How was the Taliban formed?

The organisation was founded in the early 1990s by Afghan mujahideen, or Islamic guerrilla warriors, who had fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89) with the help of the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). They were joined by younger Pashtun tribesmen who had attended Pakistani madrassas or seminaries; Taliban means “students” in Pashto. Pashtuns make up the majority of Afghans and are the majority ethnic group in the country’s south and east. In Pakistan’s north and west, they are also a significant ethnic community.

After four years of fighting (1992–1996) between competing mujahideen factions, the movement gained popular support in the early post-Soviet era by pledging to establish stability and rule of law. In November 1994, the Taliban stormed Kandahar to quiet the crime-plagued southern metropolis, and by September 1996, they had captured Kabul from President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik whom the Taliban saw as anti-Pashtun and corrupt. The Taliban declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate the next year, with Mullah Mohammed Omar, a cleric and anti-Soviet resistance veteran, heading as amir al-mu’minin, or “commander of the faithful.” Prior to its overthrow in 2001, the government-controlled around 90% of the country.

As it established territorial authority, the Taliban enforced a severe brand of justice. Taliban law was based on the Pashtuns’ pre-Islamic tribal code and sharia interpretations influenced by the madrassas’ Saudi patrons’ austere Wahhabi teachings. Even as the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice imposed bans on behaviour the Taliban deemed un-Islamic, the government ignored social services and other fundamental state responsibilities. It ordered women to wear the burqa, or chadri, from head to toe, outlawed music and television, and imprisoned males with beards it judged too short.