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The Taliban is appointed by Pakistan to protect a trade convoy. It becomes a strong faction in the country.

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also spelled:

Taleban

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date:

1994 - present

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Taliban, ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan's communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. It began as a small force of Afghan religious students and scholars seeking to confront crime and corruption; the faction owes its name, Taliban (Pashto: Ṭālebān, "Students"), to this initial membership.

Origin and first regime

The Taliban emerged in the aftermath of the Afghan War (1978-92). Afghanistan's new government failed to establish civil order outside of Kabul, and much of the country was subject to frequent extortion and assault from local militias and warlords. Facing mass displacement during the war, many Afghans found solidarity in the religious rhetoric of the mujahideen resistance and opportunity in schools of Islamic sciences (called madrasahs) in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. In 1994 a group of former fighters, associated with a madrasah in a village of Kandahār province, successfully subdued a local warlord and began pacifying nearby areas. The faction, which enjoyed popular support with its promise of security and its religious fervour, quickly grew into the movement now known as the Taliban. By late 1996 the Taliban had seized the capital, Kabul, and gained effective control over some two-thirds of the country.

The Taliban faced significant resistance, especially after it asserted its own interpretation of law and order. It combined a strict religious ideology-a mixture of Deobandi traditionalism and Wahhābī puritanism-with a conservative Pashtun social code (Pashtunwali) to create a brutally repressive regime. Its policies included the near-total exclusion of women from public life (including employment and education), the systematic destruction of non-Islamic artistic relics (as occurred in the town of Bamiyan), and the implementation of harsh criminal punishments. Resistance was particularly pronounced among non-Pashtun ethnic groups-namely, the Tajik, the Uzbek, and the Hazara-in the north, west, and central parts of the country, who saw the power of the predominantly Pashtun Taliban as a continuation of the traditional Pashtun hegemony of the country. By 2001 the Taliban controlled all but a small section of northern Afghanistan, and only Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates ever recognized the regime.

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.

The Taliban and the United States began meeting in 2018, with the help of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, the only countries to have a diplomatic relationship with both parties. The discussions focused on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, although the United States also sought to reconcile the Taliban and the central government. Discussions were eventually held with the central government in 2019, which led in July to an agreement on general principles for future negotiations, but the Taliban's representatives remained focused on first reaching a deal with the United States. They reportedly came to an agreement in principle in September, but discussions were disrupted after an attack by the Taliban killed a U.S. service member.

A deal with the United States was signed in late February 2020. In exchange for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops over a 14-month period, the Taliban agreed to end its attacks on U.S. forces and prevent al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]), and their affiliates from operating in Afghanistan. The deal also included an agreement to begin talks with the central government within 10 days, but negotiations were delayed until September because of the central government's reluctance to carry out a prisoner swap promised to the Taliban by the United States. Little progress was made during the negotiations, which lasted into 2021. Nevertheless, in April the United States reiterated its commitment to complete its withdrawal, although the deadline for withdrawal was delayed from May to September.

As its confrontations with U.S. forces came to an end and the completion of the U.S. withdrawal drew near, an emboldened Taliban rapidly took control of dozens of districts in May-June and closed in on several provincial capitals. The group appeared to lack the manpower and firepower to hold its gains against the larger and better-equipped armed forces of the central government, but the latter's lack of coordination and lack of responsiveness to the insurgency allowed the Taliban to overrun the country within months. By mid-August the central government had collapsed and the Taliban had captured nearly all of the country, including Kabul.

With the Taliban seemingly eager to win legitimacy both domestically and internationally, many observers hoped to see a more pliant and conciliatory regime than the one the Taliban had run before. Early indications, however, showed little resolve for change: in September it filled its transitional government with hard-liners, reopened secondary schools only for boys, and reinstituted the brutal criminal punishments for which it had been known. The leadership, meanwhile, struggled to exert unified authority throughout the organization, which for years had been operating under a decentralized command structure. The disunity made it difficult to enforce policies universally and to hold local forces accountable, leading to stark contradictions between the Taliban's public statements and its actions on the ground.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Adam Zeidan.

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Taliban, ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan's communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. Learn more about the Taliban in this article.

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Malala is born in the Swat Valley region of Pakistan

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At age 11, Malala gives her first speech entitled: "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?"

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Malala Yousafzai, (born July 12, 1997, Mingora, Swat valley, Pakistan), Pakistani activist who, while a teenager, spoke out publicly against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban). She gained global attention when she survived an assassination attempt at age 15. In 2014 Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of their efforts on behalf of children's rights.

Childhood and early activism

The daughter of an outspoken social activist and educator, Yousafzai was an excellent student. Her father-who established and administered the school she attended, Khushal Girls High School and College in the city of Mingora-encouraged her to follow in his path. In 2007 the Swat valley, once a vacation destination, was invaded by the TTP. Led by Maulana Fazlullah, the TTP began imposing strict Islamic law, destroying or shutting down girls' schools, banning women from any active role in society, and carrying out suicide bombings. Yousafzai and her family fled the region for their safety, but they returned when tensions and violence eased.

On September 1, 2008, when Yousafzai was 11 years old, her father took her to a local press club in Peshawar to protest the school closings, and she gave her first speech-"How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?" Her speech was publicized throughout Pakistan. Toward the end of 2008, the TTP announced that all girls' schools in Swat would be shut down on January 15, 2009. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) approached Yousafzai's father in search of someone who might blog for them about what it was like to live under TTP rule. Under the name Gul Makai, Yousafzai began writing regular entries for BBC Urdu about her daily life. She wrote from January through the beginning of March of that year 35 entries that were also translated into English. Meanwhile, the TTP shut down all girls' schools in Swat and blew up more than 100 of them.

In February 2009 Yousafzai made her first television appearance, when she was interviewed by Pakistani journalist and talk show host Hamid Mir on the Pakistan current events show Capital Talk. In late February the TTP, responding to an increasing backlash throughout Pakistan, agreed to a cease-fire, lifted the restriction against girls, and allowed them to attend school on the condition that they wear burkas. However, violence resurged only a few months later, in May, and the Yousafzai family was forced to seek refuge outside of Swat until the Pakistani army was able to push the TTP out. In early 2009 The New York Times reporter Adam Ellick worked with Yousafzai to make a documentary, Class Dismissed, a 13-minute piece about the school shutdown. Ellick made a second film with her, titled A Schoolgirl's Odyssey. The New York Times posted both films on their Web site in 2009. That summer she met with the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, and asked him to help with her effort to protect the education of girls in Pakistan.

With Yousafzai's continuing television appearances and coverage in the local and international media, it had become apparent by December 2009 that she was the BBC's young blogger. Once her identity was known, she began to receive widespread recognition for her activism. In October 2011 she was nominated by human rights activist Desmond Tutu for the International Children's Peace Prize. In December of that year she was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize (later renamed the National Malala Peace Prize).

Shooting and Nobel Peace Prize

On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by a TTP gunman while she was en route home from school. Fazlullah and the TTP took responsibility for the attempt on her life. She survived the attack and was flown from Peshawar to Birmingham, England, for surgery. The incident elicited protests, and her cause was taken up around the world, including by the UN special envoy for global education, Gordon Brown, who introduced a petition that called for all children around the world to be back in school by 2015. That petition led to the ratification of Pakistan's first Right to Education bill. In December 2012 Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari announced the launch of a $10 million education fund in Yousafzai's honour. About the same time, the Malala Fund was established by the Vital Voices Global Partnership to support education for all girls around the world.

Yousafzai recovered, staying with her family in Birmingham, where she returned to her studies and to activism. For the first time since being shot, she made a public appearance on July 12, 2013, her 16th birthday, and addressed an audience of 500 at the United Nations in New York City. Among her many awards, in 2013 Yousafzai won the United Nations Human Rights Prize, awarded every five years. She was named one of magazine's most influential people in 2013 and appeared on one of the seven covers that were printed for that issue. With Christina Lamb (foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times), Yousafzai coauthored a memoir, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013). She also wrote the picture book Malala's Magic Pencil (2017), which was based on her childhood. In 2014 she became the youngest person to win the Liberty Medal, awarded by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to public figures striving for people's freedom throughout the world. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 but passed over that year, Yousafzai in 2014 won the prize, becoming the youngest Nobel laureate.

After winning the Nobel Prize, Yousafzai continued to attend school in England-she graduated from the University of Oxford in 2020-while using her enhanced public profile to bring attention to human rights issues around the world. In July 2015, with support from the Malala Fund, she opened a girls' school in Lebanon for refugees from the Syrian Civil War. She discussed her work with refugees as well as her own displacement in We Are Displaced (2019).

Her life, before and after the attack she endured, was examined in the documentary He Named Me Malala (2015). The title referenced the fact that Yousafzai had been named for the Afghan heroine Malalai, or Malala, who purportedly led her people to victory against the British in the 1880 Battle of Maiwand.
Naomi Blumberg The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Malala Yousafzai | Biography, Nobel Prize, & Facts

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Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist who, while a teenager, spoke out against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan's ban on the education of girls. She gained global attention when she survived an assassination attempt at age 15. In 2014 Yousafzai won a share of the Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the youngest Nobel laureate.

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Malala begins writing anonymously for the BBC Urdu blog about life under the Taliban.

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"Hers was the voice which made us consider that indeed, there can be alternatives, and there can be resistance to all forms of tyranny. Today, the attempt to silence that voice shall only make her stronger; the blood stains on her school uniform shall only feed the conviction that as long as there is breath and life, there shall be struggle."

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Malala Yousafzai: Portrait of the girl blogger

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"Hers was the voice which made us consider that indeed, there can be alternatives, and there can be resistance to all forms of tyranny. Today, the attempt to silence that voice shall only make her stronger; the blood stains on her school uniform shall only feed the conviction that as long as there is breath and life, there shall be struggle."

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The Taliban blow up over 100 girls' schools in the Swat Valley & ban girls from going to school after age 15.

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The Taliban's deadly attack in Peshawar killed 132 school children and nine staff. So why did they do it?

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Malala goes on a radio show to speak out against the Taliban's decision to prevent women from accessing education. This is in her native language; however, you can pay attention to her eye contact, tone and gestures to get an idea of how she feels.

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Malala ends her blog while the Pakistani Army moves into the Swat Valley. After being first separated then reunited with her family, Malala realizes she is no longer anonymous & is in grave danger.

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In the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, on the bank of the river that courses through the Swat Valley, boys play soccer in a dusty field. When the Pakistani Taliban occupied this valley a decade ago, loyalists trudged to the same riverbank with their own television sets, setting them ablaze in a fiery rejection of Western culture.

But the Taliban embraced other broadcast technology, when it was useful. Yards away, tucked into the low-slung village of Imam Dherai, lies the rubble of a pirate radio station where a preacher, Fazal Hayat, known as Maulana Fazlullah, broadcast his vision of an Islamic utopia in the Swat Valley. Residents nicknamed the charismatic preacher "Mullah Radio." And that is how militants began inching across the Swat Valley in 2004: over the airwaves.

Women donated jewelry to Mullah Radio, who used the donations to help fund a network of religious hardliners. Men offered labor and money to build a seminary and a mosque.

Fazlullah promised Islamic law in Swat; residents - chafing under what they said was a sluggish, corrupt and inept state system - said they were enamored by his promises of swift justice. Young men joined him.

Fearing his messianic influence on their elderly mother, one family sabotaged their radio. "Mother kept asking me to repair it," Iqbal Isakhel, a lawyer who opposed the militants, said with a laugh. "I didn't."

In 2007, Fazlullah led militants in an uprising to avenge a high-profile military operation against a radical mosque in Islamabad. The militants captured key towns in Swat and killed local leaders. Government officials went into hiding.

The militants used the radio station to announce who would be arrested or killed for infractions like adultery and homosexuality that violated their harsh rule. Men and women were whipped in the main square of the valley's largest town, and sometimes the Taliban left bodies hanging off a street light, pinned with notes detailing the peoples' alleged crimes. Girls' schools were targeted in attacks.

The Taliban, based in Imam Dherai, took control of the entire Swat Valley and held power until the Pakistani military retook the area in 2009. But nearly a decade later, the soldiers remain. Military checkpoints dot the roads. Residents say soldiers occupy government buildings in their towns and villages. And they say the military has overstayed its welcome.
"A black chapter"
When a Pakistani airstrike crushed the radio station in 2009, many residents said they cheered. Fazlullah escaped, and now leads the Pakistani Taliban, who remain violently opposed to the Pakistani state.

"It's a black chapter of our history," Waris, a 22-year-old Swat Valley resident, said with a sigh. "We prefer to forget it." He requested NPR only use his first name because he still fears the Taliban.

Still, he pointed out, "There is also our Malala Yousafzai."

Pakistan's Nobel Peace laureate, who recently returned to Swat for the first time since she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, was born and raised here. As a child, she defied the Taliban by calling for girls' education.

Fawad, a 28-year-old activist, said the army routinely points to Swat as a success story. He preferred not to use his full name, to avoid possible repercussions from the military.

"As they are saying, we have established peace in Swat," Fawad said. "We want them to give full authority to civilian government - to police and local government."

But security problems remain. On Feb. 3, a suicide bomber with the Pakistani Taliban - the same branch that once ruled Swat - attacked soldiers, killing 11.

And so, says Shahid Latif, a retired air vice marshal, the military must remain as well. He said it is unlikely that the army will ever leave Swat, because police aren't trained properly to deal with the region's security complexities.

"Perhaps some kind of presence of the army, in my opinion, is going to stay there permanently," he said.

Pakistan's army spokesperson declined NPR's repeated requests for interviews.
The "paradise of Pakistan"
Across the river from Imam Dherai is the blaring, blinking Swat Wonderland Amusement Park. It opened two summers ago. It is best reached by crossing the Swat River in a dinky, two-seat chairlift. It is manned by soldiers: they took it over because it was symbolically tied to the Taliban's rule of Swat. Before he was Mullah Radio, Fazlullah was the chairlift operator.

At the park, young women shrieked as they swung wildly on a carousel. They pressed their veils to their faces, worried they'd fly away.

Iqbal Asad, 26, a dental assistant, brought his two-year-old nephew Sahil Khan for a fun day. This, he said, gesturing to rides, showed "life is going well here."

"Swat - it's called the paradise of Pakistan," he said. "It's the Switzerland of Pakistan."

Foreign tourism was once a mainstay of the local economy and residents hope to revive it, but they've hit some obstacles.

In 2016, a company opened a ski resort. Workers are widening the perilous mountain route where cars inch along crumbly tracks over steep gorges.

Traffic was also slowed by soldiers checking IDs. For foreigners, they wanted to see the military permission slips that must be obtained to enter Swat. Kalimullah, a tour guide who only uses one name, said the army's permission was often a stumbling block for foreign tour groups who wanted to visit, though domestic tourists are arriving.

At the ski resort, Pakistani tourists tumbled out of small vans, gleefully posing for selfies. Children hurled themselves in melting spring snow, flinging icy balls around a stout snowman.

There was more checking to cross a military zone that lies along the route to another tourist attraction: a 7th century rock-face carving of a Buddha above the village of Jahanabad. It was restored by a team of Italian archaeologists in 2016, nine years after the Taliban badly damaged the face with explosives.

A soldier took down all the visitors' details, and then provided a mandatory escort of two soldiers.

Kalimullah said the presence of soldiers tended to frighten foreign tourists. He said he was grateful that the army had bought peace to Swat, but escorting tourists - "it is work of police."

"I think [the] army should go back," he said. "This is not work of army."

Down in the valley, Fawad said some residents did not feel safe around the army. "We don't see ourselves as secure," he said.

In his hometown, he said soldiers occupied government buildings, including the girls' school, the agricultural office, several hostels - and a relative's house.

Referring to the army, he said, "They are not leaving."

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Once Ruled By Taliban, Residents Of Pakistan's Swat Valley Say Army Should Leave

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In the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, on the bank of the river that courses through the Swat Valley, boys play soccer in a dusty field. When the Pakistani Taliban occupied this valley a decade ago, loyalists trudged to the same riverbank with their own television sets, setting them ablaze in a fiery rejection of Western culture.

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Malala is targeted by the Taliban and is shot. She is treated in Pakistan then flown to Birmingham England for further treatment after the British government offers help.

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Diane Sawyer Sits Down With the Inspirational Malala Yousafzai

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Malala has become an activist for education for all children, both boys and girls. She is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner, at the age of 17.

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"The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." ( Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)

Alfred Nobel showed a big interest in social issues and was engaged in the peace movement. His acquaintance with Bertha von Suttner, who was a driving force in the international peace movement in Europe and later awarded the Peace Prize, influenced his views on peace. Peace was the fifth and final prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget).

See all peace prize laureates or learn about the nomination process.