A few words from an Afghan eye witness
Assalamu alaikum to all brothers and sisters
First of all, I would like to say that post No. 44 by Mr India is close to the truth. I would also like to say that while Taliban wereemerging as a power to reckon with in the west and south-west of Afghanistan, I was a medical student in eastern Afghanistan (Jalal Abad Medical Faculty). In the early days of their rise, Taliban were assuring people, who were the main power behind their success (who were tired of anarchy pointed out in by Mr India in post No 44), that they (Taliban) were not intending to rule the country, but only cleaning the mess up that was left by the post Communist civil war. They were also promising the return of Monarachy under the exiled king Zahir Shah who was residing in Rome at the time.
The military and financial support behind Taliban was coming directly from Pakistan and indirectly from the USA. Taliban did many good things and some very bad things too. The good things that they did were to get rid of local warlords who would kill, rape, loot..and they collected majority of the heavy weapons held by the warlords and small arms owened by ordinary Afghans. Centralisation of the weapons, knowingly or unknowingly by the Taliban, helped future Western invasion get a firm grip on Afghanistan, at least in the first few years of occupation. So, honetly speaking, as a resident of Afghanistan at the time, I am a witness to the fact that Afghanistan became a very safe place to live in for the first time after 16 years of Soviet invasion and civial war. This can not be denied. Another good thing they did was to put a full stop to the cultivation of opium.
It soon became clear that Taliban were not truthful in their promise and they showed the signs that they were not going to give up the political and military power that they had achieved and they soon made it clear that the king's return was out of question.
Two things happened that marked the beginning of the end for Taliban long before 9/11. First, a severe drought started to get a grip on the entire Afghanistan that was never seen in the living memory. Secondly, the western world imposed severe economic sanctions on Afghanistan once it became clear to them that Taliban were not going to be the puppet regime. These two factors weakened Taliban's support by the general public as they needed food, medicine...and therefore a change, perhaps any change would do. Some of the reasons the western allies did not face a strong opposition during invasion was the two facts (loosing public support and centralisation of weapons) mentioned above.
Let me clarify that the very hard-core opposition to Taliban (who are mainly Sunni Pashtoons-I am Pashtoon and Sunni too) comes from those Afghans who are ethnically different from majority of Taliban and who have been strong allies of the West since the invasion. Let me also clarify the characterestics of those who are the stongest allies of the West. They are mainly non-Pashtoons, some of the strongest among them are Shia and a great number of them are those who were allies of Comunist Soviet Union in the past. As someone mentioned earlier, the picture is not so black and white.
Among the bad things that the Taliban did were that there was evidence of curruption and injustice among Taliban too, perhaps not as widespread as it is now under occupation and refusing education to women (Our female students of the medical faculty stayed at home throughout their rule).
There is more to the story, but I hope this will suffice for now.