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Taliban rule turned the war-revaged country into a base for Osama bin Laden. The tentacles of the al-Qaeda terrorist network extended into Pakistan, where it had strong allies among the ISI-trained Islamic militants. The country became a conduit for training aspiring militants across the world. The Lslamic the Taliban never controlled the entire area of Afghanistan, as about 10% of the country in the northeast was held by the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan. The Taliban association emerging from the refugee settements provided a natural political vehicle for this Pakistani strategy. It depended on the cooperation of the Islamist political parties that sponsored the Taliban in the camps. The task merely involved lightly arming and training Taliban cadres, and negotiating their entry through Quetta to join those Afghanistan who deplored the country's internal disintegration and aspired, however crudely, to pacify. reunify and rebuild Afghanistan. This work is essentially useful for scholars researchers social activists academics government functionaries and the general reader alike.