WHO ARE TALIBANS

Who Are Talibans

Talibans have been fighting the government and its allies in Afghanistan for 20 years. Currently they seem stronger than ever.

History Of Taliban

So who exactly are the Taliban? How is it that they have so much influence and power? And why are people worried they will capture Afghanistan — again?

To understand the Talibans, you need to know what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Afghan guerillas, called the MUJAHEDEEN, engaged a Soviet invasion for nine years. They even got monetary support and arms from the CIA. In 1989 the Soviets drawn out and the next couple of years were pretty messy. By 1992 there was a full-sized civil war with tribal leaders fighting for supremacy.

Two years later a group called the Taliban started getting attention. Most of its adherents had studied in traditional religious schools in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan and some of them had also battled as mujahedeen and they had their own campaigns.

By 1996 the Taliban had apprehended the capital. They announced Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate and started imposing their own strict interpretation of Islamic law.

9/11 – The Terror Attacks

9/11 Terror Attack

The US was after al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, who was hiding out in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s help. The Taliban said they wanted proof he was behind the 9/11 attack and when they refused to hand him over immediately the Americans invaded.

Within a few months, the Taliban were enforced out of power and Afghanistan got a new provisional government. Three years after Afghanistan got a new constitution and Hamid Karzai was voted as President.

While that was going on the Taliban had reassembled. They wanted immigrants out and they wanted back in.

What shadowed were years of disturbing conflict — and it is still going on. More than 40,000 Afghan civilians murdered. Minimum 64,000 Afghan military and police and more than 3,500 international soldiers deceased. The US alone has drained almost a trillion dollars on the war and reconstruction projects and after all that Afghanistan is still deeply unsteady and the Taliban are still a force to count.

Talibans Today

Taliban Today

Today the Taliban have as many as 85,000 full-time fighters and training camps across the country and the area they control has been growing.

Haibatullah Akhundzada is a leading light in Talibans. He heads a board that oversees about a dozen directives in charge of things like finance, health and education. Below them are local executives, in charge of daily services.

They even run their own law courts which can be so much popular among Afghans.

All that control has also made them ironic. As per Taliban members and a UN committee, they make around $1.5 billion a year. It assumed generally that they always made a lot of money from growing opium poppies and the drug trade. But they’ve found even more ways to generate income. Last year they made millions from mining and tradeoff minerals and even generating methamphetamine.

They also have their own tax-collection system and receive money from abroad — although alleged sources, like Pakistan and Iran, deny it.

Afghans are now asking themselves what life might be like if the Taliban take over. Will they tear up the constitution which guards basic human rights. In a New York Times, opposite the editorial page, the Taliban tried to clear things up saying “they want to build an Islamic structure where the rights of women, that are granted by Islam, from the right to education to the right to work will be given.”

Currently there are many areas under Taliban control where girls are in school. But not all around country.

So how much provision is there for the Taliban? People may not admire them but the Taliban know what they want and they have shown that they are in it for the long heave.

So far their strategy seems to have worked.