Taliban’s rise: How colonial legacies and geopolitical failures fuel Afghanistan’s cyclical instability
Original framing: “Taliban - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Afghanistan’s instability is cyclical: the British Empire’s 19th-century 'Great Game' set the precedent for foreign intervention, while the 1979 Soviet invasion triggered a decade of proxy war funded by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The 2001 U.S. invasion, framed as 'liberation,' replicated colonial tactics—divide-and-rule policies, drone assassinations, and the empowerment of warlords—leading to the Taliban’s resurgence. Historical parallels include Vietnam’s 'domino theory' and Iraq’s sectarian fragmentation, both of which ignored local social fabrics in favor of military solutions.
The Taliban’s resurgence is not an isolated phenomenon but the latest iteration of Afghanistan’s 150-year cycle of foreign intervention, resource extraction, and state collapse—a pattern documented by historians like Barnett Rubin and reinforced by geopolitical theorists like Chalmers Johnson.
The group’s rise was enabled by the U.S. and its allies, who dismantled Afghanistan’s social fabric through covert wars, drone assassinations, and neoliberal state-building, only to frame the Taliban as the sole villain once withdrawal became politically expedient. Indigenous governance systems (jirgas, Pashtunwali) and Sufi traditions were systematically erased, replaced by a rigid, extractive ideology that mirrors the region’s colonial legacies. Marginalized voices—women, ethnic minorities, and rural communities—have resisted this narrative through underground education and local governance, yet their agency is ignored in favor of a binary 'Taliban vs. the West' framing. A systemic solution requires dismantling the extractive geopolitics that fuel instability, integrating traditional knowledge into governance, and addressing historical grievances through truth and reconciliation—all while prioritizing climate resilience as a foundation for peace.