Decoding the New Taliban

Antonio Giustozzi has spent more than a decade visiting, researching, and writing on Afghanistan. He is based at the Crisis States Research Centre at the LSE, where he focuses on the political aspects of insurgency and warlordism. His most recent book is Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, also published by Hurst.

Provides a nuanced micro-level view of the country... One of the most significant contributions ... is the insight into the modus operandi of the insurgency.' - Foreign Affairs 'Decoding the New Taliban is a serious and comprehensive collection of essays written by authorities on their subject matter that will directly benefit those who find themselves on the ground with the Afghan people and among the still evolving Neo-Taliban.' - Middle East Quarterly 'An outstanding and important collection - just the sort of locally specific, openly debatable, scholarly analysis ... that will be required more and more if the international community is ever to understand the insurgents and divine how to prevent a second Taliban revolution... as up-to-date as scholarship can be.' - Steve Coll (Pulitzer Prize-winner), The New Yorker 'Some evidence that the Taliban have moved on since they were in power is provided by Antonio Giustozzi, who has edited a collection of essays entitled Decoding the New Taliban... Giustozzi argues that the Taliban realise their old position on education was self-defeating and lost them support, and the line is now being reversed. In Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, according to Tom Coghlan, one of Giustozzi's contributors, people in September 2008 'reported a strikingly less repressive interpretation of the Taliban's social edicts.' They no longer ban TV, music, dog-fighting and kite-flying; nor do they insist on the old rule that men grow beards long enough to be held in the fist.' - Jonathan Steele, London Review of Books