Decoding the New Taliban
Decoding the New Taliban

Author: Antonio Giustozzi

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2012-08

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1849042268

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While the 'New Taliban' looms large in the global media, little is known about how it functions as an organisation. How united is it? Are its structures relatively strong, or surprisingly brittle? Are personal relations and networking based on traditional ties of kin and ethnicity the sum total of its organisational capabilities, or are efforts underway to build more institutionalised chains of command? How united is the New Taliban, and how does it maintain whatever degree of unity it has, given the attrition it has suffered in the field? And to what extent is its leadership able to impose switches in strategy among the rank-andfile, given Afghanistan's difficult geography and poor communications? These are among the questions answered in this book by a renowned cast of practitioners, journalists and academics, all of whom have long field experience of the latest phase of the New Taliban's insurgency in Afghanistan. Decoding the New Taliban includes a number of detailed studies of specific regions or provinces, which for different reasons are especially significant for the Taliban and for understanding their expansion. Alongside these regional studies, the volume includes thematic analyses of negotiating with the Taliban, the Taliban's propaganda effort and its strategic vision

Decoding the New Taliban
Decoding the New Taliban

Author: Antonio Giustozzi

Publisher: Hurst & Company

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13:

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While the 'New Taliban' looms large in the global media, little is known about how it functions as an organisation. This title includes studies of specific regions or provinces, which for different reasons are significant for the Taliban and for understanding their expansion. It also includes a thematic analyses of negotiating with the Taliban.

An Intimate War
An Intimate War

Author: Mike Martin

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0199387982

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An Intimate War tells the story of the last thirty-four years of conflict in Helmand Province, Afghani- stan as seen through the eyes of the Helmandis. In the West, this period is often defined through different lenses - the Soviet intervention, the civil war, the Taliban, and the post-2001 nation-building era. Yet, as experienced by local inhabitants, the Helmand conflict is a perennial one, involving the same individuals, families and groups, and driven by the same arguments over land, water and power. This book - based on both military and re- search experience in Helmand and 150 inter- views in Pashto - offers a very different view of Helmand from those in the media. It demonstrates how outsiders have most often misunderstood the ongoing struggle in Helmand and how, in doing so, they have exacerbated the conflict, perpetuated it and made it more violent - precisely the opposite of what was intended when their interventions were launched. Mike Martin's oral history of Helmand under- scores the absolute imperative of understanding the highly local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal conflict in much of the 'third' world.

Beyond the Wild Tribes
Beyond the Wild Tribes

Author: Angela Schlenkhoff

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780231702102

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International and nongovernmental organizations, as well as journalists, are excellent sources of information on contemporary Afghanistan. Unfortunately, their expertise often goes untapped by those who hope to better understand the country's complexity. Beyond the 'Wild Tribes'draws on these perspectives to build a comprehensive portrait of Afghanistan and its widely dispersed peoples and cultures. Contributors cull a wealth of research, effectively collapsing the myths and stereotypes perpetuated by nineteenth- and twentieth-century European texts. Their wide-ranging essays address everything from the causes of the country's protracted conflicts to the nature and future of its musical traditions. Anyone hoping for an intimate, engaging, and uncommon encounter with an increasingly visible nation will relish the insight of this expertly crafted collection.

The Taliban Revival
The Taliban Revival

Author: Hassan Abbas

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0300178840

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The true story of the Taliban’s remarkable resurgence in Pakistan and war-torn Afghanistan more than a decade after the U.S. military’s post-9/11 incursion In autumn 2001, U.S. and NATO troops were deployed to Afghanistan to unseat the Taliban rulers, repressive Islamic fundamentalists who had lent active support to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda jihadists. The NATO forces defeated and dismantled the Taliban government, scattering its remnants across the country. But despite a more than decade-long attempt to eradicate them, the Taliban endured—regrouping and reestablishing themselves as a significant insurgent movement. Gradually they have regained control of large portions of Afghanistan even as U.S. troops are preparing to depart from the region. In his authoritative and highly readable account, author Hassan Abbas examines how the Taliban not only survived but adapted to their situation in order to regain power and political advantage. Abbas traces the roots of religious extremism in the area and analyzes the Taliban’s support base within Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In addition, he explores the roles that Western policies and military decision making— not to mention corruption and incompetence in Kabul—have played in enabling the Taliban’s resurgence.

The Legitimization Strategy of the Taliban's Code of Conduct
The Legitimization Strategy of the Taliban's Code of Conduct

Author: Yoshinobu Nagamine

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 113753088X

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What norms and principles guide the Afghan Taliban in their conduct of hostilities? The author focuses on the Layeha, a Code of Conduct issued by the highest Taliban authority. Interviews with Taliban members were conducted to understand their perception of the Layeha, which is modeled as a 'one-way mirror.'

Directorate S
Directorate S

Author: Steve Coll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 794

ISBN-13: 052555730X

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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.

The Business of Martyrdom
The Business of Martyrdom

Author: Jeffrey W Lewis

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2012-04-15

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1612510973

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The Business of Martyrdom is the only comprehensive history of suicide bombing from its origins in Imperial Russia to the present day. It makes use of a framework from the history and philosophy of technology to explain the diffusion and evolution of suicide bombing over the past several decades. It is primarily a work of synthesis meant to reach a broad audience and endeavors to integrate as much of the recent scholarly literature as possible, including reconciling explanatory mechanisms that seem to be at odds with one another. In addition, this book is able to draw on very recent changes in suicide bombing in the years 2008-2010 that allow it to have a slightly different perspective than earlier studies. For the first time the global number of suicide attacks has declined significantly for three years in a row. This book therefore has the advantage of addressing the phenomenon of suicide bombing as a bounded phenomenon with limits to its growth and diffusion. To this point the impression that suicide bombers are the smartest bombs yet created has been widespread but confined to the area of metaphor. Drawing well-established ideas from the history of technology, The Business of Martyrdom argues that the metaphor should be taken literally. Suicide bombing is a technology that has been invented and re-invented at different times in different areas but always for the same purpose: resolving a mismatch in military capabilities between antagonists by utilizing the available cultural and human resources. Over the past several years, analysts have produced a large number of monographs and articles examining suicide bombing. The best contributions in this new and growing literature have shed considerable light on the complexity of suicide bombing in practice, particularly regarding the structure of the organizations that deploy suicide bombers and the relationships between these organizations and the recruits whom they utilize in their attacks. Nevertheless, nagging inconsistencies and questions remain. These inconsistencies can be explained by examining suicide bombing as a technological system that integrates human beings, cultures, and devices and directs them toward specific ends. Such an analysis requires that neither the individual bombers nor their sponsoring organizations be the basic unit of discussion. Instead, the bombers must be understood as components within a much larger system that has been shaped by a host of social, cultural, and operational constraints throughout its existence. Integrating insights from the historical analysis of other technological systems with the recent literature specifically devoted to suicide bombing therefore allows The Business of Martyrdom to develop a fuller understanding of suicide bombing as a unified yet diverse phenomenon.

Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop
Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop

Author: Antonio Giustozzi

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780231700092

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Since the Allied invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the Bush administration has celebrated the imminent demise of the Taliban, with claims of a moral and psychological defeat playing a prominent role in the presidential elections of 2004. Some commentators suggested that reconstruction and development had won over the Afghan population, despite widespread criticism of the meager distribution of aid and failed attempts at nation building, not to mention the infamous corruption of Kabul's power-hoarding elites. In March 2006, both Afghan and American officials continued to assert that the Taliban are no longer able to fight large battles. Unfortunately that theory would soon collapse beneath the weight of a series of particularly ferocious clashes, causing the mood in the American media to turn from one of optimism to one of defeatism and impending catastrophe.Suddenly faced with a very sophisticated and creative form of guerilla warfare, the West found itself at a loss to fight an insurgency that bore little resemblance to its former enemy. In the first book ever to be published on the neo-Taliban, Antonio Giustozzi provocatively argues that the appearance of the neo-Taliban should in no way have been a surprise. Beginning in 2003, a growing body of evidence began to surface that cast doubt on the official interpretation of the conflict. With the West cutting corners to maintain peace within the country, which included tolerating Afghanistan's burgeoning opium trade, the Taliban was able to regroup and grow in strength, weapons, and recruits. Giustozzi's book poses a bold challenge to contemporary accounts of the invasion and its aftermath and is an important investigation into the rise and dangerous future of the neo-Taliban.

Fountainhead of Jihad
Fountainhead of Jihad

Author: Vahid Brown

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 0199365253

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Drawing upon a wealth of previously unresearched primary sources in many languages, the authors shed much new light on a group frequently described as the most lethal actor in the current Afghan insurgency, and shown here to have been for decades at the centre of a nexus of transnational Islamist militancy, fostering the development of jihadi organisations from Southeast Asia to East Africa. Addressing the abundant new evidence documenting the Haqqani network's pivotal role in the birth and evolution of the global jihadi movement, the book also represents a significant advance in our knowledge of the history of al-Qaeda, fundamentally altering the picture painted by the existing literature on the subject.