The misgovernance rot hollowed out even the Afghan security forces which the U. But will the Taliban be able to maintain itself in power? The most significant threat to the Taliban regime could come from within. The factions have disparate views about how the new regime should rule across just about all dimensions of governance: inclusiveness, dealing with foreign fighters, the economy, and external relations.
Besides juggling those different views on policy, the Taliban will also need to ensure that its key commanders and their rank-and-file soldiers retain enough income not to be tempted to split off. The ISK cannot currently bring the Taliban regime down. But it could become an envelope for any future defections. If it fails to prevent bloody ISK urban attacks, like the one that killed 13 U. Yet the Taliban wants and needs Chinese money. If the Taliban fails to control these attacks, its improved relations with Iran could deteriorate — something all the more likely if the attacks set off runaway sectarian fighting that sucks in Taliban factions.
If the Taliban does not prevent the leakage of anti-Shia terrorism into Iran — from Taliban factions, foreign fighters, or ISK — Iran could attempt to activate its Fatimiyoun units in Afghanistan. The Fatimiyoun are Afghan Shia fighters, numbering the tens of thousands, whom Iran trained and deployed to fight in Syria and Libya.
These future threats are far more potent than the currently small, weak, divided, and encircled anti-Taliban opposition of Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh in the Panjshir Valley. In its shadow governance, the Taliban effectively delivered order and enforcing rules, such as ensuring that teachers showed up to teach when it allowed schools to operate and that government employees did not steal supplies from clinics.
The Taliban also got much political capital from delivering swift, not corrupt, and enforced dispute resolution and from protecting the poppy economy. And it has excelled in taxing economic activity in Afghanistan, legal and illegal — from NATO supply trucks to government aid programs, drugs, and logging. But it has no experience with or technocratic capacity for delivering or even just maintaining other existing services such as electricity or water delivery, let alone tackling complex issues like setting macroeconomic policies or addressing droughts.
Amount President George W. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars. Hundreds of people run alongside a U. Air Force C transport plane, some climbing on the plane, as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it was the architect of the Taliban enterprise, but there is little doubt that many Afghans who initially joined the movement were educated in madrassas religious schools in Pakistan.
It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the group. At one point, the Taliban threatened to destabilise Pakistan from areas they controlled in the north-west.
One of the most high-profile and internationally condemned of all Pakistani Taliban attacks took place in October , when schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot on her way home in the town of Mingora. A major military offensive two years later following the Peshawar school massacre greatly reduced the group's influence in Pakistan though.
At least three key figures of the Pakistani Taliban had been killed in US drone strikes in , including the group's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. The Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the prime suspects - Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement.
On October 7, , a US-led military coalition launched attacks in Afghanistan, and by the first week of December the Taliban regime had collapsed. The group's then-leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and other senior figures, including Bin Laden, evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world. Many senior Taliban leaders reportedly took refuge in the Pakistani city of Quetta, from where they guided the Taliban.
But the existence of what was dubbed the "Quetta Shura" was denied by Islamabad. Despite ever higher numbers of foreign troops, the Taliban gradually regained and then extended their influence in Afghanistan, rendering vast tracts of the country insecure, and violence in the country returned to levels not seen since There were numerous Taliban attacks on Kabul and, in September , the group carried out a high-profile raid on Nato's Camp Bastion base.
Hopes of a negotiated peace were raised in , when the Taliban announced plans to open an office in Qatar. But mistrust on all sides remained high and the violence went on. In August , the Taliban admitted they had covered up Mullah Omar's death - reportedly of health problems at a hospital in Pakistan - for more than two years. The following month, the group said it had put aside weeks of infighting and rallied around a new leader in the form of Mullah Mansour, who had been the deputy of Mullah Omar.
At around the same time, the Taliban seized control of a provincial capital for the first time since their defeat in , taking control of the strategically important city of Kunduz. Mullah Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in May and replaced by his deputy Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, who remains in control of the group. In the year following the US-Taliban peace deal of February - which was the culmination of a long spell of direct talks - the Taliban appeared to shift their tactics from complex attacks in cities and on military outposts to a wave of targeted assassinations that terrorised Afghan civilians.
The targets - journalists, judges, peace activists, women in positions of power - suggested that the Taliban had not changed their extremist ideology, only their strategy.
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