A new leadership, a resurgence & a conquest: Decoding Taliban food chain after Mullah Omar's demise

By the end of 1996, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan and thereby ruled the nation until the 9/11 attacks. Read on to find out what led to the resurgence of the Taliban.

Taliban, meaning "students" in Pashto, was formed after the civil war of the early 1990s in Afghanistan. The instability and chaos resulted in Mullah Mohammad Omar founding the Taliban in 1994. The group only had a dozen followers to start with, before becoming highly influential and growing in numbers by recruiting erstwhile Mujahideens responsible for pushing Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. By the end of 1996, the Taliban controlled most parts of the country and thereby ruled the nation until the 9/11 attacks. Omar went into hiding after the American invasion and lived in hiding near a US base in southern Afghanistan till his death.