The Taliban or Taleban, who refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), are a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement and military organisation in Afghanistan currently waging war within that country. Since 2016, the Taliban's leader is Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada.
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. It was a response to the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and it was intended to deter the Soviet Union, the United States' Cold War adversary, from seeking hegemony in the Persian Gulf region.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad is an Afghan-American diplomat, who has served as the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at the State Department since September 2018. Previously, he served as a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the president of Gryphon Partners and Khalilzad Associates, an international business consulting firm, based in Washington, D.C.
Union Oil Company of California and Unocal Corporation, dba Unocal was a company that was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headquartered in El Segundo, California, United States.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was a totalitarian Islamic state established in September 1996, when the Taliban began their governance of Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul. At its peak, the Taliban regime controlled approximately 90% of the country, whereas 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. After the September 11 attacks and subsequent declaration of a "War on Terror" by the United States, international opposition to the regime drastically increased, with diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan being rescinded. The Islamic Emirate ceased to exist on 17 December 2001 after being overthrown by the Northern Alliance, which had been bolstered by the ISAF coalition established after a U.S.-led invasion of the country two months prior.
Ahmed Rashid is a journalist and best-selling foreign policy author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.
Bacha bāzī is a slang term in some parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan for a custom involving child sexual abuse between older men and young adolescent males or boys, who are called dancing boys. The custom is connected to sexual slavery and child prostitution. In the 21st century, Bacha bazi is reportedly practiced in various parts of Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan. Force and coercion are common, and security officials state they are unable to end such practices because many of the men involved in bacha bazi-related activities are powerful and well-armed warlords.
The Afghan Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a united military front that came to formation in late 1996 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was 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 and others.
Opposition to the Afghanistan war stems from numerous factors, including the view that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was illegal under international law and constituted an unjustified aggression, the view that the continued military presence constitutes a foreign military occupation, the view that the war does little to prevent terrorism but increases its likelihood, and views on the involvement of geo-political and corporate interests. Also giving rise to opposition to the war are civilian casualties, the cost to taxpayers, and the length of the war to date.
India–Iran relations, also knows as Indian-Iranian relations or Indo-Iranian relations, refers to the bilateral relations between India and Iran. Independent India and Iran established diplomatic relations on 15 March 1950. During much of the Cold War period, relations between the Republic of India and the erstwhile Imperial State of Iran suffered due to their different political interests—non-aligned India fostered strong military links with the Soviet Union, while Iran enjoyed close ties with the United States. Following the 1979 revolution, relations between Iran and India strengthened momentarily. However, Iran's continued support for Pakistan and India's close relations with Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War impeded further development of Indo–Iranian ties. In the 1990s, India and Iran supported the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime. They continue to collaborate in supporting the broad-based anti-Taliban government led by Ashraf Ghani and backed by the United States. The two countries signed a defence cooperation agreement in December 2002.
The Afghanistan Oil Pipeline was a project proposed by several oil companies to transport oil from Turkmenistan and Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.
Iran–Pakistan relations covers the bilateral relations between the adjacent states of Iran and Pakistan. After Pakistan gained its independence in August 1947, Iran was one of the first countries to recognize its sovereign status. Relations between Shi'a-majority Iran and Sunni-majority Pakistan became greatly strained due to sectarian tensions in the 1980s, as Pakistani Shi'a Muslims claimed that they were being discriminated against under the Sunni-biased Islamization program being imposed throughout Pakistan by the military dictatorship government of then-President, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran and Saudi Arabia gradually began to use Pakistan as a battleground for their proxy sectarian conflict, and Pakistan's support for the Deobandi Taliban organization in Afghanistan during the civil wars in the 1990s became a problem for Shi'a Iran, which opposed a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
A Bremer wall, or T-wall, is a twelve-foot-tall (3.66 m) portable, steel-reinforced concrete blast wall of the type used for blast protection throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. The name is believed to have originated from L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority, who was the Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for post-war Iraq, following the Iraq War of 2003, in the early years of the Iraq War.
Events from the year 2007 in Afghanistan.
The war on terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism and U.S. War on Terror, is an international military campaign launched by the United States government after the September 11 attacks. The targets of the campaign are primarily Sunni Islamic fundamentalist armed groups located throughout the Muslim world, with the most prominent groups being Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and the various franchise groups of the former two organizations. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. In the latter speech, George Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The term was originally used with a particular focus on countries associated with al-Qaeda. The term was immediately criticised by such people as Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and more nuanced terms subsequently came to be used by the Bush administration to publicly define the international campaign led by the U.S. While it was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations in internal government documentation, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was issued.
The Kunduz airlift, also called the Airlift of Evil, refers to the alleged evacuation of hundreds of top commanders and members of the Taliban and their Pakistani advisers including Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agents and army personnel, and other Jihadi volunteers and sympathizers, from the city of Kunduz, Afghanistan, in November 2001 just before its capture by U.S. and United Front of Afghanistan forces during the War in Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda combatants were allegedly evacuated from Kunduz and airlifted by Pakistan Air Force cargo aircraft to Pakistan Air Force bases in Chitral and Gilgit in Azad Kashmir's Northern Areas. The United States and Pakistan denied that the airlift took place. However, all evidences point to the contrary and USA had to accept the Pakistan claims in spite of evidences to the contrary. General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, said that the Kunduz airfield had been disabled by United States attacks. Donald Rumsfeld, US defense secretary, said on December 2 that "neither Pakistan nor any other country flew any planes into Afghanistan to evacuate anybody".
Since the 1970s, the CIA has engaged in multiple operations in Afghanistan. The first major operation, code named Operation Cyclone, began in 1979. It was a program to arm and finance the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR. President Reagan had seen an expansion of the Reagan doctrine, which aided anti-Soviet resistance movements. The program also supported militant Islamic groups that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, at the expense of other resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; costing over $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rising to $630 million per year in 1987. Funding continued after 1989 as the mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992). After the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the CIA's objective was to topple the government of Mohammad Najibullah, which had been formed under the Soviet occupation. The three main factions that the CIA supported were: Ahmed Shah Massoud, Gulbadin Hekmatyar, and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Another civil war developed in 1990, as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and CIA-supported Gulbadin Hekmatyar sought to violently eliminate all rivals, including the CIA-supported Ahmed Shah Massoud. In spite of this internecine warfare, ISI and CIA formulated a plan to topple the Najibullah government in a winter offensive on Kabul. As part of this offensive, the CIA paid Massoud $500,000, over and above his monthly stipend of $200,000, to close the Salang Highway, which Massoud failed to do. During this period, the U.S. became increasingly concerned with the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. Their support of the Taliban escalated tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan. It was concerning for the U.S. as the Taliban grew to be a more extreme and direct threat to the United States, its citizens, and its foreign dignitaries.
The War in Afghanistan is an ongoing war following the United States invasion of Afghanistan that began when the United States of America and its allies successfully drove the Taliban from power in order to deny Al-Qaeda a safe base of operations in Afghanistan. Since the initial objectives were completed, a coalition of over 40 countries formed a security mission in the country called International Security Assistance Force, of which certain members were involved in military combat allied with Afghanistan's government. The war has afterwards mostly consisted of Taliban insurgents fighting against the Afghan Armed Forces and allied forces; the majority of ISAF/RS soldiers and personnel are American. The war is code named by the U.S. as Operation Enduring Freedom (2001–14) and Operation Freedom's Sentinel (2015–present); it is the longest war in U.S. history.
This is a timeline of the background of the Taliban's rise to power, from its first actions in October–November 1994 to its capture of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul in September 1996. 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.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is a United States–based think tank founded in 2007 by Kimberly Kagan. ISW describes itself as a non-partisan think tank providing research and analysis regarding issues of defense and foreign affairs. Others have described ISW as "a hawkish Washington" group favoring an "aggressive foreign policy". It has produced reports on the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, "focusing on military operations, enemy threats, and political trends in diverse conflict zones". The non-profit organization is supported by grants and contributions from large defense contractors, including Raytheon, General Dynamics, DynCorp and others. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
