, called for talks with Taliban at the highest level, suggesting Mullah Omar—even though Omar had recently dismissed such overtures as long as foreign troops were in Afghanistan.


title: Taliban

text: In 2010, the UN lifted sanctions on the Taliban, and requested that Taliban leaders and others be removed from terrorism watch lists. In 2010 the US and Europe announced support for President Karzai's latest attempt to negotiate peace with the Taliban.