Is it really valid to talk about "the Taliban" over a period of somewhere on the order of 40 years? The term referred to a particular group and generation, I t

Is it really valid to talk about "the Taliban" over a period of somewhere on the order of 40 years? The term referred to a particular group and generation, I thought, that grew up in the wake of the Soviet invasion. Obviously the young men with rocket launchers in the news are not the same people decade after decade.