U.S. Imperialism is the reason for the Taliban's recent successes in Afghanistan

 

The original, cringe-worthy dedication title card of Rambo III, before being edited out in subsequent post-9/11 DVD copies and television airings.

The Taliban were one of the groups that sprang from the U.S.-created and U.S.-backed Mujahideen, who were made with the ultimate goal in mind of destroying the Soviet Union. The United States saw an opportunity for its anti-communist goals in the exiled, ousted, reactionary, neo-feudalist landowning class who were willing to betray their country, to undo all the revolutionary gains and progress (which included women's emancipation) made by the popular socialist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and to bring the country back to what is essentially the stone ages. While the United States does not necessarily preach Wahhabist or Salafist ideology itself, they were very useful tools, due to their highly sectarian nature, in countering the progressive anti-imperialist forces -- whom they saw as foils and bitter 'archenemies' -- in Central Asia and the Greater Middle East like battering rams. 

The reason why the Taliban had turned against its U.S. creators is because the U.S. had disowned them in the early 2000's after deeming them as unreliable, incompetent puppets -- which was due to the fact that the Taliban drastically reduced the opium poppy cultivation and thereby hurt U.S. investors' profits.  As I've written in my long essay on the topic:

"This led to the direct U.S. military intervention of 2001 in Afghanistan and the subsequent overthrow of the Taliban; the U.S. used the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as a pretext even if there was no proof that the Taliban had a hand in them or had been in contact with Osama bin Laden at all during that time. The U.S. would soon replace the Taliban with another faction of the Mujahideen that was more compliant with the rules that the imperialists had set out. In other words, the Taliban were ousted not necessarily because they posed a significant challenge to U.S. hegemony as the PDPA had, or because of their treatment of women — nor were they hiding Osama bin Laden; it was because they had become more of liabilities than assets."

Hence the bitterness towards the U.S. occupiers. To be clear, the Taliban are not anti-imperialist; but rather, they are anti-interventionist, which springs out of opportunity and (in)convenience.

Nevertheless, the United States' goals in Afghanistan were never about bringing "democracy" and "human rights"; they never even intended -- nor do they care -- for there to be a strong, stable, long-lasting government to begin with. After all, chaos and suffering for the Afghan people -- Taliban or no Taliban -- makes it much easier for U.S. foreign policy to loot and plunder the country. And the underdevelopment of Afghanistan is conducive to American Empire-building, which needed to expand on and assert its dominance on Central Asia in order to strategically counter any geopolitical rivals -- such as the Soviet Union in the past, and China and the Russian Federation in more recent years -- who may challenge its hegemony, in addition to laying claim on the resources and exploiting the people's labour. 

If the United States had not sent its proxy forces to invade the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan all those years ago in 1979, then perhaps it would not be in the quagmire that it is in now. Although of course, that is too tall of an order for the American Empire.