Taliban's rise to power

This is a timeline of the background of the Taliban's rise to power.

It details the Taliban movement's origins in Pashtun nationalism, and briefly relates its ideological underpinnings with that of broader Afghan society.

It details the Taliban's consolidation of power, listing persecutions by the Taliban officials during its five years in power in Afghanistan and during its war with the Northern Alliance.

During the power vacuum created by the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the country was torn apart by warring mujahideen groups and the ISI of Pakistan grasped the chance to wield power in the region by fostering a previously unknown Kandahari student movement. They continued to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. One story is that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mohammed Omar (Mullah Omar) and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals. Another motivation was that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the "Afghanistan Transit Trade" and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed, and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.

Many senior leaders of the Afghanistan Taliban were closely associated with and had attended the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Akora Khattak in Pakistan, including Mullah Omar, and its role in supporting the Taliban. The seminary is run by Maulana Sami ul Haq of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam who is often referred to as the "Father of the Taliban".

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