Taliban was a homegrown Afghan movement sponsored and funded by Pakistani Intelligence. Pak Intel is still fairly pro-Taliban. This is one of the problems we deal with in trying to operate in Pakistan, and this is the fine line Musharraf walks in dealing with us, that he is surrounded by pro-Taliban security men. Probably half his military is pro-Taliban.
The Taliban's first military success came in 1994 when they captured the city of Kandahar.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
So that's the timeframe for Taliban power.
The claim of US support stems from US arms shipments to the Mujahadeen in the early 1980's (note that) when the Mujahadeen were fighting the Soviets.
The later rise of the Taliban came as a reaction against the Mujahadeen who had beaten the Soviets and who were then seen as oppressive and insufficiently pro-Islamic.
It's hard for me to see how the US "created" the Taliban, but through pretzel logic some folks make that claim.
As others have said, prior U.S. support in the 80’s was for the Muhajedeen fighting the Soviets. Even then it was mostly limited to getting them some stinger missiles and some antiaircraft guns. They were getting pounded by the Soviet Hind helocopters and needed some way to get at them.
But it wasn’t until years after that that the Taliban rose up as a political force, and by then there wasn’t much left over in the way of U.S. weapons. They got most of their stuff from Pakistan, financiers like Bin Laden, and whatever ex-soviet stuff they could scrounge, which appears to have been a lot.
You can challenge the M-I-L to simply look for herself. Look at the weapons that the Taliban has used throughout their sordid history:
Soviet AK-47’s
Soviet RPG’s
Soviet Machine guns
Soviet armor (well, until we got there anyway...)
Same for that matter with the Northern Alliance. Not a whole lot in the way of American gear.
It’s like those that claim that the U.S. “created and armed” Saddam Hussien. It’s ridiculous. Suppose that’s where he got all those T-72 tanks? AK’s? Scuds? Silkworms? In the war with Iran we gave Saddam some tiny support and advice, but it was inconsequential. Especially compared to the supply line he had coming from the Soviets, and to some extent from the Chinese.