John Philip Walker Lindh (born February 9, 1981) is an American who was captured as an enemy combatant during the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. He was detained at Qala-i-Jangi fortress, used as a prison. He denied participating in the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, a violent uprising of the Taliban prisoners, stating that he was wounded in the leg and hid in the cellar of the Pink House, in the southern half of the fort. He was one of 86 of the estimated 400 prisoners to survive the uprising, in which CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed. Brought to trial in United States federal court in February 2002, Lindh accepted a plea bargain; he pleaded guilty to two charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released on supervision on May 23, 2019, for a three-year period of supervised release.A convert to Sunni Islam in California at age 16, Lindh traveled to Yemen in 1998 to study Arabic and stayed there for 10 months. He later returned in 2000, then went to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban in fighting against the Afghan Northern Alliance. He received training at Al-Farouq, a training camp associated with al-Qaeda, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other countries. While at the camp, he attended a lecture by Osama bin Laden. After the 9/11 attacks, he remained with the Taliban military forces despite learning that the U.S. had become allied with the Northern Alliance. Lindh had previously received training with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an internationally designated terrorist organization based in Pakistan.Lindh went by the name Sulayman al-Faris during his time in Afghanistan, but prefers the name Abu Sulayman al-Irlandi today. In early reports following his capture, when the press learned that he was a U.S. citizen, he was usually referred to by the news media as just "John Walker".

The Taliban (; Pashto: طالبان, romanized: ṭālibān, lit. 'students' or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by the name of its state, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi-Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, and jihadist political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996–2001, before being overthrown following the United States invasion. It regained power in August 2021 after years of insurgency.

The Taliban emerged in 1994 as one of the prominent factions in the Afghan Civil War and largely consisted of students (ṭālib) from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan who had been educated in traditional Islamic schools (madāris). Under the leadership of Mohammed Omar, the movement spread throughout most of Afghanistan, shifting power away from the Mujahideen warlords. In 1996, the group administered roughly three-quarters of the country, and established the First Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with the Afghan capital transferred to Kandahar from Kabul. The Taliban's government was opposed by the Northern Alliance militia, which seized parts of northeast Afghanistan and largely maintained international recognition as a continuation of the interim Islamic State of Afghanistan. The Taliban held control of most of the country until being overthrown after the United States invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001.

After being overthrown, the Taliban launched an insurgency to fight the United States-backed Karzai administration and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the War in Afghanistan. Under Hìbatullah Akhundzada's leadership, in May 2021, the Taliban began a military offensive, in which the group seized control of several areas from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Following the Fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan and established the Islamic Emirate once again.

During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, and were widely condemned for massacres against Afghan civilians, harsh discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities, denial of UN food supplies to starving civilians, destruction of cultural monuments, banning of females from school and most employment, and prohibition of most music. Following their return to power in 2021, the Afghanistan government budget has lost 80% of its funding, food insecurity is widespread and Taliban leaders have talked of a "softer" enforcement of sharia, and urged the United States and other countries to recognize its regime.