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Afghanistan, 11/1/06
Key Lecture Points:
• After the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, a broad coalition of countries (broader than that of the Iraq war) engineered the fall of the Taliban government which had harbored Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization.
• The Taliban are a Sunni Islamist theocratic movement that arose in the region in the during the Afghan-Soviet War from 1979-89. Predominantly ethnic Pashtun, the Taliban seized power over most of Afghanistan by 1995, but also elicited the resentment of non-Pashtun Afghans, including the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen.
• Today, approximately 40,000 NATO and US troops are on the ground in Afghanistan. The US has 18,000 troops in Afghanistan—10,000 under NATO command assisting with state building and 8,000 under direct US command hunting al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and assisting in the training of the fledgling Afghan Army. In October 2006, NATO took over full command of the state building International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
• Notwithstanding its military defeat in 2001, the Taliban appears to have regained military and political footing in Afghanistan in the past few months. Western analysts suggest that the resurgence of the Taliban is associated with the support that is coming from Pakistani Pashtuns in the border region between the two countries.
• On 10/28/06 the Pakistani military (under the command of embattled secular President Pervez Musharraf) launched rockets at a religious school in Northern Pakistan, killing 80. Defending the attack, Musharraf alleged that the school was actually a terrorist training ground for the Taliban. Many suggest that Pakistan was coming under increasing pressure to crack down on the Taliban presence within its borders.
For More Information:
• CIA Analysis of Afghanistan: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html
• BBC Analysis: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/south_asia/2004/afghanistan/default.stm
Books For Further Reading:
• Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin Press, 2005. 738 pages.
Description: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Coll details the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Click here to order.
• Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. Penguin Press, 2006. 386 Pages.
Description: Chayes reveals how the tribal strongmen who have regained power-after years of being displaced by the Taliban-have visited a renewed plague of corruption and violence on the Afghan people, under the complicit eyes of U.S. forces and officials. The story Chayes tells is a revelation of the deeply entrenched traditions of tribal warlordism that have ruled Afghanistan through the centuries.
Click here to order.
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