The Taliban insurgency took root shortly after the group's fall from power following the 2001 war in Afghanistan. The Taliban continue to attack Afghan, U.S., and other ISAF troops and many terrorist incidents attributable to them have been registered. Al-Qaeda is closely associated with their activity. The war has also spread to Pakistan, in particular the Waziristan War. The Taliban conduct low-intensity warfare against the Afghan National Army and coalition forces.
In common usage, "the Taliban" may refer to the largest insurgent group in Afghanistan, known as Quetta Shura Taliban, or to the Afghanistan insurgents in general (which include the Haqqani network, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, and smaller groups, as well Quetta Shura Taliban).[2]
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After evading U.S. forces throughout the summer of 2002, the remnants of the Taliban gradually began to regain their confidence and launched the insurgency that Mullah Mohammed Omar had promised during the Taliban's last days in power. During September 2002, Taliban forces began a recruitment drive in Pashtun areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to launch a renewed "jihad" or holy war against the Afghan government and the U.S-led coalition. Pamphlets distributed in secret during the night also began to appear in many villages in the former Taliban heartland in southeastern Afghanistan. Small mobile training camps were established along the border with Pakistan by al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives to train new recruits in guerrilla warfare and tactics, according to Afghan sources and a United Nations report. Most of the new recruits were drawn from the madrassas or religious schools of the tribal areas of Pakistan, from which the Taliban had originally arisen. Major bases, a few with as many as 200 men, were created in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan by the summer of 2003. The will of the Pakistani paramilitaries stationed at border crossings to prevent such infiltration was called into question, and Pakistani military operations proved of little use.
There are many players now in Afghanistan that are operating against the NATO coalition forces. In the general, the media use the term Taliban for all the insurgents in Afghanistan. However, in addition to Afghan insurgent groups with a separate history from the original pre-2001 Taliban — the Haqqani network and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin — there is also a Taliban group in Pakistan. The US military commanders call the Afghan Taliban Big T and they call the Pakistani Taliban Little T. The Afghan Taliban's main goal is to remove the foreign forces and their backed government from Afghanistan. Their leadership councils are intact and they operate in almost all parts of the Afghanistan in one form or the other. The Taliban control most of the country side from Herat Northwestern Afghanistan to Qandahar (southern Afghanistan) to Kunar (Northeastern Afghanistan). Taliban fighters are also said to have started operations in the Northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The Pakistani Taliban's main goals are very unclear. The Pakistani Taliban do cross border to Afghanistan to fight NATO forces but their main concern seem to be in Pakistani tribal areas. There is also the Hezbi-Islami militia which operates in Northeastern Afghanistan.
While the pre-2001 Taliban suppressed opium production, the current insurgency "relies on opium revenues to purchase weapons, train its members, and buy support." In 2001, Afghanistan produced only 11% of the world’s opium, today it produces 93% of the global crop, and the drug trade accounts for half of Afghanistan's GDP.[3] [4]
On 28 July Richard Holbrooke, the United States special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that money transfers from Western Europe and the Gulf States exceeded the drug trade earnings and that a new task force had been formed to shut down this source of funds.[5]
The United States Agency for International Development is investigating the possibility that kickbacks from its contracts are being funneled to the Taliban.[6]
In November 2009, a report with the results of an opinion poll of the western aid group Oxfam indicated that 70 percent of the Afghan population does not consider the Taliban militants, but poverty, unemployment, and government corruption as the main causes of war in their country.
After thirty years of war, the country remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. It is also one of the most corrupt. Unemployment stands at 40 percent and more than half of the populaton lives below the poverty line. On top of that, violence then seemed to culminate since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001. Nearly half of those surveyed said corruption and bad government were the main reasons for the ongoing war. 36 percent said the Taliban insurgency was to blame.
After the Taliban, the reason most people gave for the continued fighting was the foreign interference: 25 percent of respondents saying other countries were to blame [7].
The Taliban gradually reorganized and reconstituted their forces over the winter 2002-2003, preparing for a summer offensive in 2003. They established a new mode of operation, gathering into groups of around 50 to launch attacks on isolated outposts and convoys of Afghan soldiers, police, or militia and then breaking up into groups of 5-10 men to evade subsequent offensives. U.S. forces in the strategy were attacked indirectly, through rocket attacks on bases and improvised mines planted in the roadside. To coordinate the strategy, Mullah Omar named a 10-man leadership council for the resistance, with himself at the head. Five operational zones were created, assigned to various Taliban commanders such as the key Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah, in charge of Zabul province operations. Al-Qaeda forces in the east had a bolder strategy of concentrating on the Americans and catching them when they could with elaborate ambushes.
The first sign that Taliban forces were regrouping came on January 28, 2003, when a band of 80 fighters allied with the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami were discovered and assaulted by U.S. forces at the Adi Ghar cave complex 15 miles (24 km) north of Spin Boldak.[8] 18 rebels were reported killed and no U.S. casualties reported. The site was suspected to be a base to funnel supplies and fighters from Pakistan. The first isolated attacks by relatively large Taliban bands on Afghan targets also appeared around that time.
As the summer of 2003 continued, the attacks gradually increased in frequency in the "Taliban heartland." Dozens of Afghan National Army soldiers, non-governmental organization and humanitarian workers, and several U.S. soldiers died in the raids, ambushes, and rocket attacks. In addition to the guerrilla attacks, Taliban fighters began building up their forces in the district of Dai Chopan, a district in Zabul province that also straddles Kandahar and Uruzgan and is at the very center of the Taliban heartland. Dai Chopan district is a remote and sparsely populated corner of southeastern Afghanistan composed of towering, rocky mountains interspersed with narrow gorges. Taliban fighters decided it would be the perfect area to make a stand against the Afghan government and the coalition forces. Over the course of summer 2003 up to 1,000 guerrillas regrouped in the area, perhaps the largest concentration of Taliban militants since the fall of the regime. As Taliban fighters gained strength, over 220 people, including several dozen Afghan police, were killed in August 2003.
As a result, coalition forces have begun preparing offensives to root out the rebel forces. In late 2005, Afghan government forces backed by U.S troops and heavy American aerial bombardment advanced upon Taliban positions within the mountain fortress. After a one-week battle, Taliban forces were routed with up to 124 fighters (according to Afghan government estimates) killed. Taliban spokesmen, however, denied the high casualty figure and U.S estimates were somewhat lower. By the first week of September, however, Taliban forces had been scattered from their base at Dai-Chopan. The operation (Operation Mountain Thrust) was launched on June 13, 2006 with the purposes of rooting out Taliban forces [26], later followed by Operation Medusa which started at the weekend of 2 and 3 September.
British commanders in Helmand have described the ongoing violence in the province to be the most intense level of fighting the British army has seen since the Korean war. Long and brutal firefights are a daily occurrence, so much so that over the summer extra men, armoured vehicles and Chinook helicopters were promised to reinforce the troops in theatre.
Since the start of 2006 Afghanistan has been facing a wave of attacks by improvised explosives and suicide bombers, particularly after NATO took command of the fight against insurgents in spring 2006. [27]
Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly condemned the methods used by the western powers. In June 2006 he said:
And for two years I have systematically, consistently and on a daily basis warned the international community of what was developing in Afghanistan and of the need for a change of approach in this regard.
and
The international community [must] reassess the manner in which this war against terror is conducted
Insurgents were also criticized for their conduct. According to Human Rights Watch, bombing and other attacks on Afghan civilians by the Taliban (and to a lesser extent Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin), are reported to have "sharply escalated in 2006" with "at least 669 Afghan civilians were killed in at least 350 armed attacks, most of which appear to have been intentionally launched at civilians or civilian objects."[9][10] 131 of insurgent attacks were suicide attacks which killed 212 civilians (732 wounded), 46 Afghan army and police members (101 wounded), and 12 foreign soldiers (63 wounded).[11]
Before the summer 2006 offensive began indications existed that the NATO led International Security Assistance Force peacekeepers had lost influence and power to other groups, including potentially the Taliban. In May there were riots after a street accident in the city of Kabul.
The continued support from tribes and others in Pakistan, the drug trade, the failure to produce a true central government and the small number of NATO troops, combined with the long history of resistance and isolation, all lead to the conclusion that even if not gaining power, post-Taliban forces and leaders are surviving and will play a significant role in Afghanistan into the future.[citation needed]
Below are a few deaths (note:this is just a few NATO deaths)
The Taliban continue to favor suicide bombing as a tactic. In 2007 Afghanistan saw 140 more suicide bombings - more than in the past five years combined - that killed more than 300 people, many civilians.[22] A United Nations report said the perpetrators were poorly educated, disaffected young men who were recruited by Taliban leaders in Pakistani madrassas.[23]
Western analysts estimated that the Taliban can field about 10,000 fighters at any given time, according to an October 30 report in The New York Times. Of that number, "only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents", the Times reported. The rest are part-timers, made up of alienated, young Afghan men angry at bombing raids or fighting in order to get money. In 2007, more foreign fighters were showing up in Afghanistan than ever before, according to Afghan and United States officials. An estimated 100 to 300 full-time combatants are foreigners, usually from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps even Turkey and western China. They tend to be more fanatical and violent, and they often bring skills such as the ability to post more sophisticated videos on the Internet or bombmaking expertise.[24] It has also been reported that the Taliban now control up to 54% of Afghanistan.[25]
In April 2007, Karzai admitted that he spoke to the Taliban to bring about peace in Afghanistan.[26] He noted that the Afghan Taliban are "always welcome" in Afghanistan, although foreign militants are not.[27] On April 15, 2007 the Afghan Government promised to end all hostage deals with the Taliban after two Afghan kidnapped victims were executed in an agreement to free an Italian journalist.[28]
On May 12, Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander in charge of operations in the south of the country was killed in Helmand province, in what is seen as a great moral victory.
The U.S. warned that in 2008 the Taliban has "coalesced into a resilient insurgency", and would "maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks".[47] Attacks by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan increased by 40% when compared to the same period in 2007.[47]
During 2009 the Taliban regained control over the countryside of several Afghan provinces. In August 2009, Taliban commanders in the province of Helmand started issuing "visa" from the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" in order to allow travel to and from the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah[55].
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   | Asia Times Online on spring offensive - Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan |
| | Assessing the Threats to CF Leopard Tanks in Afghanistan - Afghanistan Mission - Leopard Tank - NATO-ISAF - Panjwaii District - Missile Threat - Anti-tank Weapons - Operation Medusa - Counter-insurgency Warfare - Armoured Vehicles - Threat Analysis - CASR - Canadian American Strategic Review |
| | Guardian Unlimited article - British Lieutenant General calling the situation the worst low-level dirty fighting since the Korean War - UK general warns over Afghanistan fighting | World news | guardian.co.uk |
| | The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan - The Human Cost | Human Rights Watch |
| | Human Rights News, Afghanistan: Civilians Bear Cost of Escalating Insurgent Attacks - Afghanistan: Civilians Bear Cost of Escalating Insurgent Attacks | Human Rights Watch |
| | AFGHANISTAN, Alone, Afraid, In the Company of Men Dreaming of Death - Interview With the Suicide Bomber | Newsweek Scope | Newsweek.com |
| | Afghanistan`s record of suicide attacks in 2006 - Afghanistan`s record of suicide attacks in 2006 |
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