Just last week, US intelligence analysts had predicted it would likely take several more weeks before Afghanistan’s civilian government in Kabul fell to Taliban fighters. In reality, it only took a few short days.
On Sunday, Taliban militants retook Afghanistan’s capital, almost two decades after they were driven from Kabul by US troops. Although Afghan security forces were well funded and well equipped, they put up little resistance as Taliban militants seized much of the country following the withdrawal of US troops beginning in early July. On Sunday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, abandoning the presidential palace to Taliban fighters. Already, US officials have admitted that they miscalculated the speed at which the Taliban were able to advance across the country, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying of Afghanistan’s national security forces: «The fact of the matter is we’ve seen that force has been unable to defend the country… and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated.» The Taliban’s swift success has prompted questions over how the insurgent group was able to gain control so soon after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan — and, after almost 20 years of conflict in the US’ longest running war, what the Taliban want. Who are the Taliban? Formed in 1994, the Taliban were made up of former Afghan resistance fighters, known collectively as mujahedeen, who fought the invading Soviet forces in the 1980s. They aimed to impose their interpretation of Islamic law on the country — and remove any foreign influence. After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the Sunni Islamist organization put in place strict rules. Women had to wear head-to-toe coverings, weren’t allowed to study or work and were forbidden from traveling alone. TV, music and non-Islamic holidays were also banned. That changed after September 11,2001, when 19 men hijacked four commercial planes in the US, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon, and another, destined for Washington, into a field in Pennsylvania. More than 2,700 people were killed in the attacks. The attack was orchestrated by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who operated from inside of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Less than a month after the attack, US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan, aiming to stop the Taliban from providing a safe-haven to al Qaeda — and to stop al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base of operations for terrorist activities. In the two decades since they were ousted from power, the Taliban have been waging an insurgency against the allied forces and the US-backed Afghan government. Who are the leaders? The Taliban are led by Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a senior religious cleric from the Taliban’s founding generation. He was named as the Taliban’s leader in 2016 after the group’s previous leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan. At the time, Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network said the new Taliban leader might be able to «integrate the younger and more militant generation.» Another key player is Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban co-founder, who was released in 2018 after being captured in 2010 in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
