The Rise of Afghanistan's Insurgency: State Failure and Jihad

Abstract

In 2002 Afghanistan began to experience a violent insurgency as the Taliban and other groups conducted a sustained effort to overthrow the Afghan government. Why did an insurgency begin in Afghanistan? Answers to this question have important theoretical and policy implications. Conventional arguments, which focus on the role of grievance or greed, cannot explain the Afghan insurgency. Rather, a critical precondition was structural: the collapse of governance after the overthrow of the Taliban regime. The Afghan government was unable to provide basic services to the population; its security forces were too weak to establish law and order; and there were too few international forces to ªll the gap. In addition, the primary motivation of insurgent leaders was ideological. Leaders of the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other insurgent groups wanted to overthrow the Afghan government and replace it with one grounded in an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam.

U.S. Strategic Culture and the Genesis of Counterinsurgency Doctrine

“…35 However, the unsuccessful post-war administration of Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) led to an increase in insurgency. 36 Programs for dissolving the military, de-Ba'athification of government administration, and massive privatization proved problematic for the CPA. These policies were responsible for the collapse of state authority and the rule of law.…”

The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996-2001) : ‘war-making and state-making’ as an insurgency strategy / Yaqub Ibrahimi.

“…Deobandism follows a Salafist egalitarian model and like all Islamist schools seeks to emulate the life and times of the Prophet Mohammed. 66 It rejects all forms of ijtihad -the use of reason to create innovations in sharia in response to new conditions. 67 The Deobandi philosophy was founded in 1867 at the Dar ul-Ulum (Abode of Islamic Learning) madrassa in Deoband, India.…”

Village-level Behavior Under Conditions of Chronic Conflict

“…For this reason, the Single NonTransferable Voting system (SNTV) is used to elect members of parliament, as it creates obstacles to the formation of party ("warlord") blocs. A dizzying array of scholars have written on warlords and armed groups in Afghanistan since 1979 (Aras and Toktas 2008;Donini, Niland, and Wermester 2004;Englebert and Tull 2008;Fukuyama 2006;Giustozzi 2000;Goodson 2001;Jones 2008;Maley 1998Maley , 2002Rashid 2002;Rubin 2002;Saikal and Maley 1991;Giustozzi and Ullah 2006;Schetter, Glassner, and Karokhail 2007). New Community Development Councils (CDCs) that emerged in 2003 as the result of efforts by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) are also a type of noncustomary organization that emerged during the state reconstruction process.…”