the Talibans final stand?

The current Taliban are a dissident of the mujahideen resistance which in the 1980's were supplied arms by the United States and proved to be the sand in the underwear of the occupying Soviets, they were even armed with the latest hand held FIM-92 Stinger missiles which they used to take down Soviet aircraft, the Russians were losing (literally) millions worth in hardware, in 1989 they withdrew leaving a powerful government in charge.



But civil war broke out which was to last until 1992, in 1989, the army and pro-government militias still had 1568 tanks, 828 armoured personnel carriers, 4880 artillery pieces, 126 modern fighter-bombers and 14 attack helicopters. Also, the DRA continued to receive massive aid from the Soviet Union, valued at two to six billion dollars a year, and Soviet military advisors were still present in Afghanistan. The government forces also came to rely on the use of large quantities of Scud missiles: between 1988 and 1992 more than 2000 of these were fired inside Afghanistan, the largest amount of ballistic missiles used since World War II. This considerable amount of firepower was sufficient to keep the mujahideen at bay.

Read that paragraph again, all that fire power and still not enough to keep the mujahideen at bay, although major fighting did continue the Afghan Army still proved to be tough but corrupt and many were negotiating with mujahideen rebels, by 1992 the war had come to the end and the afghan army had appeared to collapse after the mujahideen had destroyed half of Kabul!
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was no more.

The Taliban rose to power in 1996 but after the attacks on the World Trade in September 2001 the coalition responded with bombing Afghanistan in October, followed by a ground offensive of around 11,000 troops in December, following that Operation Anaconda in 2002 that hit the Taliban hard several fleeing to Pakistan, the war seemed to have cooled then.



Instead of hunting down the 50,000 or so in the mountains of Pakistan Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 bogging down the US Army there in the occupation, the Taliban then had five or so years, it was not until 2004 that it seemed to make a revival and now in 2008 it has sky rocketed, starting in his last year Bush had started to send troops to Afghanistan from Iraq and Obama has continued where he has left off.

They're no longer the thriving victorious warriors that they were back in the 1980's and now as the US completely control Afghanistan seem to be trying to bring order down in Pakistan, Gordon Brown has hinted several times of an attack on Pakistan (maybe even supported by India who at the moment has itchy trigger fingers).

For instance after Bhutto's assassination in late 2007 order came close to falling, US Special Forces had been readying for the seizure of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapon, (250 of which situated in ten bases across the country).

But the Taliban seem to be pushing for order to fall before their last attack since they've already proved they don't have the man or fire power to fight another war with the coalition since they've no longer anywhere to fall back too, they obviously realized this and after years of fighting seem to want to symbolize their downfall in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Or maybe get into the minds of the people since Pakistan at the moment is one bullet away from Islamic Revolution (think Iran in late 1978), and a revolution will leave the new leaders led by God knows who armed with 250 nuclear weapons including the means (ballistic missiles and F-16 fighter-bombers) to deliver them.