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Ray Reply
Ray,
For an out-gunned organization dependent upon local support, Shabnamah is not only an effective means of intimidation, but also a way to gauge popular sentiment. With a pen and paper, the Taliban can announce its presence, elicit a reaction from the population, and weed out those who are sympathetic from those who are hostile. Armed with this information, they’re presumably able to shore-up their base of support—at which point—increases in the scope and intensity of their operations are bound to follow. Shabnamah, in other words, is a kind of tactical probe that might actually presage a more virulent form of insurgent activity. The implication is that by monitoring the frequency of Shabnamah in a given area and reacting quickly, the counterinsurgent might be able to prevent the insurgency’s continued spread.
As Antonio Giustozzi has argued elsewhere, if the Taliban has learned from AQI’s mistakes and begun to moderate its treatment of the Afghan populace, useful information about the changing nature of the insurgency might also be gleaned through a careful examination of the Taliban’s narrative. With this in mind, I thought Thomas Johnson’s article was a worthwhile read, which provided some insight into the Taliban’s worldview and underlying motivations.
I hope you’ll give it a second chance.
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