How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement’s extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban’s external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which have affected the Taliban’s military campaigns and internal politics. Secondly, this is the first full-length study of the Taliban to acknowledge and discuss in detail the movement’s polycentric character. Here not only the Quetta Shura, but also the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s other centers of power, are afforded the attention they deserve. The Taliban at War is based on extensive field research, including hundreds of interviews with Taliban members at all levels of the organization, community elders in Taliban-controlled areas, and other sources. It covers the Taliban insurgency from its first manifestations in 2002 up to the end of 2015. The five-month Battle of Kunduz epitomized the ongoing transition of the Taliban from an insurgent group to a more conventional military force, intent on fighting a protracted civil war. In this latest book, renowned Afghanistan expert Antonio Giustozzi rounds off his twenty years of studying the Taliban with an authoritative sitrep detailing the evolution of its formidable military machine.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The article offers a review of centre-periphery relations and local politics in the Afghan province of Badakhshan from the 1980s to the post-2001 era. It maps the local powerbrokers and charts the transformations that occurred during this period, with particular reference to the impact of the central government's policies on local political alignments and relations of power. The key argument is that President Karzai's and the cabinet's behaviour towards Badakhshani politics was aimed at re-establishing a patrimonial system, rather than at institution-building as claimed. Unable or unwilling to successfully deal with established local players, Kabul resorted to sponsoring new players in local politics and facilitating their rise in order to weaken more independent powerbrokers. However, a local perception of weakness in Kabul, not least due to uncertainty over the durability of the Karzai administration, led local players, old and new, to behave with very short-term horizons, as 'roving bandits' rather than as 'stationary' ones.