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.     

Germany

European Journal of Political Research -     

Who completes batterer's treatment groups? An empirical investigation

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences that could discriminate among batterers who completed a violence treatment program and batterers who dropped out after intake, but prior to or during treatment. A discriminant analysis of a variety of demographic and psychological variables showed a significant difference between the completers group and the other two groups of batterers. Men who completed treatment reported fewer indirect threats of violence, had a higher level of education, were more likely to be employed full time, witnessed abuse more often in their family of origin, were less likely to be victims of child abuse, scored higher on the FIRO-B subscale of expressed control and had more children. Further research needs to be done to assess how these variables influence the batterers during treatment and to help dropouts successfully complete treatment.