Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani or Usmani (died 19 December 2006) [1] was a senior leader of the Taliban, treasurer for the organization, [2] and close associate of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Omar. He was involved in the demolition of the Buddhas of Bamyan [3] and was considered a potential successor to Mullah Omar. [4] Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, once referred to him as one of the four most dangerous Taliban members still in Afghanistan. [5]
Shortly after the 11 September attacks, CIA officer Robert Grenier met him to offer the Taliban the opportunity to give up Osama bin Laden. [4]
In December 2006, as he was riding in a four-wheel drive vehicle in Helmand Province, Osmani was killed by a smart bomb in a United States Air Force airstrike. [3] He had been tracked down by a Royal Air Force airplane which monitored his satellite phone. [2] Spokesmen of the Taliban initially denied his death [6] and claimed that the bomb had instead killed a Taliban leader called Abdul Zahir. [7] However, several days later other top Taliban officials confirmed his death. [8]
While Taliban provincial governor in Mazar-e-Sharif, he began seeing Afghan psychiatrist Nader Alemi, the only psychiatrist in northern Afghanistan to speak Pashto, the language of most Taliban. Akhtar only kept a few appointments as he would go off on missions every three months. "I used to treat the Taliban as human beings, same as I would treat my other patients… " said Alemi. "." [9]
Mullah Muhammad Omar was an Afghan mujahideen commander, revolutionary, and the cleric who founded the Taliban. During the Third Afghan Civil War, the Taliban fought the Northern Alliance and took control of most of the country, establishing the First Islamic Emirate for which Omar began to serve as Supreme Leader in 1996. Shortly after al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, the Taliban government was toppled by an American invasion of Afghanistan, prompting Omar to go into hiding. He successfully evaded capture by the American-led coalition before dying in 2013 from tuberculosis.
Mullah Mohammad Rabbani Akhund was one of the main leaders of the Taliban movement who served as Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. He was second in power only to the supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, in the Taliban hierarchy.
The following lists events that happened during 2001 in Afghanistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, also referred to as the First Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, was a totalitarian Islamic state led by the Taliban that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At its peak, the Taliban government controlled approximately 90% of the country, while remaining regions in the northeast were held by the Northern Alliance, which maintained broad international recognition as a continuation of the Islamic State of Afghanistan.
The 055 Brigade was a guerrilla organization loyal to Osama bin Laden that was sponsored and trained by al-Qaeda, and was integrated into the Taliban between 1996 and 2001.
Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil Abdul Ghaffar is an Afghan politician who has been a member of the militant Taliban organization. He was the Taliban foreign minister from 27 October 1999 in their first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rule, until the Taliban were deposed in late 2001. Prior to this, he served as spokesman and secretary to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban. After the Northern Alliance, accompanied by U.S. and British forces, ousted the regime, Muttawakil surrendered in Kandahar to government troops.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the United States declared the war on terror and subsequently led a multinational military operation against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The stated goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the attacks under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, and to deny Islamist militants a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by toppling the Taliban government. The United Kingdom was a key ally of the United States, offering support for military action from the start of the invasion preparations. The American military presence in Afghanistan greatly bolstered the Northern Alliance, which had been locked in a losing fight with the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War. Prior to the beginning of the United States' war effort, the Taliban had seized around 85% of Afghanistan's territory as well as the capital city of Kabul, effectively confining the Northern Alliance to Badakhshan Province and smaller surrounding areas. The American-led invasion on 7 October 2001, marked the first phase of what would become the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan.
Hajji Mohammed Zaman, also known as Zaman Ghamsharik, was a Pashtun Afghan military leader and politician. He was an ethnic Pashtun from the Khogyani tribe. According to Maj. Dalton Fury, who fought together with Ghamsharik in November/December 2001 in the Tora Bora campaign against the Taliban, Haji Zaman had been "one of the more infamous mujahideen junior commanders during the Soviet–Afghan War. When the Taliban took over, Zaman departed Afghanistan for France. When the Taliban fell from grace after 9/11, he returned to his homeland to reclaim his former VIP status. He was said to have had influential friends in neighboring Pakistan, including members of the Pakistan intelligence service. He reportedly led a force of 4,000 men during the campaign to oust Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers.
Osama bin Laden, the founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, went into hiding following the start of the War in Afghanistan in order to avoid capture by the United States for role in the September 11 attacks, and having been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999. After evading capture at the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, his whereabouts became unclear, and various rumours about his health, continued role in al-Qaeda, and location were circulated. Bin Laden also released several video and audio recordings during this time.
Dadullah was the Taliban's most senior militant commander in Afghanistan until his death in 2007. He was also known as Maulavi or Mullah Dadullah Akhund. He also earned the nickname of Lang, meaning "lame", because of a leg he lost during fighting.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Third Afghan Civil War, took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
Mullah Mansoor Dadullah was the Taliban militant commander Mullah Dadullah's younger half-brother who succeeded him as a senior military commander of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He came from the Arghandab district of Kandahar province, and belonged to the Kakar Pashtun tribe.
The following lists events that happened during 1999 in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and co-founder of al-Qaeda, in conjunction with several other Islamic militant leaders, issued two fatawa – in 1996 and then again in 1998—that military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list until his death.
Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, fell in November 2001 to the Northern Alliance forces during the War in Afghanistan. Northern Alliance forces began their attack on the city on 13 November and made swift progress against Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces that were heavily weakened by American and British air strikes. The advance moved ahead of plans, and the next day the Northern Alliance forces entered Kabul and met no resistance inside the city. Taliban forces retreated to Kandahar in the south.
The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is an Afghan militant movement, that governs Afghanistan, with an ideology comprising elements of Pashtun nationalism and the Deobandi movement of Islamic fundamentalism.
Jumaboi Ahmadjonovich Khodjiyev, better known by the nom de guerreJuma Namangani, was an Uzbek Islamist militant with a substantial following who co-founded and led the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) with Tohir Yo'ldosh. The IMU received substantial Taliban patronage, and was allowed to operate freely in northern Afghanistan.
Mullah Noorullah Noori is a militant and Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan since 7 September 2021. He was also the Taliban's Governor of Balkh Province during their first rule (1996–2001). Noori spent more than 12 years in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Noori was released from the detention camp on May 31, 2014, in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban Five, and flown to Qatar.
Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was the second supreme leader of the Taliban. Succeeding the founding leader, Mullah Omar, he was the supreme leader from July 2015 to May 2016, when he was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan, Pakistan.
The following is an outline of the series of events that led up the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).