CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Wassel, Mohammad Wahdat |
|---|---|
| Title | The Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan: A Study of Transnational Factors |
| Summary | In this thesis I investigate how a wide array of extraterritorial factors have affected the onset and protraction of insurgency in Afghanistan. Through a qualitative analysis of five exogenous factors which bear on the Taliban insurgency – rival neighbouring state, weak neighbouring state, refugees in neighbouring state, bisected ethnic groups along international borders, and extraterritorial sanctuaries for insurgents – I demonstrate that the Taliban insurgency is a typical case of transnational insurgency. One of the main findings of this thesis is that an interaction between state weakness in Pakistan on the one hand, and its foreign policy rivalry towards Afghanistan, India and the U.S. on the other, has allowed the Taliban insurgents find extraterritorial sanctuary and support. The support for the Taliban insurgents comes from Pakistan’s intelligence organization (ISI), as well as from the nearly two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the bisected Pashtun ethnic groups along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. This study emphasizes that peace negotiations and reconciliation efforts have repeatedly failed in Afghanistan because the Taliban can evade the coercive power of U.S./NATO forces by retreating to their sanctuaries in Pakistan. I argue that Afghanistan is trapped in a jammed negotiation process where a dyadic negotiation track between the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents is hijacked by a third party: the host state. The underlying message of the thesis is that negotiation and reconciliation with the Taliban only becomes possible if ways are found to neutralize the extraterritorial support and sanctuary being provided to the Taliban insurgents. |
| Supervisor | Matteo Fumagalli |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/wassel_mohammad-wahdat.pdf |
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