Taliban's Role in Afghanistan

The Taliban's Rise

In the last blog, we discussed Afghanistan and the Mujahideen. Ultimately Mujahideen was in full power, and Mohammad Najibullah was sitting on Afghanistan's throne. The USSR tried to help Najibullah but it was all in vain, as in 1991 the USSR itself got broken. Mujahideen boycotted the parliamentary elections held in Afghan and a civil war starts, which Mujahideen ultimately won. In spite of the fact that Mujahideen was an Islamic group, it was formed with people of different ideologies who belonged to different ethnicities, which resulted in tension among the group as to who will get the power. 

In 1992, Burhanuddin Rabbani got power and became the leader of Afghanistan. In the next few years, a new rival shows up and that was the Taliban. In 1996, the Taliban eradicates Burhanuddin Rabbani too from the throne.

Let's now see who were the Taliban. In the Pashtun language, the word Taliban means students. Initially, Mullah Omar was the leader of the Taliban group who started it with 50 students. Along with time, some refugees of Afghanistan returned from Pakistan, who later joined the Taliban group and, in comparison to Mujahideen these people were way more religious extremists. These Afghan refugees had learned this extremism in the mosques of Pakistan. But the question was not just about religious extremism. The Taliban believed a lot in Pashtun ideology. It was also supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It is also said that the Taliban was formed by the USA. Although this statement is not technically correct, but it has got some weight in it because America had created a lot of instability in Afghanistan by supporting Mujahideen, which anyways does the groundwork for the formation of the Taliban. The US not only supported Afghanistan by supplying weapons but also spent millions of dollars on printing some textbooks which had violent images promoting religious extremism, later used by the Taliban.

Till September 1996, the Taliban took over Kabul and declared it an Islamic state of Afghanistan. The common people supported Taliban initially because they assumed that Afghanistan is moving towards stability as the Taliban also did some peaceful settlements in few areas of the state. But with time people knew the actual conservative ideology of Taliban. After some time, it banned a whole lot of things in Afghan such as, Cinema, TV, Football, Chess, Photography, Flying kites, UN offices, Internet, clean shave, Paintings, NGOs, education for girls above the age of ten, etc. Burkha for women and beard for men was made compulsory.  

As the Taliban believed in Pashtun ideology, ethnic cleansing was done against non-Pashtun ethnicities. Thousands of Hazara Muslims were killed, Christians were prosecuted and Hindus were given different badges so that they can be identified. Former President Mohammad Najibullah was killed by the Taliban. Everyone criticized Taliban except for three countries that considered Taliban as a legitimate government. These countries were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and UAE.

In late 1990s Mujahideen’s forces fought against the Taliban. These forces were known as Northern Alliance, headed by Ahmad Shah Masoud. Northern Alliance got defeated in this fight and Ahmad Masoud was killed. Just two days later a terrorist group Al-Qaeda conducted the 9/11 attack in the US. The leader of Al-Qaeda was a Saudi terrorist named Osama Bin laden.  Taliban helped Osama to get shelter in Afghanistan. In a letter to America, Osama Bin Laden says that “the attacks of 9/11 are the revenge for the barbaric actions of America in countries like Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan. America is torturing Muslims in all these countries. So, we have taken the revenge on America with the 9/11 attacks”.

And this was the reason for America to post its army in Afghanistan in 2001. American Army conducted airstrikes at different places in Afghanistan wherein many casualties took place. With the support of the Northern Alliance in December 2001, America was successful in defeating the Taliban.

In 2004 Afghanistan again got a new constitution. Elections were also conducted in which more than sixty lakh people of Afghanistan took participation.  Hamid Karzai won the elections and was appointed as the new president of Afghanistan. He established good relations with India. The US on the other hand did airstrikes and bombing in Pakistan to destruct the hidden camps of Taliban. In 2011 Osama Bin Laden also gets killed by the US forces.

In 2015, it was found that Mullah Omar (founder of Taliban) died of illness in 2013. During all this time the US force was still posted in Afghan to maintain peace and to control the Taliban. The USA forces gave full support to the democratic party in Afghanistan. Despite this Taliban didn’t settle, in fact, it kept doing attacks at different places. A number of civilians died in these attacks.

 

February 2020, Donald Trump (President of America) starts peace talks with the Taliban. They discussed that if Taliban disconnects with terrorist group Al-Qaeda then US will pull back its forces from Afghanistan.

2021, when the Taliban is at its peak power, Joe Biden (US president) continues Trump’s Policy and decides to pull back US forces from Afghanistan, especially, before the 20^th anniversary of 9/11. In a press conference, Joe Biden says that “we don’t trust Taliban, but we trust 3 lakhs Afghanistan soldiers, who are well equipped like any other nation in the world, and we believe that they can counter 85000 Taliban fighters”. But the ground reality has come out to be completely contrasting. Taliban has taken over Afghanistan.

People questioned the US. There are questions such as, why did US pull out their forces so quickly? If revenge was their only intention, then why didn’t US bring back their forces after killing Osama Bin Laden in 2011?

It is clear that if peace in Afghanistan was the only motive of US then it had absolutely failed.  

Read the previous story here What happened in Afghanistan Since 1979 ?| Who are Mujahideen? | How it started? (spellonwhite.blogspot.com)