Taliban with Al Qaeda in the Fall of Afghanistan

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Afghan Taliban militants and villagers celebrate the peace deal and their victory in the Afghan conflict in the Alingar district of Laghman Province on March 2.NOORULLAH SHIRZADA / AFP - Getty Images  WASHINGTON — The Afghan Taliban have kept up a close relationship with Al Qaeda despite having pledged to stop cooperating with terrorist groups, permitting the militants to conduct training in Afghanistan and deploy fighters alongside its forces, according to the head of a U.N. panel monitoring the insurgency.

The Taliban and al Qaeda are mutual killers who work together.  

The Taliban is a predominantly Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist group that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when a U.S.-led invasion toppled the regime for providing refuge to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The Taliban regrouped across the border in Pakistan and has led an insurgency against the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, Afghanistan  for nearly twenty years.  The USA got into this fight over 9/11 which was executed by al Qaeda.  

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defined the presidency of George W. Bush.

Afghanistan has al-Qaeda to contend with thanks to the Taliban.  "Al-Qaeda, Arabic al-Qāʿidah (“the Base”), broad-based militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s.  Osama bin Laden, also spelled Usāmah ibn Lādin, (born 1957, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—died May 2, 2011, Abbottabad, Pakistan), founder of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, including the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. warship Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.

Afghanistan's population in 2011 was 28,395, 716 and was the 12th largest Muslim majority state.  They were 99.8% Muslim with 90% being Sunni and 10% Shiia.  The Pashtuns are an Iranic ethnic group and make up one of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising between 38% and 42% of the country's population. Afghanistan's military troops were only 70,000 compared with Iraq, who had 254,418 with almost the same sized population.  They had about the same sized force as Yemen.                   

The Taliban emerged in 1994 as one of the prominent factions in the Afghan Civil War and largely consisted of students (talib) from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan who had been educated in traditional Islamic schools, and fought during the Soviet–Afghan War. Under the leadership of Mohammed Omar, the movement spread throughout most of Afghanistan, sequestering power from the Mujahideen warlords. The totalitarian Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was established in 1996 and the Afghan capital was transferred to Kandahar. It held control of most of the country until being overthrown after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001 following the September 11 attacks.                                                

                                  Taliban's Mullah Omar

According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." "Mullah Mohammed Omar was an Afghan mujahid commander who led the Taliban, and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996. Born into a poor family, Omar graduated from Darul Uloom Haqqania in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan."

"These are the same type of war crimes as were committed in Bosnia and should be prosecuted in international courts", one UN official was quoted as saying. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings.                                         

Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. "The 055 Brigade (or 55th Arab Brigade) was a guerrilla organization sponsored and trained by Al Qaeda that was integrated into the Taliban army between 1995 and 2001."They were equipped with weapons left behind by the Soviets, as well as those provided by the Sudanese and Taliban governments. The Brigade was also the beneficiary of Al Qaeda's worldwide network of procurement officers who obtained sophisticated equipment including satellite phones, night vision goggles, and even airplanes. Reports from Time magazine indicate that members of the 055 Brigade were often deployed in smaller groups to help reinforce regular Afghan members of the Taliban. This was often achieved via threats or intimidation designed to enforce discipline and a commitment to   mujahedin philosophy."    

  

   The report by the United Nations quotes "eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people". The Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, in late 2011 stated that cruel behaviour under and by the Taliban had been "necessary".

The Taliban have been condemned internationally for the harsh enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, which has resulted in the brutal treatment of many Afghans. During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban and their allies committed massacres against Afghan civilians, denied UN food supplies to 160,000 starving civilians and conducted a policy of scorched earth, burning vast areas of fertile land and destroying tens of thousands of homes.

 While the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they banned activities and media including paintings, photography, and movies if they showed people or other living things, and prohibited music using instruments.

                                                                   

 The Taliban prevented women from attending school, banned women from working jobs outside of healthcare (male doctors were prohibited from seeing women), and required that women were accompanied by a male relative and wear a burqa at all times when in public. If women broke certain rules, they were publicly whipped or executed.          

Religious and ethnic minorities were heavily discriminated against during Taliban rule. According to the United Nations, the Taliban and their allies were responsible for 76% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010, and 80% in 2011 and 2012. The Taliban also engaged in cultural genocide, destroying numerous monuments including the famous 1500-year old Buddhas of Bamiyan.

                                                         

Taliban fighters in Balkh and elsewhere have made a rapid advance in recent weeks

"The Taliban's ideology has been described as combining an "innovative" form of sharia Islamic law based on Deobandi fundamentalism and the militant Islamism combined with Pashtun social and cultural norms known as Pashtunwali, as most Taliban are Pashtun tribesmen."  

From what I have read, Pashtunwali is an ethical part of their culture, and I believe combined with what they had remembered of their Mosaic teaching when part of the 10 tribes of Jacob.  However, this Sharia Law is something that is so severe, that freedom or rights seem to be dirty talk to them.  They are to act like programmed robots without feelings.                         

                    Taliban fighters patrol a street in the city of Herat. [Reuters]

I question why it is that Afghanis have given into the Talibans without much of a fight.  The US right now is in the act of getting the US embassy evacuated and has sent in 3,000 troops to help them do so.  The president of Afghanistan has already skipped out of the country.  One city, an anti-Taliban city, Maza el Sharif, was holding out of all the cities.  Translators who helped Americans are left behind.  Is it because the Afghanis feel that brother is fighting against brother and they haven't the heart to kill their own?

The USA did during the Civil War back in 1861.  Brother often was fighting brother.  Their ideology was different.  One was more interested in the using of Blacks for economic reasons, and the other wanted them free and treated like the whites.

                                                                    

         Many Afghans who have fled the fighting have sought refuge in Kabul

With the Afghanis, religion is the base problem.  Taliban want to install the strict Sharia Law throughout not only Afghanistan and all the Middle East but the whole world, including Los Angeles, California and New York City, Paris, London, etc.  Al-Qaeda will help them do it.    

It's commendable if they couldn't kill, but the Taliban show no hesitation to kill Afghani citizens.  What they are now in for will most likely last their whole lifetime.  There is no freedom of speech or any other freedom, not even of thought.  They and their children, if not killed, are in for much brainwashing.  

                                                                  

Al-Qaeda began as a logistical network to support Muslims fighting against the Soviet Union during the Afghan War; members were recruited throughout the Islamic world. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued to oppose what its leaders considered corrupt Islamic regimes and foreign (i.e., U.S.) presence in Islamic lands. Based in Sudan for a period in the early 1990s, the group eventually reestablished its headquarters in Afghanistan (c. 1996) under the patronage of the Taliban militia." 

Al-Qaeda was linked—whether directly or indirectly—to more attacks in the six years following September 11 than it had been in the six years prior, including attacks in Jordan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Israel, Algeria, and elsewhere. 

At the same time, al-Qaeda increasingly utilized the Internet as an expansive venue for communication and recruitment and as a mouthpiece for video messages, broadcasts, and propaganda. Meanwhile, some observers expressed concern that U.S. strategy—centered primarily on attempts to overwhelm al-Qaeda militarily—was ineffectual, and at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, al-Qaeda was thought to have reached its greatest strength since the attacks of September 2001.  

Many observers believe that the group’s primary goal remains to inspire, plan, and carry out attacks against the United States and its allies around the world, with particular emphasis on targeting economic and energy infrastructure and fomenting unrest in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf states, and countries neighboring Israel.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace warned Friday that Afghanistan risks becoming a failed state and predicted a-Qaida will again thrive in the country.

“I’m absolutely worried that failed states are breeding grounds for those types of people,” he told British broadcaster Sky News.                                                            

The Taliban, which has between fifty-eight thousand and one hundred thousand full-time fighters, is stronger now than at any point in the last twenty years. As the United States has withdrawn its remaining forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban has increased attacks on civilians, seized control of critical border crossings, and dramatically expanded its presence throughout the country. In July 2021, the group controlled an estimated 54 percent of Afghan districts, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Long War Journal, a U.S.-based publication that has covered the U.S. fight against al-Qaeda and other militant groups since 2007; just months earlier it controlled only 20 percent. By midsummer 2021, sixteen of the country’s thirty-four provincial capitals were at risk of falling under Taliban control.  As of today, August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban.  

And then there's COVID 19, turning into Delta and now Lambda just detected which is from Peru and in California ; from August 1 to 14, a reported 5,247 cases.  So far, Afghanistan has had 152K cases and 7,000 deaths from the Covid 19 virus.  

Resource:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/al-Qaeda

https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks

https://www.voanews.com/us-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/al-qaida-will-return-afghanistan-british-official-says

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Osama-bin-Laden

https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32759.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58219169