To understand the current conflict in Afghanistan, one must first have an understanding of the Taliban. Understanding their history and purpose will start to shed some light on why these things are happening, and how we got to this point. We will first turn our attention to the 1980’s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The 1980’s saw the US still locked in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. When we think of the Cold War, we often reflect on the events where the US was more heavily involved. Think about events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare, the space race, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. While those were certainly important events, the Soviet Union was also having its own conflicts. One of which, was the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This was the first and only time the Soviets invaded a country outside of the Eastern Bloc. This move to occupy Afghanistan, would eventually lead to the birth of the Taliban.
In the late 70’s Afghanistan was ruled by communists. In 1979 their communist leader was assassinated, and the new potential president appeared that he was going to switch sides to the United States. Upon learning that information, the Soviets decided to deploy their army across the border to halt the civil war, took over the capital city of Kabul, and installed a soviet loyalist as President of Afghanistan. While the government of Afghanistan remained communist, many thousands of Afghan citizens did not agree with this form of government. The civil war would now switch to a war of liberation of their country.
Most of the religious and ethnic groups of Afghanistan opposed the Soviets. These pockets of rebel groups came to be known as the “Mujahideen”. Mujahideen in Arabic means “defenders of the faith”, or freedom fighters. While they varied in tribal and ethnic affiliations, they were united in the religion of Islam and anti-communism. Many of these rebellious Afghans fled across the border into nearby Pakistan, specifically the city of Peshawar.
In Peshawar there were dozens and dozens of various afghan resistance groups. They started a council to unite their groups under common interests such as liberating Afghanistan, toppling the regime, and creating a single political bloc ruled under Islamic law. In Pakistan the groups were able to unite enough to form a sizable resistance toward the Soviets.
Throughout the 1980’s, the Mujahideen were able to implement a style of guerrilla warfare that kept bleeding the Soviets of resources for years. They were even able to recruit thousands of Arab fighters from Middle Eastern countries to come join their cause in both freedom fighters and financial backing. These individuals were know as “Arab Afghans”. Many of these Arabs wanted to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to support the cause of Islam defeating communism, and support their religious brothers and sisters.
As a sidebar, but a necessary one, this is where Osama bin Laden (OBL) enters the equation. OBL came from a wealthy Saudi family, as his father owned a giant construction company that served the royal family. At one point in time, his family was the largest owner of Caterpillar construction equipment in the world. OBL left college, traveled to Pakistan, and in 1984 started an organization that’s purpose was to funnel money, weapons, and fighters from the Arab world to the Mujahideen. Because he himself was wealthy, and had many wealthy contacts in Saudi Arabia and surrounding areas, he was able to funnel millions of dollars to the rebels. He was even able to use his knowledge of construction and equipment to build numerous man made tunnels and caves throughout the mountains of Afghanistan. This relationship will become important later on in the story.
The Mujahideen also received heavy support from the US government (through the CIA) and the government of Pakistan (who did not want a soviet country on their border). These are both much larger stories, but for now we will leave it at that. The US supplying the Mujahideen with shoulder firing Stinger missiles is believed to be what ultimately turned the tide in the war. They were now able to shoot down Soviet helicopters which were reeking havoc on their fighters.
With a new leader coming to power in the Soviet Union, their draining of resources against the mujahideen and in other countries, and their conflict with China, they decided in 1988 and 1989 to withdraw their forces. This was a victory for the mujahideen and the Afghan freedom fighters, and a victory for Islam. But the liberation of the country was still a battle to be fought, because the leader of Afghanistan was still receiving support and funds from Moscow. By 1992 the Mujahideen had taken over Kabul and created the Islamic State of Afghanistan.
This ended up being another disaster for the citizen of Afghanistan. While the Soviets were now gone, another problem arose. As we described earlier, the freedom fighters were made up of dozens and dozens of factions. And no unified singe system of government ever works well when you have dozens of competing factions trying to rule the country. This once again plunged Afghanistan into a brutal civil war. Different factions decided to not recognize the interim government, and with no military and no police force yet set up, warring factions controlled various parts of the country. This led to much corruption, human rights violations, and disagreements over Islamic law.
Fed up with the corruption and the government not adhering to strict Islamic Law, a man by the name of Mohammed Omar decided to take matters into his own hands. Mullah Mohammed Omar was a religious scholar and a former mujahideen commander. After the war, he took jobs teaching at religious schools, called madrassas, within Afghanistan and Pakistan. By 1994 he was teaching at a Madrassa in Kandahar, Afghanistan. 
With corruption, raping, and pillaging running rampant in that region, he took 50 of his students and formed a group simply known as the Taliban. Taliban is Pashto ( the language spoken in that region) for students. So Taliban simply means the students, as this is where the first followers originated. Omar solicited the help from some former mujahideen commanders, and recruited from madrassas (schools) mostly in Afghan refugee camps along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He started out by leading his followers to freeing children from warlord captivity, and other minor small village disputes. By the end of the year he had recruited over 12,000 students from Islamic schools to join his cause. The Taliban took over the city of Kandahar, and by the end of 1995 had control of over a dozen of Afghanistan’s provinces. By 1996, the Taliban continued to grow and grow in number and stature. By September of that year, they had the numbers to take over the capital, and Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban.
The Taliban quickly declared Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They also instituted a moral code of Islam, with strict Sharia type Islamic law and traditional Afghan and Pashtun practices and traditions. When the Taliban took over, two decades of fighting various countries and groups had left the country with no running water, little electricity, barely usable roadways, a few telephones. Many could not access basic needs. While the UN tried to help address this issue, little was ever accomplished.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Osama bin Laden was expelled from his home in the Sudan in 1996 after the Sudanese government faced intense pressure from the US and surrounding countries like Egypt for his links to bombings and assassination attempts. The Sudan permitted him to leave to any country of his choosing. With no options and no country willing to take him, his only choice was to return to the war torn country of Afghanistan, with its newly installed government, and seek the protection of the Taliban comprised of mujahideen that he once helped, financed, and fought alongside. Mullah Omar took him in, and they begun forming a strong relationship.
It was from Afghanistan that Bin Laden declared war against the United States for entering Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and from here he and his group al-Qaeda planned the 1998 embassy bombings of two US African embassies, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11th attacks. After the 9/11 attacks President Bush ordered the Taliban to hand over OBL, in which they refused to do so. In October 2001 we entered Afghanistan and with the help of the Northern Alliance (another mujahideen group who controlled the northern part of Afghanistan, and did not join the Taliban) quickly thwarted the Taliban and kicked them out of power.
Since 2001, the Taliban have conducted a guerrilla warfare type insurgency against US troops, the Afghan government, and the Afghan security forces. Hiding out in Pakistan (the Taliban leadership) and Afghanistan. These were done through attacks, bombings, suicide attacks, assassinations, and drug trafficking. By the mid-2010’s it was estimated that’s the Taliban controlled around 20% of the country.
Mullah Mohammed Omar would die in 2013 from natural causes, most likely tuberculosis. But news of his death was not released until two years later in 2015. His son, Mohammad Yaqoob, is currently the leader of the Taliban’s military. Sirajuddin Haqqani, a member of the despised Haqqani Network serves as the deputy leader of the Taliban, and the current Supreme Commander of the Taliban is Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada.
In the next addition, we will look at the events that have taken place in the past couple of weeks facilitated by the Taliban and it’s current leadership.