The Taliban are a diffuse and multifaceted phenomenon. Founded in the Afghan southwest by Mullah Mohammad Omar in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal, today the group encompasses an incredibly broad swath of militants across all of Afghanistan and much of Pakistan — including the Pakistani Taliban also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has set its sights on overthrowing the Pakistani state. The Afghan Taliban include everything from foreigners waging transnational jihad against the United States and its allies to regional entities like the Haqqani network, probably the single-largest and most autonomous regional Afghan Taliban entity, to local groups with purely local grievances to thugs, criminals and drug runners that have adopted the Taliban name as a flag of convenience.
