Center for a New American Security

Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and the Laptop: The Neo Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan is a must read for any soldier, sailor, airman, marine, or government official headed to Afghanistan. It is a good starting point for anyone else with a passing interest in the current conflict in Afghanistan.

Most important to the work are Giustozzi's first three chapters in which he differentiates the neo-Taliban from the Taliban that the United States dispersed in the final two months of 2001. This is vital as until recently it was quite common to view the new Taliban insurgency through the prism of the previous Taliban movement (the best book on which is Ahmed Rashid's Taliban). It was on this basis that writers such as Thomas Johnson argued that the Taliban insurgency was essentially a tribal movement of Ghilzai Pashtuns (and specifically the Hotak sub-tribe) against the Durrani Pashtun (and specifically Popalzai sub-tribe) dominated Afghan government.

The neo-Taliban as described by Giustozzi are a more-or-less unitary insurgency. The senior leadership operate as a franchising operation that maintains the Taliban brand name through the Laheya, a set of rules regulating behavior.

Because there are few outlets for grievances against the Afghan government, the Taliban offer their franchise coverage to various groups with local grievances in return for occasional obedience to orders directed from the Quetta Shura. The result of this franchising is a relatively flat, non-hierarchical network that allows individual branches to carry out jihad against the government while receiving resources and some direction from the central Taliban command. In Guistozzi's words:

By 2006, the Taliban had formed a complex opposition alliance comprising:

• At the centre their purely ideologically driven madrasa students (including a significant number from the NWFP)
• A second ring of genuine jihadist recruits provided by village mullahs mainly driven by xenophobia
• A third, and by 2006 the largest, ring of local allies (communities and opportunists)
• An outer ring of mercenary elements

It is an excellent, well-articulated, and well-supported breakdown of the Neo-Taliban insurgency.

In other areas, Giustozzi gets it right but is not particularly original (nothing wrong with being right but unoriginal). Giustozzi's description of the grievances upon which the neo-Taliban developed the movement have previously been discussed in Sarah Chayes' excellent The Punishment of Virtue. The breakdown of post-jihad Afghanistan into competing power bases of traditional leaders, commanders (including criminal barons), and mullahs has been discussed by several others including Larry Goodson. An excellent account of the military and political breakdown of the neo-Taliban can be found in this month's Military Review.

Originality excepted, nowhere other than in Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, can be found in one place such a detailed description of the organization of the Neo-Taliban nor their region-by-region emergence in post-2001 Afghanistan. It is this that makes it a must read.

It is a shame then that Giustozzi did not simply stop at his third chapter (and bits of his fourth) with a major contribution to the study of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In subsequent chapters, he marks himself as a commentator on insurgency and counterinsurgency who has little practical or theoretical understanding of the subject.

In the fourth chapter he pontificates on whether the Taliban have adopted a Maoist strategy or a "war of the flea," citing Robert Taber's description of the latter. A quick read of Taber would have informed Giustozzi that the term "war of the flea" was derived from the translation of Mao rather than presenting an alternate paradigm. His study of counterinsurgency has apparently included a reading of TX Hammes' The Sling and the Stone but has not included the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, even as he discusses the supposed new approach of the US in the country. His discussion of ISAF and Coalition Forces in Chapter 6 is exceedingly ill-informed, especially when compared to that of Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian's chapter on Afghanistan in Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare.

His discussion of Taliban tactics describes a rag-tag bunch of insurgents incapable of posing a serious threat to ISAF forces while poorly describing the effects of weapons such as the RPG-7 and DShK. Complex Taliban ambushes and long-range engagements, including accurate mortar fire, are not featured in his account despite their prevalence in the country.

Such shortcomings are for Giustozzi the result not of deliberate acts of omission but of a failure to consult with those who could have provided insight into the military side of the insurgency and counterinsurgency that he attempts to describe. While Kip knows and has tremendous respect for (among others cited and thanked by Giustozzi) Massoud Karokhail, Eckart Schiewek, Michael Semple , and Barbara Stapleton, none would qualify as knowing much about insurgency per se or the specific design of ISAF's counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Neither would any, besides Karokhail perhaps, be able to describe with much sophistication detailed tactics of either the Taliban, Afghan, or Coalition forces. Had Giustozzi sought this expertise, he could most definitely have found it, particularly from Lieutenant General David Barno at the NESA center.

That he didn't leaves us with the best half-book to date on the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

PS Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, particularly to Lady Kip, Mother Kip, and Grandmother Kip.