Taliban, Islamic fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan that controls most of the country through fearful dominance. It is not the center government.They are what we would refer to as Militant Muslims. The Taliban movement was created in August 1994 by a senior mullah (Islamic priest), Mohammed Omar Akhund, in the southern Afghanistan town of Kandahar. The name Taliban, meaning �student,� supposedly refers to the group's origins, although most members have known war all their lives and have been students only for rudimentary religious training.
The Taliban movement emerged out of the chaos and uncertainty of the Afghan-Soviet War (1979-1988) and subsequent internal civil strife in Afghanistan. During the 1980s Afghanistan was occupied by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and ruled by a Soviet-backed government. Afghanistan's long war with the USSR was largely fought by mujahideen (guerrilla) factions with military assistance from the United States; Pakistan also provided places of refuge, military training, and other support. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, civil war broke out between the mujahideen factions and the central government. Afghanistan's central government had long been dominated by the country's majority ethnic group, the Pashtuns, but after Soviet withdrawal a coalition government that included Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and other minority groups came to power. The Taliban, which emerged as a mujahideen faction, consisted mostly of Pashtuns intent on once again dominating the central government in Kabul. They were trained and armed by the Frontier Constabulary, a quasi-military unit in Pakistan, which also has a significant Pashtun population. The Taliban promoted itself as a new force for peace and unity, and many Afghan people, particularly fellow Pashtuns, supported the Taliban in hopes of respite from years of war.
In late 1994 and early 1995 the Taliban moved through the south and west of Afghanistan, taking control of Kandahar and many other towns and cities dominated by fellow Pashtuns. Herat and most of the other towns along the main southern and western highway soon followed. In February 1995 the Taliban reached the outskirts of Kabul but was ousted by government forces in March. Again it advanced to the capital in October. While continuing to assault Kabul with rockets and bombs, Taliban soldiers advanced and took control of eastern Afghanistan, as well as the country's central area. The Taliban continued its siege of Kabul off and on throughout 1996 until it was able to advance and capture the city in September. Government troops fled as Pashtun control was restored to the capital. Shortly after the city fell to the Taliban, Mohammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed president of the country, and his brother, security chief Shahpur Ahmadzai�both of whom had taken refuge in the United Nations (UN) compound in Kabul in 1992�were dragged out by Taliban soldiers, beaten, shot, and hanged in a public area.
After taking over Kabul, the Taliban created a government agency, called the Ministry for Ordering What is Right and Forbidding What is Wrong, to enforce its fundamentalist rules of behavior. Some of these rules have little to do with pure Islam, and are more influenced by ancient tribal beliefs. Taliban leaders banned music, shut down movie theaters and burned the film, and bulldozed bottles and cans of alcohol taken from foreign hotels. Men were ordered to grow full, untrimmed beards (in accordance with orthodox Islam), and were rounded up and beaten with sticks in an effort to force prayer in the mosques. Women were told to cover themselves from head to toe in burkas (long, tentlike veils) with only woven, dark screens in front of the eyes; improperly dressed women were beaten. Girls' schools were closed, and women were forbidden to work outside their homes. As a result, hospitals lost almost all their staffs and children in orphanages were deserted. In a country where hundreds of thousands of men had been killed in warfare, widows, who were the sole sources of income for their families, found themselves unable to work.
The Taliban has continued to announce additional rules and laws, using Radio Kabul and trucks equipped with loudspeakers. The Taliban has made murder, adultery, and drug dealing punishable by death, and has allowed stonings�some of which have been fatal�of women escorted by men who are not related to them. Other rules enforced by the Taliban include the punishment of theft by amputation of the hand. Many of these laws have alarmed human-rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation. Even Iran, itself a bastion of fundamentalist Islam, has censured the Taliban's excesses in the name of their religion.
Taliban's rapid takeover of Kabul in September 1996 paved the way for its conquest of the rest of the country, as Taliban soldiers advanced north to the mountain strongholds of the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar fled when the Taliban took over the capital, remaining in the northern part of the country and fighting the Taliban alongside other factions. In November 1996 the Taliban was driven back toward Kabul, but by the late 1990s it had taken control of almost all of Afghanistan. Thousands of refugees have streamed into UN-supported camps outside Herat. Despite concerns over human-rights abuses, particularly against women, the UN and various countries including the United States have held diplomatic talks with the Taliban in an effort to restore peace to the area.