Dikhyaa Mohanty 
After 20 years, the Taliban mopped into Afghanistan’s capital on August 15 after the government deflated and the embattled president joined an emigration of his fellow citizens and foreigners, beckoning the end of a costly two-decade US campaign to reconstruct the country. While heavily armed Taliban fighters stirred out across the capital and several of Kabul’s abandoned presidential palaces.
But who are ‘Talibans’, why and how after 20 years they came and captured the country?
HISTORY OF TALIBAN-
The Taliban means “students” in the Pashto language appeared in 1994 around the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and was one of the parties fighting a civil war for control of the country following the resignation of the Soviet Union and succeeding downfall of the government. The group was rooted in rural areas of Kandahar Province, in the country’s ethnic-Pashtun heartland in the south. It incipiently induced members from so-called “mujahideen” fighters who, with support from the United States, spurned Soviet forces in the 1980s.
The Taliban were founded in southern Afghanistan by Mullah Mohammad Omar, a member of the Pashtun tribe who became a mujahedeen commander that helped force the Soviets out of the country in 1989. In 1994, Mullah Omar formed the group in Kandahar with about 50 followers who awoke up to challenge the uncertainty, exploitation and corruption that devastated Afghanistan during the post-Soviet-era civil war.
Following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States by Al-Qaeda, US-backed forces in the north swept into Kabul in November under the cover of heavy US airstrikes. They provided Bin Laden who operated the attack with protection.
When the Taliban refused U.S. demands that they hand over bin Laden, American forces penetrated Afghanistan and promptly overthrew Mullah Omar’s government. In February 2020, the U.S. and the Taliban approved a historic deal that deposited out a 14-month timetable for America to withdraw all of its forces from Afghanistan. In the interim, talks between the Taliban and Afghan government meant to end the war gained little traction.
TALIBAN’S IDEOLOGY-
The main ideology of the Taliban is very stringent, especially for women, art and culture. They inflicted strict Islamic rules that banned television and music, barred girls from going to school and forced women to wear head-to-toe coverings called burqas. Public executions and floggings were common, Western films and books were banned, and cultural artefacts seen as irreverent under Islam were slaughtered.
But, the Taliban leaders say that they want to create a comprehensive government that won’t be a threat to the West, but the group has reimposed its rigid rule in parts of the country it controls. They have also said that Afghans have nothing to fear from their rule and that they would grant absolution to those who have worked for the government. But Afghans who escaped Taliban-held areas, or lived under the insurgents’ control say they have witnessed unprovoked attacks on civilians, women being sent home from work at gunpoint, and killings of captured soldiers.
FUTURE OF AFGHANISTAN-
An agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban in February 2020, which involved bringing down American troops without the acquiescence of the Afghan government, impelled the Taliban. President Biden’s decision this year to withdraw all troops unreservedly by September further encouraged the Taliban to push their offensive, which as it gathered speed weakened assurance among government security forces. Nine days after the Taliban captured their first provincial capital, the Islamist group entered Kabul, developing their takeover of the entire country after President Ashraf Ghani left.
The Taliban said it had issued orders to its fighters to not enter homes without owners’ permission. There are reports Taliban fighters are going door-to-door in Kabul, searching for female journalists. There are many more reports of women hiding in their homes and men with their faces covered in black tar being paraded through the streets. The future of women is at most stake as earlier when Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, girls were banned from school and university and women were ordered to stop working. When women did leave the house they had to be covered from head to toe with a burqa and they were only allowed to venture out with a male relative.
Image Source – Google
