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Afghan Islamist militant organization
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist political and militant organization which has governed Afghanistan since 2021. Having previously ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, the group was overthrown following the United States invasion of Afghanistan and fought a twenty-year war which ended in their return to power.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Taliban”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist political and militant organization which has governed Afghanistan since 2021. Having previously ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, the group was overthrown following the United States invasion of Afghanistan and fought a twenty-year war which ended in their return to power.
Emerging in 1994 as a faction in the Afghan Civil War (1992–1996), the Taliban largely consisted of warlords from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan. Under the leadership of Mullah Omar, it took control of most of the country and, after seizing the capital Kabul in 1996, established a government which enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia. They were internationally condemned and isolated for their human rights practices. The Northern Alliance continued a civil war against the group and maintained international recognition as a continuation of the previous government.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States demanded the Taliban surrender al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was residing in the country. Upon refusing to do so, Afghanistan was invaded by a US-led coalition and the Taliban government was overthrown, most of the group fleeing to neighboring Pakistan. Following the invasion, the Taliban regrouped and mounted an insurgency against the US-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and coalition forces. After signing a peace deal with the US, the Taliban conducted a nationwide offensive in 2021 culminating in the fall of Kabul, the collapse of the Islamic Republic, and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The ideology of the Taliban is dominated by the Deobandi movement of Hanafi Islamic fundamentalism, along with elements of Pashtun nationalism. It is de facto the sole legal political force in the country, rejecting the principles of democracy and political parties. The group operates centrally under a supreme leader (Hibatullah Akhundzada since 2016) who wields unlimited power and issues fatwas serving both as law and religious instruction. The Taliban has been condemned for civilian massacres, human rights abuses and restrictions, particularly of women's rights, and persecuting ethnic and religious minorities. Unlike al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, it does not hold transnational aims—it remains discreetly allied with the former and is openly hostile to the latter. It is designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, and its government is largely unrecognized by the international community, with only Russia having granted it diplomatic recognition as of 2026.
The word Taliban is Pashto, طَالِباَنْ (ṭālibān), meaning "students", the plural of ṭālib. This is a loanword from Arabic طَالِبْ (ṭālib), using the Pashto plural ending -ān اَنْ. (In Arabic طَالِبَانْ (ṭālibān) means not "students" but rather "two students", as it is a dual form, the Arabic plural being طُلَّابْ (ṭullāb)—occasionally causing some confusion to Arabic speakers.) Since becoming a loanword in English, Taliban, besides a plural noun referring to the group, has also been used as a singular noun referring to an individual. For example, John Walker Lindh has been referred to as "an American Taliban" rather than "an American Talib" in domestic media. This is different in Afghanistan, where a member or a supporter of the group is referred to as a Talib (طَالِبْ) or its plural Talib-ha (طَالِبْهَا). In other definitions, Taliban means 'seekers'.
In English, the spelling Taliban has gained predominance over the spelling Taleban. In American English, the definite article is used; the group is referred to as "the Taliban" rather than "Taliban". In English-language media in Pakistan, the definite article is always omitted. Both Pakistani and Indian English-language media tend to name the group "Afghan Taliban", thus distinguishing it from the Pakistani Taliban. Additionally, in Pakistan, the word Talibans is often used when referring to more than one Taliban member. The group is also sometimes referred to as the Taliban Islamic Movement or Islamic Movement of Taliban, and often refers to itself by the name of the government it operates, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban is frequently called the گرُوهِ طَالِبَانْ (Goroh-e Taleban), a Dari term which means 'Taliban group'. As per Dari/Persian grammar, there is no "the" prefix. Meanwhile, in Pashto, a determiner is normally used and as a result, the group is normally referred to as per Pashto grammar: دَ طَالِبَانْ (Da Taliban) or دَ طَالِبَانُو (Da Talibano).
After the Soviet Union intervened and occupied Afghanistan in 1979, Islamic mujahideen fighters waged a war against Soviet forces. During the Soviet–Afghan War, nearly all of the Taliban's original leaders had fought for either the Hezb-i Islami Khalis or the Harakat-i Inqilab-e Islami factions of the Mujahideen.
Pakistan's President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq feared that the Soviets were also planning to invade Balochistan, Pakistan, so he sent Akhtar Abdur Rahman to Saudi Arabia to garner support for the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation forces. A while later, the US CIA and the Saudi Arabian General Intelligence Directorate (GID) funnelled funding and equipment through the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI) to the Afghan mujahideen. About 90,000 Afghans, including Mullah Omar, were trained by Pakistan's ISI during the 1980s.
In April 1992, after the fall of the Soviet-backed régime of Mohammad Najibullah, many Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accord, which created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, Hezbe Wahdat, and Ittihad-i Islami did not participate. The state was paralysed from the start, due to rival groups contending for total power over Kabul and Afghanistan.
Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin party refused to recognise the interim government, and in April infiltrated Kabul to take power for itself, thus starting this civil war. In May, Hekmatyar started attacks against government forces and Kabul. Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan's ISI. With that help, Hekmatyar's forces were able to destroy half of Kabul. Iran assisted the Hezbe Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari. Saudi Arabia supported the Ittihad-i Islami faction. The conflict between these militias also escalated into war.
Due to this sudden initiation of civil war, working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability for the newly created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. Atrocities were committed by individuals inside different factions. Ceasefires, negotiated by representatives of the Islamic State's newly appointed Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud, President Sibghatullah Mojaddedi and later President Burhanuddin Rabbani (the interim government), or officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commonly collapsed within days. The countryside in northern Afghanistan, parts of which were under the control of Defense Minister Massoud, remained calm and some reconstruction took place. The city of Herat under the rule of Islamic State ally Ismail Khan also witnessed relative calm. Meanwhile, southern Afghanistan was neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local leaders such as Gul Agha Sherzai and their militias.
The Taliban movement originated in Pashtun nationalism, and its ideological underpinnings are with that of broader Afghan society. Pakistan was heavily involved in creating the Taliban in 1994. The Taliban's roots lie in the religious schools of Kandahar and were influenced significantly by foreign support, particularly from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, during the Soviet–Afghan War. They emerged in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, capturing Kandahar and expanding their control across the country; they became involved in a war with the Northern Alliance. The international response to the Taliban varied, with some countries providing support while others opposed and did not recognize their regime.
During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban implemented strict religious regulations, notably affecting women's rights and cultural heritage. This period included significant ethnic persecution and the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. After the US-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban were ousted from power but regrouped and launched an insurgency that lasted two decades.
The Taliban returned to power in 2021 following the US withdrawal. Their efforts to establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan continue, with education policies and international relations, including internal and external challenges faced by the Taliban regime.
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. 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 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.
The Taliban seized power from a government supported by some of the world's most advanced militaries. As an ideological insurgent movement seeking to establish an Islamic state, its victory has been compared by commentators to the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979, both of which reshaped their societies. However, in interviews conducted in 2021–2022, senior Taliban leaders emphasized the relative moderation of their revolution and expressed a desire for constructive relations with the United States, according to journalist Jon Lee Anderson.
Anderson notes that the Taliban's earlier campaign against images and iconography has largely been abandoned, a change he suggests may be linked to the ubiquity of smartphones and social media. Local political figure Sayed Hamid Gailani argued that the Taliban have not carried out widespread killings since returning to power. Women continue to appear in public, and Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stated that some women remain employed in government ministries. He also claimed that girls would be permitted to attend secondary school once the government had access to frozen bank funds, which he said would allow the creation of separate facilities and transportation.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs was closed, and its building repurposed to house the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. According to Jon Lee Anderson, some women who remained formally employed by the government were required to sign in at their offices but then return home, a practice intended to create the appearance of gender equity. Anderson also reported that the appointment of ethnic minorities to government positions was described by a Taliban adviser as tokenistic. In response to international criticism over the lack of diversity in government appointments, the Taliban named an ethnic Hazara as deputy health minister and an ethnic Tajik as deputy trade minister.
Reports have circulated of Hazara farmers being displaced by ethnic Pashtuns, of raids on activists' homes, and of extrajudicial executions of former government soldiers and intelligence agents. A report released by Human Rights Watch in November 2021 stated that the Taliban killed or forcibly disappeared more than 100 former members of the Afghan security forces in the three months following their takeover, in the provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, and Kunduz. The report indicated that Taliban forces identified targets for arrest and execution through intelligence operations and access to employment records left behind. It also documented cases in which former security personnel were killed within days of registering with the Taliban to obtain letters guaranteeing their safety.
When asked about the violence against Hazara Shia communities, the Taliban's former nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, spokesman Suhail Shaheen, told Jon Lee Anderson that the Hazara Shia were regarded as fellow Muslims and part of Afghan society: "We believe we are one, like flowers in a garden."
Explanations for the relative moderation of the new Taliban government include its unexpected rapid takeover of the country, which left internal factions with unresolved issues, and the severe economic constraints created by frozen Afghan government funds abroad. Approximately US$7 billion in Afghan assets held in American banks were blocked, and about 80 percent of the former government's budget—previously funded by the United States, its partners, and international lenders—was cut off, contributing to a major economic crisis. According to the United Nations World Food Program country director Mary Ellen McGroarty, 22.8 million Afghans were already severely food insecure by late 2021, with seven million on the brink of famine. The international community has expressed a reluctance to recognize the Taliban regime, urging it to form an inclusive government, safeguard the rights of women and minorities, and prevent Afghanistan from serving as a base for global terrorist operations. In discussions with Jon Lee Anderson, senior Taliban leaders suggested that their strict application of sharia law during the 1990s was a response to the disorder left by the Soviet occupation, but asserted that mercy and compassion were now guiding principles. Former officials from the Ministry of Women's Affairs disputed these claims, with one telling Anderson that the Taliban's conciliatory statements were aimed at securing international financing, and predicted that women would eventually be forced to wear the burqa again.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Taliban”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.