Recent years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taliban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government.

They are also threatening to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and are blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks.

The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994.

It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries - mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia - which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam.

The Taliban's promise - in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power.

WASHINGTON -- A Missouri man was executed Wednesday for the 1991 kidnap, rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

Martin Link was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m. (0615 GMT), 14 minutes after being given a lethal injection at Bonne Terre prison, the Missouri Department of Corrections said. It was the state's first execution in two years and its second since late 2005.
The 47-year-old was first sentenced to death in 1995.
Elissa Self-Braun had gone missing while walking to her school bus stop. Investigators later discovered her body along the St. Francis River, south of her hometown of St. Louis.
They subsequently found a jar of Vaseline inside Link's vehicle with traces of blood mixed with the petroleum jelly. A DNA test confirmed Link was a match with evidence found on the girl's body.source