Afghanistan in 1996: Year of the Taliban

Abstract

At the end of 1995, the Taliban, a movement of Islamic students, mullahs, Pushtun tribesmen, and ex-mujahidin with the backing of Pakistan, had been repulsed for the second time from the gates of Kabul by the forces of the Kabul regime under their famed commander, Ahmed Shah Mas'ud. At the end of 1996, through their occupation of the three eastern provinces and Kabul itself in September, they had perhaps decisively tipped the scale in the Afghan civil war. The Taliban's successes gave them threequarters of the territory of Afghanistan but led in turn to an alliance of their two main opponents, Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostam and Ahmed Shah Mas'ud's largely Tajik forces. The year marked the revival of the United Nation's mediation efforts under a new special representative. There was also a renewal of U.S. interest in the Afghan situation, coupled with alarm in Russia and the Central Asian states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as the war drew closer to their borders.