The fall of the Taliban regime and its recovery as an insurgent movement in Afghanistan

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 2004.
This thesis investigates the rapid defeat of the Taliban Regime by a US-led coalition and
the ability of the Taliban to survive, reorganize, and form an insurgency movement. This
thesis contends that there is an important set of interrelated social, cultural, religious,
ethnic, tribal, historical, and geographic factors that must be considered to understand the
current resurgence of the Taliban as an insurgency. The rationale for looking at these
factors is to provide insight into the Taliban resurgence that can expose possible
vulnerabilities that might be used to defeat the current insurgency. The main premise is
that the insurgency cannot be divorced from its larger cultural context and that an
understanding of the Taliban’s support base will yield solutions towards eroding that base
of support.