Taliban

The Taliban are a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim organization in Afghanistan that ran the country for a brief period of time until their defeat by the U.S. Military in 2001. 
They have an extreme interpretation of Islam and are known for their oppression of women and their hatred of things associated with the West. Much of the world considers them to be terrorists. Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns, an Iranian people living in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.
==History==
NATO fought against a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2001 and 2016. NATO persuaded some Taliban chiefs to join the new Afghan government while targeting and destroying others. During his presidency between 2009 and 2017, Barack Obama escalated the use drone strikes to assassinate Taliban commanders.
Iran and Russia emulated NATO tactics in Afghanistan in 2016 and 2017 in an attempt to rout out the Islamic State which had infiltrated both Afghanistan and Pakistan and gained the allegiance of some Taliban commanders. After the annexation of Afghanistan by the newly formed United Islamic Republic in August 2017, Tehran granted autonomy to the predominantly Pashtun regions in what had been the provinces of southern Afghanistan giving former Taliban de facto control over their core territories and allowing them to continue their harsh, traditional Islamic way of life.
Category:Militias
Category:Organizations
Category:Terrorist Organizations