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On Sunday 15th August 2021, after an almost 20 year-long absence, the Taliban recaptured the Afghan capital city of Kabul. As the US-led coalition withdrew, the Taliban regrouped and began expanding outward once again. Facing little opposition from the Afghan National Army that had been trained and equipped by western forces, they only grew bolder and began an almost Blitzkrieg-style campaign to retake villages, towns, cities and then entire provinces until they were once again in near-total control of a land that has seemingly only known bloodshed for the better part of fifty years.

The story of the Taliban is the story of Afghanistan in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Cloaked in Islamic ideology that even many of the most prominent Muslim countries have largely moved on from, Afghanistan under the Taliban was always a land that resisted the influence of outsiders with tenacity, ferocity and always in blood. The attempts by the great powers of the world to bring Afghanistan more in-line culturally with the wider world perspective particularly concerning the treatment of women and the application of science and technology has presented an arena where the tools of the modern world have waged battles with the determination of the old. Yet almost every foreign power that has gotten involved with Afghanistan has ultimately failed in its mission there hence, Afghanistan becoming known as the graveyard of empires.

In this the first part of a two-part special, we are going to examine the modern history of Afghanistan, investigate the origins and ideology of the Taliban and chart their rise and fall and then return to power. This is the Taliban’s Story. Welcome to Wars of the World.

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