Top 70 Taliban Quotes

Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.

I want education for the sons and the daughters of all the extremists, especially the Taliban.

The Taliban knows they have more to fear from an educated girl than an American drone.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

If you’re an Afghan village leader in a small town down around Kandahar somewhere, and you know that the footprint is getting smaller for your security, and the Taliban saying don’t forget, I’m going to be back real soon, who is your loyalty going to go through?

People will politicize religion; we see it in every faith, in every religion. We see it with Pat Robertson, in my opinion, and we see it with the Taliban.

Thousands of civilians have lost their lives to terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, and thousands more will – because, unlike the Pakistani government, which has no coherent policy to deal with the radicals, the Taliban have one to deal with Pakistan and its citizens.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush’s 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.

The SEALs rarely call the Taliban ‘terrorists’ because they respect them as worthy opponents.

Peace cannot come without the government of Afghanistan speaking directly to the Taliban or the Taliban talking directly to us.

There’s a group of people – maybe the secular Taliban is a good name for them – who have morphed this idea, that you have to accept my values being every bit as cherished as your values. That’s not tolerance… There are too many things in this world which we sit back and tolerate.

The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets.

We have to be willing to engage ISIS militarily, economically, and even on the Internet without delay. For instance, I think we waited too long to engage al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan. And we should not make a similar mistake with ISIS elements throughout the world.

Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.

Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India’s supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

When you say things like, ‘We have to wipe out the Taliban,’ what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway.

We can’t afford to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and the terrorists.

Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.

Does the global Left – as well as the Israeli Left – truly not care about the horrific Taliban regime, the terrible oppression of women in Gulf states, and the mass hanging festivals in Iran?

Without U.S. forces in the country, there is a strong possibility Afghanistan could host a reinvigorated Taliban allied to a reinvigorated al Qaeda.

As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.

The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11 – Al-Qaeda did. That’s why I and other people joined the military – to go after Al Qaeda. Not the Taliban.

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.

Talking to the Taliban is a process the Afghans have to manage. It is their country.

After September 11, when the United States took action to overthrow the Taliban, our interests and Iran’s aligned, and we were able to coordinate quietly but effectively.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with the United States negotiating directly with the Taliban.

One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn’t learn about the outside world.

When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist and as an anti-war activist, I heard about what was happening to women, and I wanted to do something to support those folks.

The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not.

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory.

If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq.

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don’t say you’re worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America’s concern, America’s operational presence there would be much different.

It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?

People always assume I was in a motorcycle wreck. My response to them: no, Taliban.

The Taliban is resilient.

The Taliban are terrible shots. At the end of some long patrols, we’d be walking through the fields and get shot at – and we’d just keep walking.

People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They’re also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.

Courts are grappling with what it means to be ‘part of’ al Qaida or the Taliban – every case poses a unique challenge, involving individuals with a different degree and type of connection to these terrorist organizations.

A key flaw of the Obama administration’s approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock.

I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened.

I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people’s religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought to all oppose burning the Koran.

When the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan, women were not allowed to go to school, to work, or even leave the house without a male chaperone. The greatest moment was when that ended.

President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.

As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.

The armies, the difference of all of those armies that had been fighting each other and the Taliban took advantage of that to rule over the whole country.

Defeat the Taliban. Secure the population.

This body, the United States Congress, was united, Republicans and Democrats alike, in taking that action, toppling the Taliban government, and working to try and root out al Qaeda and find Osama bin Laden.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.