Afghan Civil War (1996–2001)
| Third Afghan Civil War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Afghan conflict | |||||||||
Military situation in Afghanistan in 2000, between the Taliban (green) and the Northern Alliance (blue) | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Afghanistan | Pakistan | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Burhanuddin Rabbani Ahmad Shah Massoud X Ismail Khan Bismillah Khan Mohammadi Abdul Rashid Dostum Mohammad Qasim Fahim Hamid Karzai Abdul Haq Haji Abdul Qadeer Asif Mohseni Sayed Hussein Anwari Muhammad Mohaqiq Karim Khalili |
Muhammad Omar Osama bin Laden Ayman al-Zawahiri Nawaz Sharif | ||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 35,775 killed | |||||||||
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Third Afghan Civil War, took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil Wars that had started in 1989, and also part of the conflict (in wider sense) in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
The Islamic State of Afghanistan government remained the recognized government of Afghanistan by most of the international community. The Taliban's Islamic Emirate government, however, received recognition from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
The defense minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) in opposition to the Taliban. The United Front included all Afghan ethnicities: Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens, some Pashtuns and others. During the conflict, the Taliban received military support from Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda supported the Taliban with thousands of local and foreign fighters from Pakistan, Arab countries, and Central Asia.