Fall of Kabul may refer to:
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
The Taliban is a Deobandi Islamist religious-political movement and military organization in Afghanistan. Currently one of two entities claiming to be the legitimate government of Afghanistan, alongside the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Taliban maintain de facto control over the country. The Taliban's ideology has been described as combining an "innovative" form of Sharia Islamic law based on Deobandi fundamentalism and militant Islamism, combined with Pashtun social and cultural norms known as Pashtunwali, as most Taliban are Pashtun tribesmen. The group is internally funded by its activities in the illegal drug trade by producing and trafficking narcotics such as heroin, extortion, and kidnap and ransom. They also seized control of mining operations in the mid 2010s which were illegal under the previous government.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician and former mujahideen leader. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis. He has twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.
This article on the History of Afghanistan since 1992 covers the time period from the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the end of the international military presence in Afghanistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is an unrecognized Islamic emirate that was first established in September 1996 by the Taliban, a Deobandi Islamist organization that began its governance of Afghanistan after the 1996 fall of Kabul. In 2001, it was toppled by a United States-led military coalition that invaded the country after the September 11 attacks, sparking the 20-year war in Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power after the departure of most NATO forces and the August 2021 fall of Kabul, and has since had de facto control over most of the country.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, is a military alliance of groups that operated between late 1996 to 2001 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was originally assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Karim Khalili, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Abdullah Abdullah, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Asif Mohseni, Amrullah Saleh and others.
The Taliban insurgency was an insurgency that began after the group's fall from power during the 2001 War in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces fought against the Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, and later by President Ashraf Ghani, and against a US-led coalition of forces that has included all members of NATO; the 2021 Taliban offensive resulted in the collapse of the government of Ashraf Ghani.
Battle of Kabul may refer to:
This article covers the part of contemporary Afghan history between 28 April 1992, the day that a new interim Afghan government was supposed to replace the Republic of Afghanistan of President Mohammad Najibullah, and the Taliban's conquest of Kabul establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996.
The War in Afghanistan was a conflict that took place in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. It started when the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate. The war ended with the Taliban regaining power after a 19 years and 8 months insurgency against allied NATO and Afghan Armed Forces. It was the longest war in United States history, surpassing the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by roughly five months.
Siege of Kabul may refer to:
The 2001 fall of Kabul took place during the War in Afghanistan. Northern Alliance forces began their attack on the city on 13 November that year and made swift progress against Taliban 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.
This is a timeline of the background of the history of the Taliban. It details the Taliban movement's origins in Pashtun nationalism, and briefly relates its ideological underpinnings with that of broader Afghan society. It also describes the Taliban's consolidation of power, listing persecutions by Taliban officials during both its five years in power in Afghanistan and its war with the Northern Alliance. It further covers the Taliban's time in power, its fall following the US invasion and its fight against the subsequent occupation, as well as its eventual return to power.
Abdul Ghani Baradar is an Afghan political and religious leader who is currently the acting first deputy prime minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. He is also a co-founder of the Taliban. He is known by the honorific Mullah.
The Afghanistan conflict is a series of wars fought in Afghanistan from 1978 through to the present day. Afghanistan has been in a continuous state of civil war since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Previously, the Kingdom of Afghanistan was overthrown in the relatively bloodless 1973 Afghan coup d'état, which brought the monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah’s 39-year reign to an end, and ended Afghanistan’s relatively peaceful period in modern history. Starting with the Saur Revolution military coup, an almost continuous series of armed conflicts has dominated and afflicted Afghanistan, including a Soviet invasion, a series of civil wars between mujahideen groups, notably the Taliban, a NATO invasion, a Taliban insurgency, and fighting between the Taliban and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province. The conflict includes:
2021 (MMXXI) is the current year, and is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2021st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 21st year of the 3rd millennium, the 21st year of the 21st century, and the 2nd year of the 2020s decade.
A military offensive by the Taliban and allied militant groups against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its allies began on 1 May 2021, coinciding with the withdrawal of United States and allied troops from Afghanistan. The offensive marked the end of the near 20 year old War in Afghanistan, that had begun following the United States invasion of the country in response to the September 11 attacks and resulted in the de facto takeover of the country and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The Battle of Kandahar began on 9 July 2021, as Taliban insurgents assaulted the city to capture it from the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). After heavy fighting for weeks the city's defenses had started to dissolve in August. This allowed the Taliban to enter and overrun most of the city on 12 August 2021, including the Sarposa prison, which included the release of over 1,000 prisoners, and ultimately the capture of the city. However, the siege for the nearby airport continued, where government loyalists held out until being evacuated on 16 August.
Taliban forces took control of Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul on 15 August 2021 during a military offensive against the Afghan government that had begun in May 2021. The capture took place hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Most of the provincial capitals of Afghanistan had fallen in succession in the midst of a US troop withdrawal under a February 2020 US–Taliban agreement that concluded on 30 August 2021.