The revival of the Afghan Taliban 2001-2011
In: Orient: deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur des Orients, Band 53, Heft 2, S. 59-68
"The paper explains how a movement, which in 2001 was dismissed as defeated and irrelevant to the future of Afghanistan, re-established its influence across the country during the decade of international intervention in order to position itself as a serious contender for power by 2011. The paper shows that the Taliban effectively harnessed multiple Afghan cultural resources, including religious institutions, the Pashtun tribal system, elements of the Afghan national narrative as well as also embracing modern communications. However, the Taliban movement still suffers from constraints to its social power, in the form of limited ethnic appeal, lack of inroads in urban areas and slowness to embrace the instruments of pluralism. The implication is that the Taliban are still ill-equipped to exercise state power." (author's abstract)