Who are the Taliban and what’s happening in Afghanistan? Explained

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With the President of Ashraf Ghani unexpectedly left his country, Afghan’s fate became as clear as a day. While women and children run for safety, prayers flow from all over the world who want to see a better future for Afghanistan. Until now, the Afghan army locked the horn with the Taliban fighters. However, the latter seems to beat the former with the arrest of each province, including the capital of Kabul. The almost complete pace of the Afghanistan Taliban was unexpected, as felt by US President Joe Biden and other US officials.

But, where did the problem arise? Who is the Taliban? Why are they after Afghanistan? What are their plans after getting full control? This is a brief view of what happened for years which resulted in a country like a war in Afghanistan.

Ironically, the Taliban terror group gets its name from the word ‘student’ and they first began to form in the 1990s in North Pakistan, shortly after the Soviet returned from Afghanistan. This is a religious group that also passed by the name of the Afghan Islamic Emirates. Unlike the dominant image, the Taliban actually claims to aim to “restore peace and security and uphold the sharia version, or their own Islamic law, emergency”. Even when they continued to take advantage of provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban continued to claim that they would not take anyone “forcefully”.

This is not the first time Afghanistan was terrorized by the Taliban. Some pieces of the literature are proof that Afghans continue to tell stories due to the Taliban in 1996, when they captured the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, overthrew President Burhanuddin Rabbani’s regime. The Taliban also introduced or supported a sentence in line with their strict interpretation of Islamic law – such as public execution of punished murderers and defense, and amputation for those who were found guilty of theft. The man who was asked to cultivate a beard and a woman had to wear all-round burka.

More than two decades later today, the Taliban won the vast plots of regions, threatened to overthrow the government in Kabul after withdrawal of foreign power. However, in many cases, the Taliban had been able to take over major cities without fighting, because government forces surrendered to avoid civilian casualties.