What a military takeover by the Taliban could mean for Afghanistan

The Taliban is typically portrayed as a group of men with beards and turbans, driven by Islamic fundamentalist ideology and responsible for widespread violence. But to understand the group that is poised to return to power in Afghanistan, and what we might expect from its rule, we need a much more nuanced picture.

To start with, it is important to understand the Taliban’s origins in the 1980s during the Cold War. Afghan guerrillas called the Mujahedeen waged war against Soviet occupation for around a decade. They were funded and equipped by an array of external powers, including the United States.

In 1989, the Soviets pulled out and that marked the beginning of the collapse of the Afghan government that had relied heavily on them. By 1992, a Mujahedeen government was formed but suffered from bloody infighting in the capital.

The unfavourable conditions on the ground created fertile ground for the emergence of the Taliban. An Islamic fundamentalist group dominated by those of Pashtun ethnicity, the Taliban is believed to have first appeared in Saudi Arabia-funded hard-line religious madrassas in northern Pakistan in the early 1990s.

Some of them were Mujahedeen fighters against the Soviets. In 1994, the Taliban started a military campaign from the south of Afghanistan. By 1996,…

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