Afghanistan: The Rise of the Taliban

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and enigmatic forces in the world? The Taliban is a name that has haunted the American imagination since 2001. The scenes of the group's brutality repeatedly played in the Western media, while true, perhaps obscure our ability to see the complex origins of the Taliban and how they impact the lives of Afghans. It's a shadow that reaches across the vast ancient Afghan homeland, the reputation of the modern state, and throughout global politics. At the end of the US war in Afghanistan we go back to the end of the Soviet Occupation and the start of the Afghan civil war to look at the rise of the Taliban. Their story concludes Throughline's two-episode investigation on the past, present, and future of the country that was once called "the center of the world."

Transcript

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0:00.0	The year is 2001.
0:18.4	Ahmed Shah Masood is in northern Afghanistan, commanding his soldiers.
0:23.7	Ahmed Shah Masood is a legend in Afghanistan.
0:35.8	He's the most important commander of the opposition to the ruling Taliban.
0:40.8	Known as the Lion of Panshire, Masood was tall and thin with an angular face.
0:47.2	His curly hair always poked out from under his pocle.
0:51.0	The iconic brown wool cap that he made famous.
0:54.7	He kind of looked like an Afghan Jagebarah.
0:58.6	It was a Sunday and for weeks prior, a pair of journalists had pushed hard to get an interview
1:03.4	with him.
1:05.2	They set up what they purported to be a television interview with him.
1:11.1	Today was the day of the interview.
1:13.6	When the journalists showed up with their camera gear, they got searched by a guard and
1:17.8	then walked into the building where Masood sat.
1:36.0	The cameraman fumbled with his equipment, seeming to aim the lens at everyone's knees.
1:41.4	Masood leaned over and asked his friend why the cameraman didn't seem to know what
1:47.0	he was doing.
1:52.2	Then...
1:54.4	Turns out they'd loaded explosives into their camera and they blew themselves up.
2:09.0	Today though, his fate is uncertain.
2:10.6	He was hurt in an explosion yesterday in the North.
2:13.7	Ahmed Shah Masood was a threat to the Taliban.
	...

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