Taliban | Definition, History, & Facts - Britannica

The Afghanistan War and removal from power

Apart from the Taliban’s unsettling disregard for human rights, many countries were concerned about the Taliban allowing refuge to Osama bin Laden, who had helped organize a network of foreign-born Muslim fighters during the Afghan War. That network, al-Qaeda, had evolved into a network of Islamist militants who sought a violent struggle to free the Islamic world from non-Muslim influence and had orchestrated several attacks against the United States. Even after bin Laden and al-Qaeda were found responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., that had occurred on September 11, 2001, the Taliban refused to extradite bin Laden. The United States and its allies began bombarding Afghanistan in October and supported the efforts of the Northern Alliance, a group of anti-Taliban factions in Afghanistan that had been resisting the Taliban’s takeover of the country. In early December the Northern Alliance succeeded in toppling the Taliban regime.

Although driven from power and fractured, the Taliban survived, and many of its core members remained at large throughout the Afghanistan War (2001–14). In 2005 the Taliban began enjoying a resurgence, showing indications of greater coordination and resilience among its fighters. Its founder and leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, remained in hiding with infrequent contact, but senior commanders such as Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar were increasingly centralizing the group’s command structure. It adopted new tactics modeled on those being used by insurgents in the Iraq War, including the use of suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. Recruitment was prolific, drawing on thousands of Afghans disenchanted by widespread corruption in the new Afghan government and resentment toward the casualties and destruction that accompanied the ongoing U.S. and NATO military operations. In 2009, as fighting grew to unprecedented levels, newly elected U.S. Pres. Barack Obama ordered a surge in the U.S. troop presence in the war.

In July 2015 the Afghan government discovered that Omar had died in 2013 in a hospital in Pakistan. His deputy Mullah Akhtar Mansour briefly served as his successor until he was killed in a U.S. air strike in Pakistan in May 2016. Hibatullah Akhundzada took leadership later that month; like his predecessors, he remained relatively secluded and appeared to play a minimal role in directing military operations. The militant wing of the Taliban became increasingly dominated by the Haqqani network, whose leader, Sirajuddin, served as deputy leader of the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Taliban’s continued resilience and the inability of Afghanistan’s central government to exert control throughout the country prompted the central government to seek reconciliation with the Taliban. Officials under Pres. Hamid Karzai had met informally with Taliban leaders, most notably Baradar, and the first formal meeting was held under Pres. Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban continued to see the central government as fundamentally illegitimate, however, and insisted on talks with the foreign power that had installed it: the United States.

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