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Resurgence of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan: How and why?

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Abstract

On the same day (1 May 2003) that President Bush declared ‘mission accomplished’ in Iraq; in an announcement considered as ‘marking a major victory in America's ongoing war on terror’ by the Fox News, his Secretary of Defence declared that ‘the major combat activity’ had ended in Afghanistan. More than 5 years later, however, victory in Afghanistan seems as elusive as in Iraq. The Taliban have re-emerged as a formidable fighting force and are going from strength to strength, despite the involvement of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and more than quadruple increase in the number of foreign troops. What went wrong and how were the Taliban able to survive and pose a serious challenge to the United States and NATO? The aim of this paper is to provide an outline of the important factors for the rise of insurgency, from the initial mistakes made to the interference by Pakistan; weaknesses of the Karzai government and its national army and police; the question of legitimacy and offences to traditional and religious values and beliefs; and finally the Allied Forces and NATO troops becoming part of the problem, incapable of solving it.

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Notes

  1. For detailed discussions of these factors see (Dobbins, 2007; Johnson, 2007; Rohde and Sanger, 2007; Sky, 2007) and http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html.

  2. In addition to the Taliban or the ‘neo-Taliban,’ consisting of several factions themselves, at least two other groups are involved in the insurgency: the Hizb Islami of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar and the group of foreign fighters. For convenience, all the insurgent groups are referred to as the ‘Taliban’ in this paper.

  3. Interviews were conducted in Kabul in December 2006–January 2007, and the interviewees included President Karzai, Speaker of Owlosi Jirga (Lower House of the Parliament), several ministers and members of Parliament, some high-level military officers and some political pundits.

  4. Wahid Muzhdah, an Afghan political analyst who served in Taliban's Foreign Ministry. I am grateful to him for sharing with me his insights on the causes of Taliban's resurgence.

  5. It is interesting that a week later, on 21 May 2008, ISAF-NATO Commander, General Dan McNeill, estimated the number of Afghan army troops at 55 000 in an interview with the BBC Dari Service.

References

  • Dobbins, J. (2007) Ending Afghanistan's civil war. Rand Corporation Testimony Series, CT-276 (March), pp. 1–8.

  • Giustozzi, A. (2008) Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 15–21 and 46–69.

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  • Johnson, T.H. (2007) On the edge of the big muddy: The Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 5 (2): 93–129.

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  • Rohde, D. and Sanger, D.E. (2007) How a ‘good war’ in Afghanistan went bad. The New York Times, 12 August.

  • Sky, E. (2007) Increasing ISAF's impact on stability in Afghanistan. Defense & Security Analysis 23 (1): 7–25.

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Lafraie, N. Resurgence of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan: How and why?. Int Polit 46, 102–113 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2008.36

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