The Taliban Insurgency and an Analysis of 'Shabnamah' (Night Letters)

Abstract

The Taliban has recently re-emerged on the Afghan scene with vengeance. Five years after being defeated in Afghanistan by a U.S. coalition, the resurgent Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda, are mounting an increasingly virulent insurgency, especially in the east and south, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The re-emergence of the Taliban can be attributed to three major factors: (1) the lack of state-building and the inability of the Afghan government to establish a significant presence throughout the country; (2) the failure to secure and stabilize the rural areas of the country so that development and reconstruction can proceed, and; (3) the lack of any significant material improvement in the lives of most Pashtuns in the south and east of the country since the demise of the Taliban regime. These three factors have all had a significant impact on the failure of the Karzai regime to engender support and have contributed to making the Taliban a viable alternative to what is perceived as a failed Kabul regime. In essence, the Taliban now represents a significant challenge to the survival of President Hamid Karzai's government. The purpose of this paper is to make sense of Taliban "culture" or world view and its implications for the insurgency that is gripping Afghanistan. The research reported here focuses on the narrative strategy the Taliban has employed to garner support with the Afghan people. Specifically, the paper assesses the narratives of Taliban "shabnamah," commonly referred to as "night letters," in an effort to unravel what the Taliban represents. As will be demonstrated, night letters have played a critical role in the information campaign employed by the Taliban in an effort to establish a popular base for its insurgency against the Karzai regime in Kabul.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA484261

Entities

People

  • Thomas H. Johnson

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Christianity
  • Counterinsurgency
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • Instructions
  • Insurgency
  • Man Borne Improvised Explosive Devices
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Psychological Operations
  • Security
  • Societies
  • Task Forces
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States
  • Urban Areas

Readers

  • Military and Counterinsurgency Studies.
  • Systems Analysis and Design