Central Asian Countries: Learning to Live Next to the Taliban

With the withdrawal of the US and coalition forces from Afghanistan and the rapid takeover by the Taliban, most Central Asian governments recognized the Taliban in a pragmatic decision to peacefully coexist with the neighboring extremist regime that will likely remain in power for the foreseeable future. Tajikistan is, however, denying the Taliban recognition and indirectly supporting the resistance movement in Panjshir. The political and human catastrophe in Afghanistan is threatening to boost autocratic tendencies and further deepen political gaps in Central Asian societies. This article discusses the rationale behind each Central Asian government’s approach to the Talibanized Afghanistan and the looming domestic and external challenges to the region.     

阿富汗大变局:地缘政治和安全格局的演变

当前,阿富汗正在经历重大变局.阿富汗塔利班(阿塔)成功卷土重来,并且完成临时政府组建.尽管仍有多重挑战,但阿塔执政已不存在根本性威胁.这引发阿富汗地缘政治格局和地区安全形势的深度调整.在地缘政治格局方面,整体呈现"美国西方影响力下降,地区国家影响力上升"这一"东升西降"趋势.美国正在从"局内人"变为"局外人",但仍将发...     

How Many Lives Do the Taliban Have?

After having participated in the civil war and later ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, the current Taliban have a third life as insurgents against the Afghan government and its foreign supporters. Their aim is to return to power and establish an Islamic system. Pakistani shelter and support, guerrilla warfare, and terrorist tactics allowed the Neo-Taliban to extend their influence, particularly to the south and east of Afghanistan. They used the weakness of the Hamid Karzai regime to set up shadow governments. Since even the coalition forces have abandoned the aim of defeating them, the Taliban are guaranteed survival after foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014. Due to the different interests of the main stakeholders—the Afghan government, the Taliban, the United States, and Pakistan—it is unlikely that the conflict will end by negotiations any time soon. Thus, the civil war will continue. When the Taliban try to extend their reach beyond rural areas and into non-Pashtun districts, they will meet tough resistance. Therefore, it is likely that the fragmentation of Afghanistan will persist and that the Taliban will not return as rulers of a united Afghanistan.     

论奥巴马政府的“阿富巴”战略困局

奥巴马在阿富汗战争问题上继承了布什的失误，将不具有连续性的恐怖主义和具有连续性的战争混为一谈，采取增兵阿富汗的方针，战争造成的死伤人数激增，美国已有半数以上的人反对这场战争。奥巴马又将战争扩大到巴基斯坦，遭到塔利班的疯狂报复，恐怖主义袭击遍及巴基斯坦各大城市，巴基斯坦形势恶化。在阿富汗启动和平进程，解决美国和北约撤军问题，成立联合政府，恢复阿富汗的和平与稳定，在巴基斯坦实现停战，是值得探索的出路。     

Italy and the community after thirty years of experience

Convincing the Pakistani military to focus its attention on the Afghan Taliban and associated groups has so far proved unsuccessful. The Obama administration's reliance on economic incentives and regional peace initiatives, such as a dialogue with India on Kashmir, has failed to deliver tangible results. Instead, India's footprint within Afghanistan has expanded, leaving Pakistani elites ever more anxious. Balancing Indian and Pakistani interests in South Asia remains a top priority for Western governments, and most importantly the US. In the current milieu this will require shifting Western bureaucratic focus from the age old and seemingly intractable Kashmir dispute to maintaining the peace within Afghanistan. This article outlines why this shift should be considered, and how the India--Pakistan trust deficit might be bridged.     

Force Size for the Post-Westphalian World

The quality of the U.S. military has improved steadily since the end of the Cold War, but technological and managerial advancements cannot compensate for the inadequate size of the American armed forces. The post–Cold War years saw a shift from the Westphalian, state-ordered world to one where Western states are at war with transnational, substate terrorist groups. This requires adjustments in the American military establishment. Improvements in quality must be matched by an increase in quantity in order to meet U.S. security needs. As interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven, a minimalist force may be sufficient to win a war, but where nation-building is required, it will find it difficult to win the peace.     

On the Trail of the ‘Lions of Islam’: Foreign Fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 1980-2010

This article provides a review of the history of jihadi foreign fighters in Afghanistan over the last 30 years. It details the post-9/11 period and the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces, focusing on the ethnic origin of the foreign fighters and how different groups engaged in different aspects of the conflict. Additionally, the piece explains that while the foreign fighters who came to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan included, among others, Uzbekistanis (not Afghan Uzbeks), Turks, and Arabs, there was also a significant force of Pakistanis—of both Pashtun and Punjabi origins—that joined, bolstering the Taliban army.     

India's ‘Af-Pak’ Conundrum: South Asia in Flux

The risks to global security from a failure in Afghanistan are great. Abandoning the goal of establishing both a functioning Afghan state and a moderate Pakistan places greater pressure on Indian security. Pakistani intelligence would be emboldened to escalate terrorist attacks against India once it is satisfied that the Taliban would provide it strategic depth in Afghanistan. This would surely force retaliation from India.     

A FAREWELL TO THE GREAT GAME? PROSPECTS FOR RUSSIAN-AMERICAN SECURITY COOPERATION IN CENTRAL ASIA

Long before 9–11, Russia and the United States found common ground in their efforts to undermine the Taliban government in Afghanistan, despite serious disagreements over policy in other parts of the world. The events of 9–11, however, changed Russian foreign and security policy drastically. One of the most fundamental and controversial shifts came when President Putin chose not to interfere in US negotiations with the Central Asian states to use their airbases for the US war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Putin also offered to use Russia’s oil reserves as a means to stabilize jittery world markets. In return, Russia gained US support for its bid to pipe Caspian Sea oil over Russian territory. More importantly, the US government gave Russia essentially a free hand in its war against separatist Chechnya. While there are many potential scenarios in highly unstable Central Asia that could serve to sour relations once again, Russia and the United States have an unprecedented opportunity to build trust and cooperation through peacekeeping and problem solving in the region.     

British and American military operations in the Battle of Helmand, 2006–2011

In summer 2006, elements of the British Army were deployed to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The US Army followed with a surge in 2009 and 2010. The British and American military forces attempted to construct a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to win the war in Helmand from 2006 until 2011, but the operational approach implemented was most often that of conventional warfighting. The inability to successfully implement COIN owed not to a lack of will, but rather to short tours, mission command, a lack of available resources, the particular situation on the ground in Helmand and the propensity of the Taliban to launch major conventional operations during much of the period in question.     

巴阿边境地区的毒品生产与贩运

巴阿边境地区历史上就是重要的鸦片产地,阿富汗目前是全球最大鸦片生产国和海洛因输出地,巴基斯坦则为阿富汗毒品输出的重要通道。塔利班和"基地"组织在该地区的活动,尤其是阿富汗境内安全局势与该地区的毒品生产和贩运紧密联系。该地区毒品生产和贩运既有地理、气候和经济原因,更有政治和历史文化原因。对该地区毒品生产和贩运进行研究,不仅有助于了解其对世界毒品市场的影响,也有助于研究塔利班和"基地"组织等恐怖极端势力的活动。     

De-antagonising the Other: Changing Constructions of the Taliban and the Possibility of Reconciliation

Shortly after 9/11 any kind of engagement, let alone reconciliation, with the Taliban was considered absurd. Recently, however, Afghan as well as Western elites have announced that they are now willing to talk to parts of the Taliban in an attempt to begin a reconciliation process in Afghanistan. This article focuses on the discourse theoretical framework developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and illustrates the merits of such an approach for explaining how such a shift became possible. It argues that the turn to reconciliation with the Taliban was enabled by a transformation of the discursive construction of the Taliban. The article focuses on the discursive dynamics of the (de)coupling and differentiation of signifiers as a central mechanism of meaning production. It argues that antagonistic identity constructions in the context of the global war on terror formed the discursive background against which the Taliban were first articulated as part of the terrorist “Other”, which made any engagement impossible. From 2009 onwards, however, it can be observed how the signifier “Taliban” was decoupled from the identity of the “terrorist”, how it transcended the antagonistic frontier and came to be seen as an entity worthy of engagement.     

End States,Resource Allocation and NATO Strategy in Afghanistan

This article compares Canadian and allied goals in Afghanistan during the military campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in 2001–2002 with the objectives of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in subsequent years. The authors conclude that the limited aims in the initial campaign have been replaced by a set of more ambitious objectives. After considering force levels, resources committed to Afghanistan and the exigencies of the security situation, the authors conclude that Canadian and allied means have not been adequate to the ends sought. Despite significant progress in political reform and socio-economic improvements in many regions of the country, as of the end of 2007, allied strategy in Afghanistan may not viable without considerable increases in resources.     

Insurgents,accidental guerrillas and valley-ism: an oral history of oppositional US soldiers' attitudes toward the enemy in Afghanistan

In recent years Western policy towards Afghanistan has been marked by inconsistencies and errors. This article explores United States (US) soldiers' perceptions of the enemy in Afghanistan based on oral history interviews with dissenting combat soldiers who served in the Afghan theatre. By foregrounding soldiers' attitudes towards the enemy, this study includes marginalized voices, often overlooked, that challenge prevailing misconceptions. General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has argued that significant battlefield decisions are not reserved for generals alone. Petraeus' counterinsurgency programme promotes ‘strategic corporals’ whose decisions hold important consequences. If strategic corporals are involved in military decision-making, it follows that their interpretation of the conflict may also hold strategic implications for the researcher. Soldiers' views of war are not the final, authoritative verdict. However, this article suggests that these strategic corporals should be included in a complex matrix of interpretation to broaden US understanding of the enemy.     

The Big Problem of Small Allies: New Data and Theory on Defiant Local Counterinsurgency Partners in Afghanistan and Iraq

Alliance politics are critical yet understudied in counterinsurgency interventions. Despite the importance of local allies, traditional research on alliances fails to account for the challenges of managing in-country counterinsurgency security partners or explain variation among which types of policy requests from large intervening allies are likely to result in compliance or defiance by local partners. When did US intervening forces have leverage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when was American influence limited? Utilizing thousands of US government documents to analyze over 250 US demands of allies in Kabul and Baghdad, this paper reexamines established variables in the literature on inter-alliance bargaining—namely allied interests and dependencies—to offer a new model describing the interaction of these variables in asymmetric counterinsurgency partnerships. The theory predicts when large allies are likely to influence local partners and when these intervening forces will likely fail to coerce them.     

The Taliban and Islam

This paper examines the aims, motives and methods of the Taliban, the present rulers of most of Afghanistan. In accordance with their fundamentalist views the Taliban have established an Islamic system which focuses on the implementation of Shariah. This paper argues that the Taliban apply directly the divine injunctions which they have drastically sharpened - that means without being sanctioned by act of law of men. The government which the Taliban have set up has so far reached only a low level of institutionalization; the real power emanates from their leader, Mullah Omar.     

阿富汗变局后的中亚安全:大国博弈与地区合作

阿富汗与中亚有着非常密切的历史文化联系,同时阿富汗问题对中亚安全构成了直接威胁.随着2021年美国仓促撤军、塔利班重新夺取政权,中亚战略地位的特殊性引发大国为争夺地区安全和经济主导权展开新一轮地缘政治竞争,中亚地区的和平与稳定又遭遇新的挑战.本文通过对新形势下中亚地区安全的新特征、新变化的梳理和分析,发现阿富汗变局后中...     

Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is in danger of capsizing in a perfect storm of insurgency that mimics operations and tactics witnessed in Iraq. This article assesses this insurgency and the re-emergent Taliban. The common view of the Taliban as simply a radical Afghan Islamist movement is overly simple, for that organization has been able to build on tribal kinship networks and a charismatic mullah phenomenon to mobilize a critical and dynamic rural base of support. This support, buttressed by Talib reinforcements from Pakistan's border areas, is enough to frustrate the U.S.-led Coalition's counterinsurgency strategy. At the operational level, the Taliban is fighting a classic “war of the flea,” while the Coalition continues to fight the war largely according to the Taliban “game plan.” This is resulting in its losing the war in Afghanistan one Pashtun village at a time.     

The Taliban and Islam

This paper examines the aims, motives and methods of the Taliban, the present rulers of most of Afghanistan. In accordance with their fundamentalist views the Taliban have established an Islamic system which focuses on the implementation of Shariah. This paper argues that the Taliban apply directly the divine injunctions which they have drastically sharpened ‐ that means without being sanctioned by act of law of men. The government which the Taliban have set up has so far reached only a low level of institutionalization; the real power emanates from their leader, Mullah Omar.     

Communication Breakdown: Strategic Communications and Defeat in Afghanistan

The author reflects on our decade long conflict in Afghanistan and identifies what he considers a main contributor to the malaise. He believes it is a failure to communicate: a message of purpose which answers the oft-asked “why are we there?” question amongst Western audiences; a message of resolve on which Afghans can bet their lives that ISAF will remain there until the Taliban is beaten or compelled to reasonable compromise; and, a message of what success will look like which is accompanied by a compelling rationalization of the cost.