The Taliban's War: The Other Side of the Afghan Conflict, 2001-2015

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In a lightning war in 2001-02, the United States (with British support) invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power. Since then, the West has spent over a trillion dollars and well over a decade battling the Taliban and trying to rebuild the Afghan state. Despite this, the insurgency remains undefeated. In explaining this state of affairs, analysts have mostly focused on deficiencies in the international and Afghan effort. Lack of progress has been blamed on the failings of Western leadership and strategy, on the hubris and incoherence of the international community, on Afghan government corruption, and on flaws in the tactical conduct of operations.This project will examine the Afghanistan War from the Taliban perspective. Through oral history, we will reconstruct how the Taliban planned, fought and experienced the war. We will examine the evolution in Taliban strategy, structures and tactics since 2001. We will explore how the Taliban re-established itself in the south and the east from 2004 on, and steadily expanded its presence in the north and the west of the country. Finally, we will assess the impact of the withdrawal of international combat forces on the Taliban military campaign. Overall, we will assess Taliban adaptability in the conflict and the roots of Taliban resilience. The picture is an immensely complex one, with great local variation in the politics, pressures and personalities driving the conflict on the ground, and a dynamic interactions between various factions within the Taliban leadership and between the warring parties, international, Afghan and insurgent. The research team brings together three researchers with extensive in-country fieldwork experience and extensive expertise on Afghan and Western perspectives of the war. The project methodology has been tested in an ESRC-funded pilot study that reconstructed the Taliban campaign in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan from 2004-2012, using interviews with 53 Taliban commanders and 27 local elders.This project will expand that study to eight more provinces, covering all the regions of Afghanistan. Provinces have been selected for their importance to the Taliban, and to enable assessment of variation in terms of the impact of local dynamics, clerical support, geographical location, and other armed groups on the Taliban campaign. Using experienced Afghan field researchers, this project will conduct 275 interviews; 195 with Taliban commanders and cadres and 80 with local elders. The project also draws on the research team's own extensive research on the international military campaign and on Taliban shadow government.An innovative feature of this project is that in addition to studying the closing stages of the current conflict, it will also seek to positively shape the conflict endgame through engagement with senior Taliban leaders. This will build on two sets of ESRC funded talks with senior Taliban leaders; in July 2012 to explore Taliban perspectives on reconciliation and communicate these perspectives to Western policymakers, and in March 2013 to scope out the possibilities for ceasefires. The project will result in four high-quality publications; a book, two scholarly papers in leading academic journals, and an essay in the leading US policy journal. Interim project findings will inform Western policy from mid 2014 onwards; this is a critical year with the withdrawal of Western forces and the Afghan Presidential elections opening up the potential for progress in peace talks but equally the potential for an intensification in the conflict. Final project findings will also inform the learning of lessons from this war by Western militaries for doctrine and capability development and military education, and by wider policy communities for future Western military interventions.