18.13 Taliban (1994)

The Taliban emerged in 1994 in southern Afghanistan during the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal from the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist government, and the civil war among rival mujahideen factions.

The word Taliban means “students.”

The movement was founded by Mullah Omar, a former mujahideen fighter who reportedly began the group with roughly 50 students in Kandahar to protect locals from abusive warlords. Its ideology was rooted in a fundamentalist Deobandi interpretation of Sunni Islam, heavily influenced by the curriculum of the religious schools in Pakistan where many members were educated.

The movement drew many of its early members from Islamic religious schools, especially among Afghan refugees and communities shaped by years of war and displacement. It presented itself as a force that would end corruption, punish abusive warlords, and restore order through strict Islamic rule.

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To understand why the Taliban gained support, it is important to understand what Afghanistan looked like in the early 1990s.

After the communist government fell in 1992, rival armed factions turned on one another, much of the country descended into violence, and ordinary people faced lawlessness, extortion, kidnapping, and insecurity. In that environment, the Taliban’s promise of order appealed to many Afghans who were exhausted by constant conflict.

The Taliban represents a state-controlling Islamist movement rather than a purely regional insurgency or a primarily transnational terrorist network. Unlike Al-Qaeda, which focused on global jihad across borders, the Taliban was mainly centered on controlling and governing Afghanistan. Its goal was to seize territory, impose its interpretation of Islamic law, and establish political authority over the country.

After emerging in 1994, the Taliban expanded rapidly. Pakistan also supported the Taliban’s rise to secure trade routes and establish a friendly government in Kabul to gain strategic depth against India.

By 1996, it had captured Kabul, the capital and largest city, and within a few years it controlled most of Afghanistan.

During its first period in power, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban imposed a harsh and highly restrictive interpretation of Islamic law. It became especially known for severe restrictions on women and girls, strict social controls, and harsh punishments. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were the only countries who officially recognized the Taliban’s rule during this period.

In March 2001, the Taliban used dynamite and tanks to destroy two 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues carved into a cliffside, despite worldwide pleas for preservation. This became a global symbol of the regime’s hostility to cultural and religious pluralism.

The Taliban also became globally significant because of its relationship with Al-Qaeda. During the 1990s, Al-Qaeda established training camps and a safe haven in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. When the Taliban refused, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, backed anti-Taliban forces, and removed the Taliban government from power by the end of that year.

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However, the Taliban did not disappear. Over the next two decades, it regrouped and re-emerged as an insurgency against the U.S.-backed Afghan government and international forces. When the United States withdrew in 2021, the Taliban rapidly regained control of Afghanistan and returned to power.

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls are systematically barred from education beyond the sixth grade. The Taliban also replaced the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces strict behavioral and dress codes for all citizens.

Under 2024 laws, a woman’s voice is considered private and should not be heard in public. This prohibits women from singing, reciting poetry, or reading aloud outside their homes.

In some areas, residents have been ordered to black out their windows so that women inside the home cannot be seen from the street. Some reports state that a woman who leaves her home without her husband’s permission, even to visit family, can be imprisoned for up to three months. Women are also entirely banned from public parks, gyms, and public baths—which are often the only source of hot water for many.

Men are legally required to grow a beard at least one-fist in length. The 2026 code suggests that a husband beating his wife may not be a punishable offense unless it results in broken bones or open wounds.

The Taliban shows how an Islamist extremist movement can move from insurgency to government, lose power, and then return again. It is not identical to ISIS, which claimed a transnational caliphate, and it is not identical to Al-Shabaab, which remains a regional insurgency. Instead, the Taliban is one of the clearest examples of a movement that sought to rule an entire state under its own interpretation of Islam.

In section 18.14, we will examine ISIS (2013), a group that pushed the jihadist model even further by combining territorial conquest, mass-casualty terrorism, and a self-declared caliphate.