Dino Krause

This book examines how the Taliban were able to regain power in Afghanistan in 2021, some 20 years after the US intervention. The volume presents an analysis of the factors that contributed to the Taliban’s ability to seize power following the withdrawal of the international coalition in August 2021, marking the end of 20 years of international engagement in the country. It is the result of a thorough review of research and policy publications over the course of 20 years, and is based on open-source data, including threat assessments of the Danish intelligence services. There are multiple explanations in academic and policy reports as to why the Taliban were able to take power despite the efforts expected to prevent this from happening. Based on existing research literature, analyses, studies and reports, the book identifies five factors that are central to understanding the outcome. These factors offer overarching explanations for why the Taliban was able to regain power, with each encompassing different clusters of challenges that constituted central conditions for the Taliban takeover. Although the book is not about assigning blame, the explanations provided here can contribute to further discussion about how to ensure the necessary knowledge base for future decisions when confronted with new emergencies calling for possible international intervention. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, conflict resolution, Asian security, military interventions, peace building, and International Relations.

Jihadist rebel groups that take control over a territory, claim authority over its population, and implement radical religious laws have become a rising security issue over the last decade. Generally brutal and authoritarian, the best-known manifestation of this phenomenon is the Islamic State (IS). While the IS has been decimated in the last few years, most analysts agree that the problem of jihadist violence is far from over, and that the IS may very well re-configure itself in a not so distant future. Moreover, beyond Iraq and Syria, the security threat posed by violent jihadism remains an acute issue. Yet no one has hitherto systematically explored the potential for civil resistance against jihadist armed groups. In Confronting the Caliphate, Isak Svensson and co-authors Daniel Finnbogason, Dino Krause, Luís Martínez Lorenzo, and Nanar Hawach focus on a core set of questions: What can civilians, who oppose the jihadists' attempt to rule them, do to manifest their dissent? To what extent are civilians engaging in acts of resistance against jihadist rebel rule and what does such resistance look like? Does it matter, and can it in any way influence the trajectories of jihadist proto-states? New military and political realities in Iraq and Syria have opened up the possibility to generate new knowledge in areas where the IS has been pushed back. The authors draw from a novel survey on civil resistance against the IS in Mosul after the IS lost control of the city. This survey--the first of its kind--concentrates on the extent and character of resistance behavior against the IS. The authors also utilize contemporary Arab-language social media blogs and news websites in order to document protests against jihadists in Syria, and they also draw on interviews with activists and civilian in Syria and Lebanon who have lived under rule of jihadist groups. Importantly, they show that the international character of jihadist groups are often perceived as alien to local customs, thereby triggering resistance. Given the events of the recent past and the potential resurgence of such groups, this book is a valuable intervention that not only shows us how jihadists rule, but provides the best explanation yet of how ordinary people resist jihadist totalitarianism.