Jul 2021. The Taliban in Afghanistan

US troops and their Nato and regional allies forced the Taliban from power in November 2001. The group had been harbouring Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures linked to the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. But despite a continued international presence in the region, billions of dollars of support and training for the Afghan government forces, the Taliban regrouped and gradually regained strength in more remote areas. Their main areas of influence were around their traditional strongholds in the south and south-west - northern Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Zabul provinces. But also, in the hills of southern Faryab in the north-west and the mountains of Badakhshan in the north east.