Taliban in the context of "War on terror"

Afghanistan is a mountainous landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Some of the invaders in the history of Afghanistan include the Maurya Empire, the ancient Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Mongol Empire led by Genghis Khan, the Ghaznavid Empire of Turkic Mahmud of Ghazni, the Ghurid Dynasty of Muhammad of Ghor the Timurid Empire of Timur, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and most recently the United States with a number of allies. A reduced number of NATO troops remained in the country in support of the government. Just prior to the American withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban regained control of the capital Kabul and most of the country. They changed Afghanistan's official name to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan was a prolonged armed conflict lasting from 2001 to 2021. It began with an invasion by a United States–led coalition under the name Operation Enduring Freedom in response to the September 11 attacks carried out by the Taliban-allied and Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda. The Taliban were expelled from major population centers by American-led forces supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, thus toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate. Three years later, the American-sponsored Islamic Republic was established, but by then the Taliban, led by founder Mullah Omar, had reorganized and begun an insurgency against the Afghan government and coalition forces. The conflict ended almost twenty years later as the 2021 Taliban offensive reestablished the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in United States military history, surpassing the Vietnam War by six months.

Following the September 11 attacks, masterminded by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, American president George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban immediately extradite him to the United States and close down al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan; the Taliban refused and demanded evidence of bin Laden's guilt before offering to hand him over to a neutral country. The U.S. dismissed these offers and proceeded with the invasion. After expelling the Taliban and their allies, the American-led coalition remained in Afghanistan, forming the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—sanctioned by the United Nations—with the goal of creating a new democratic authority in the country that would prevent the Taliban from returning to power. A new Afghan Interim Administration was established, and international rebuilding efforts were launched. By 2003, the Taliban had reorganized and launched a widespread insurgency against the new Afghan government and coalition forces. Insurgents from the Taliban and other Islamist groups waged asymmetric warfare, fighting with guerrilla warfare in the countryside, suicide attacks

Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term genocide. The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide. The precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, and the United Nations does not include it in the definition of genocide used in the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Armenian genocide Museum defines culturicide as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction", which appears to be essentially the same as ethnocide. Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term ethnocide as a substitute for cultural genocide, although this usage has been criticized as risking the confusion between ethnicity and culture. Cultural genocide and ethnocide have in the past been used in distinct contexts. Cultural genocide without ethnocide is conceivable when a distinct ethnic identity is kept, but distinct cultural elements are eliminated.

Culturicide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures. The issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define war crimes associated with the destruction of culture. Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate. Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention initially considered using the term, but later dropped it from inclusion. The term "cultural genocide" has been considered in various draft United Nations declarations, but it is not used by the UN Genocide Convention.

Bamyan (Pashto, Dari: بامیان), also spelled Bamian or Bamiyan, is the capital of Bamyan Province in central Afghanistan. Its population of approximately 100,000 people makes it the largest city in the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan. Bamyan is at an altitude of about 8,366 feet (2,550 m) above sea level. The Bamyan Airport is located in the middle of the city. The driving distance between Bamyan and Kabul in the southeast is approximately 180 kilometres (110 mi). The Band-e-Amir National Park is to the west, about a half-hour drive from the city of Bamyan.

Bamyan is referred to by some as the "Shining Light" and "Valley of Gods". There are several tourist attractions near the city, including the destroyed Buddhas of Bamyan, which were carved into cliffs on the north side of Bamyan city in the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, dating them to the pre-Islamic Hephthalite rule. They were part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and were tragically destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Other attractions close to the city include Shahr-e Gholghola and Zuhak. In 2008, in a maze of caves in the Bamiyan Valley were found the world's oldest oil paintings. At the end of the 10th century, there was a Buddhist culture in which several thousand Buddhist monks lived in caves carved into the mountain. The 53 meters known as the Salsal and 35 meters known as Shahmama were the high-standing Buddha statues and best-known monuments left by the Buddhists, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Furthermore, there are several cultural sites left from both the Buddhist and the later Islamic era of the valley. While the Taliban were out of power from 2002 to 2021, considerable efforts were made to preserve the cultural monuments in the valley. The city of Bamyan has four districts and a total land area of 3,539 hectares. The total number of dwellings in this city is 4,435.

The foreign relations of Afghanistan are in a transitional phase since 2021, in the aftermath of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the collapse of the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The new Taliban-led government has been recognised by one country, Russia, and some countries have engaged in informal diplomatic contact with the Islamic Emirate, formal relations remain limited to representatives of the Islamic Republic.

Kunduz (Persian: استان قندوز, romanized: Ostāne Qanduz) (Pashto: کندز,), also known as Qunduz, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northern part of the country next to Tajikistan. The population of the province is around 1,136,677, which is mostly a tribal society; it is one of Afghanistan's most ethnically diverse provinces with many different ethnicities in large numbers living there. The city of Kunduz serves as the capital of the province. It borders the provinces of Takhar, Baghlan, Samangan and Balkh, as well as the Khatlon Region of Tajikistan. The Kunduz Airport is located next to the provincial capital.

The Kunduz River valley dominates the Kunduz Province. The river flows irregularly from south to north into the Amu Darya river which forms the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. A newly constructed bridge crosses the Amu Darya at Sherkhan Bandar and the international trade is a large source of Kunduz's economy. The river, its tributaries, and derivative canals provide irrigation to the irrigated fields that dominate land usage in the agricultural province. There are also rain-fed fields and open range land that span several miles. Kunduz was once a major economic center for Afghanistan, but the wars since 1978 have changed fortunes for the province. Initially during the War in Afghanistan (2001-2021), Kunduz was one of the more stable regions of Afghanistan, but during the 2010s quickly turned into one of the most unstable provinces of the country, resulting in large parts falling under Taliban insurgent control. In 2021, the Taliban gained control of the province during their nationwide summer offensive.

Buddhism, a religion founded by Gautama Buddha, first arrived in modern-day Afghanistan through the conquests of Ashoka (r. 268–232 BCE), the third emperor of the Maurya Empire. Among the earliest notable sites of Buddhist influence in the country is a bilingual mountainside inscription in Greek and Aramaic that dates back to 260 BCE and was found on the rocky outcrop of Chil Zena near Kandahar.

Many prominent Buddhist monks were based in Afghanistan during this period: Menander I (r. 165–130 BCE), a Greco-Bactrian king, was a renowned patron of Buddhism and is immortalized in the Milinda Panha, a Pali-language Buddhist text; Mahadharmaraksita, a 2nd-century BCE Indo-Greek monk, is said to have led 30,000 Buddhist monks from "Alasandra, the city of the Yonas" (a colony of Alexander the Great, located approximately 150 kilometres or 93 miles to the north of modern-day Kabul) to Sri Lanka for the dedication of the Mahathupa in Anuradhapura, according to the Mahavamsa (Chap. XXIX); Lokaksema, a 2nd-century Kushan monk, travelled to the Chinese capital city of Luoyang during the reign of the Han dynasty, and was the first translator of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures into the Chinese language.