Taliban

The Taliban are a militia driven by an extremely harsh medieval interpretation of Sunni Islam. They are Backed by Pakistan and funded by Saudi Arabia, they promised to put an end to the factorial warfare that had claimed thousands of lives in the year following the defeat of the country’s Soviet puppet government in 1991.

    Bin Laden had been a hero of the ‘jihad’ against the Soviet occupiers, and the Taliban welcomed him back to Afghanistan in 1996 after his expulsion from the Sudan. Bin Laden has reportedly cemented his tries to the Taliban leadership through his daughter’s marriage to its leader, Mullah Omar. But more importantly, his “Arab Afghan” fighters have played a leading role in the Taliban’s ongoing military campaigns against its opponents. The Taliban’s elite brigades were trained in Bin Laden’s camps, and are believed to be loyal to the Saudi terrorist “Al Qaida” movement.

     Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government, and international recognition as a legitimate government remains the movement’s most important foreign policy objective. The country’s sea at the United Nations is still held by representatives of the government powered by the Taliban in 1996, to which the opposition Northern Alliance remains loyal. The Northern Alliance is a loose anti-Taliban coalition that includes bits and pieces of the former Soviet backed government, and a number of ethnic minority based group’s intensely opposed to the Taliban’s harsh rule. The also opposed to the principle of being ruled by a government composed only of ethnic pashtuns. The Taliban have failed to dislodge them despite launching massive annual offensives but they did strike a blow last week by assassinating the Northern Alliance’s key military leader, Ahmed Shan Masood, the “Lion of the Pansjir.” The Northern Alliance forces only controlled five percent of the country, but the Taliban’s harsh command has provoked growing resentment, even among Afghans who initially welcomed their takeover.