A Reporter Looks Back at Taliban's 1994 Rise to Power

The Taliban, a Pashto-language term for students of religious seminaries, were historically known as devout ascetics who avoided politics in communities across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

They promoted their religious devotion by highlighting how they avoided all kinds of joy or leisure in this "temporary life" with the hope of rewards in the afterlife. It was perhaps that image of the Taliban’s piety that persuaded Afghans to welcome them in their towns in late 1994, the year the Afghan Taliban launched their movement in southwestern Kandahar province. I was then a reporter in Peshawar, Pakistan, and first met a small group of the Taliban when they came to the office. The group was there to see a BBC correspondent, to tell the story of their rise in a faraway town in Afghanistan.