[AlternateGray]

The motivations? Afghanis understand perfectly the motivations behind the Taliban effort. When the Taliban first came into power in the mid-late 90's they enjoyed the popular support of the Afghani people, who were sick of the corruption and lawlessness of the local warlords, not to mention the endless fighting. The Taliban were mostly locals, and they brought about organization, law and order, especially moral order. Most importantly, they brought peace through unification. As time wore on and the Taliban gained almost complete control over the country, the movement grew in size very quickly. Most of the new members weren't locals. They were foreigners, mostly Pakistanis and Arabs, who saw their chance to jump on the bandwagon to power. The movement changed: while the original Taliban were local Islamic scholars offended by the actions of the warlords, they weren't necessarily extremists. The new Taliban was most definitely a hard-core fundamentalist group with a heavily foreign, specifically Arabic, influence, and they actually began to lose some of the support of the people. The Taliban started out as heroes (and they were); they ended up being seen as a power hungry, uncaring group corrupted by foreigners, trying to shove revamped Saudi wahabism down the Afghani people's throats. It's a power thing, now. Not too dissimilar to the Sunni Baath-related insurgent group in Iraq. For them, it's not about religion, or nationalism, or freedom, or the People. It's a group of people who want to be on top of the pile when the dust settles, and that's it.