Scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, many of you might have come across a horrific video where people are trying to jump onto a plane taking off and a few among them falling to their death. That is the amount of fear inculcated among the citizens of Afghanistan because of the Taliban.
America spent a trillion dollars on the Afghan war. For 20 years, the U.S. Army was stationed in Afghanistan. However, by 30 July 2021, about 90% of Afghanistan’s borders were under the Taliban’s control.
What Is the Taliban? Who Is The Taliban?
In the Pashto language, Taliban means “students.” Initially, the leader of this group was Mullah Omar. He formed this group with 50 students, and these people were religiously extreme and extremely right-winged people.
Taliban believed in the ideology of Pashtun nationalism. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were also supporting the Taliban.
Why are the people of Afghanistan fearing the Taliban ?
In September 1996, the Taliban successfully captured Kabul and declared it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. During the start of their reign, the common public favored the Taliban because of the thought they could finally expect certain stability. In the beginning, the Taliban did manage to make some areas of Afghanistan peaceful. But soon, they started enforcing their conservative ideologies.
Taliban’s Banned Culture in Afghanistan:
- Cinema,
- TV,
- movies,
- VCR,
- football,
- chess,
- UN officers,
- internet,
- foreigners,
- clean shave,
- kite flying,
- paintings,
- photography,
- embroidery on sleeves,
- NGO’s,
- education for girls above ten years.
Under the Taliban, rule men had to keep full beards, and women were only allowed to go out when a male member accompanied them. Women were forced to cover their whole bodies with burqas. And since the Taliban followed all Pashtun ideologies. All the non – Pashtun ethnicities became victims of ethnic cleansing.
Muslims were killed, Christians were prosecuted, and Hindus were given badges to be viewed as an inferior religion.
A very important part of Afghanistan was its history of Buddha statues which the Taliban destroyed.
US-Afghan Relations
America was trying its best to bring democracy into Afghanistan, but at the same time, it also supplied weapons to the Taliban, which ruined the environment of Afghanistan. America spent millions of dollars in printing textbooks filled with violent images and showcased extremist ideologies. The Taliban later used these books.
In the late 1990s, the Mujahedeen forces tried to fight the Taliban and called themselves the Northern alliances led by Ahmad Shah Nassau who got killed, and in 2001 Northern alliances lost this fight. Only a few days after that, a terrorist group Al-Quaeda plans the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.
This Al- Qaeda was led by Osama Bin Laden. He writes a letter to America where he confesses that those 9/11 attacks were an act of revenge for America’s actions in counties like Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan.
To revenge 9/11, America sends its forces to Afghanistan. America conducts sir strikes in Afghanistan where they suspect are terrorist hideouts. With the Support of Mujaheddin’s Northern alliance, the Taliban is completely pushed back by the U.S.A. In 2011, Osama Bin Laden got killed.
Conclusion:
In 2020, Trump signed an agreement to withdraw the U.S. Army back. Without proper ammunition support and a president who fled the country away in the name of peace, the Afghani soldiers having no moral support nor given proper weaponry were easily taken aback by the Taliban. Hence creating a state of chaos in the entire nation.
