Taliban

Taliban appears in roughly 1 monitored articles per day as of August 19, 2026. Mentions are up 201.8% week-over-week. The tone of that coverage averages -4.49 — negative.

The Taliban, officially known as the Islamic Movement of Taliban, also referring to itself by the name of the government it operates, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is the ruling government and religious organization of Afghanistan, as well as a militant organization with an ideology comprising elements of the Deobandi movement of Islamic fundamentalism and Pashtun nationalism. It is the sole legal political force in the country, and rejects the principle of democratic participation in its decision making, considering political parties to be un-Islamic. It governs and operates centrally under a supreme leader with unlimited power who issues fatwas serving both as law and religious instruction. It ruled approximately 90% of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, before it was overthrown by an American-led invasion after the September 11 attacks carried out by the Taliban's ally al-Qaeda. Following a 20-year insurgency and the departure of coalition forces, the Taliban recaptured Kabul in August 2021, overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and now controls all of Afghanistan. The Taliban has been condemned for restricting human rights, including women's rights to work and have an education, and for the persecution of ethnic minorities. It is designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, and the Taliban government is largely unrecognized by the international community.

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

Wikidata

Data updated: · refreshed every 2 hours from GDELT

Articles / day
1
mentioning this entity
Week over week
+201.8%
7-day mean vs prior
Tone
-4.49
negative

Coverage volume, last 90 days

Taliban mentions per day: 87 days, latest 1.00 on 2026-08-190.005001000May 23Jun 9Jun 24Jul 9Jul 24Aug 8Aug 19

Coverage tone, last 90 days

Taliban coverage tone: 87 days, latest tone -4.49 on 2026-08-19+200-20May 23Jun 9Jun 24Jul 9Jul 24Aug 8Aug 19

Reader interest (Wikipedia)

Daily Wikipedia pageviews for Taliban: 89 days, latest 3269.00 on 2026-08-180.00500010000May 22Jun 6Jun 21Jul 6Jul 21Aug 5Aug 18

Daily human pageviews of the entity's English Wikipedia article (Wikimedia Analytics). Coverage above measures what the press SUPPLIES; this measures what readers DEMAND — divergence between the two is its own signal.

Mentions counted via a quoted-name query against the GDELT DOC API, aggregated to UTC days — see methodology. Derived data is CC BY 4.0 (“Geotone / GDELT”).