STORY OF AFGHAN TALIBAN

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 STORY OF AFGHAN TALIBAN

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• Taliban: The word Taliban (Pashto) is the plural of Talib, which means student. Reclusive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar led the Taliban from the mid-1990s until his death in 2013. Most members of Taliban are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
• Aim: The group's aim is to impose its interpretation of Islamic law on Afghanistan and remove foreign influence from the country.
• Quick Timeline:  

1. 1979-1989 - The Soviet Union invades and occupies Afghanistan. Afghan resistance fighters, known collectively as mujahedeen, fight back. 
2. 1989-1993 - After the Soviet Union withdraws, fighting among the mujahedeen leads to chaos. 
3. 1994 - The Taliban is formed, comprised mostly of students and led by mujahedeen veteran Mullah Omar. 
4. November 1994 - The Taliban seize the city of Kandahar. September 1996 - The capital, Kabul, falls to the Taliban. 
5. 1996-2001 - The group imposes strict Islamic laws on the Afghan people. Women must wear head-to-toe coverings, are not allowed to attend school or work outside the home and are forbidden to travel alone. Television, music and non-Islamic holidays are also banned. 
6. 1997 - The Taliban issue an edict renaming Afghanistan the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The country is only officially recognized by three countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 
7. 1997 - Mullah Omar forges a relationship with Osama bin Laden, who then moves his base of operations to Kandahar. 
8. August 1998 - The Taliban capture Mazar-e-Sharif, gaining control of about 90% of Afghanistan. October-November 2001 - After US bombardment as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Taliban lose Afghanistan to US and Northern Alliance forces. 

• Authority of the Taliban: The Their leader’s authority came from the “Cloak of the Prophet”. It was at that 1994 meeting that Mullah Omar was made the Taliban leader, yet it wasn’t until 1996 that he cemented his authority. A cloak that is purported to have belonged to the Islamic prophet Muhammed was kept in a shrine in Kandahar, brought there in the mid-18th century by Amir Ahmad Shah Durrani. Mullah Omar donned the cloak from the shrine’s rooftop, and was acclaimed by his followers as the “Commander of the Faithful.” The whereabouts of the cloak today is unknown.
• Erasing Afghanistan’s Buddhist past: Afghanistan is where Zoroastrianism was founded, and until the 10 to 12th century, was almost entirely inhabited by Buddhists. The country’s pre-Islamic past doesn’t fit into the Taliban’s view of history. In Bamiyan, there were two massive statues of the Buddha carved into the rock walls of the valley, 35 and 53 metres tall. These were built in 6th century AD, when Bamiyan was famous as a centre of Buddhist scholarship, housing “1,000 monasteries each with 1,000 monks.” Although Mullah Omar originally decreed that the edifices would be protected, in 2001 he reversed his decision as part of country-wide efforts at eradicating all things un-Islamic, and they were destroyed with dynamite.
• Heroin supply: The Taliban made huge profits in the drug trade, and the organization itself taxed opium and heroin production, as well. But in 2000, the Taliban (in conjunction with the UN) declared the production of opium as un-Islamic and instituted a ban. Output fell from 4,500 tonnes in 1999 to virtually zero in 2000, cutting off 75 per cent of the world’s supply of heroin. Whether this was purely for religious reasons, or to greatly increase the value of the stores of opium held by many traders, is an open question. In 2001, production began again.
• Situation in 2021: After a 20 year battle, the Taliban stood undefeated and took over the country once again, on 15th of August.

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