The Paradox of the Heavy-Handed Insurgent: Public Support for the Taliban among Afghan Pashtuns

Abstract

Afghanistan is a profoundly insecure country, with a very high rate of insurgent violence affecting large swathes of the population. Despite contributing to physical and economic insecurity across the country, Taliban insurgents have succeeded in creating what we call the “paradox of the heavy-handed insurgent.” Insurgents use attacks on government-controlled areas to generate public support by fostering a reputation for effective security provision for the civilian population under its control. For civilians who have a strong unmet need for physical security – especially those in rural and contested communities – heavy-handed insurgents are preferable to government forces who are perceived as either incompetent or unwilling to provide governance. We test this argument using data from the 2018 Asia Society Survey of the Afghan People. We find that the most important factor driving sympathy for the Taliban among Afghan Pashtuns is their sense of insecurity where they live. This indicates that an insurgent group that wears down government forces and weakens their ability to provide public goods and services can actually benefit by appearing as the more viable alternative for governance despite their heavy-handed tactics.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: 2019.

2 Davis, Larson, Haldeman, Oguz, and Rana. Understanding and Influencing Public Support for Insurgency and Terrorism.

3 Beth, Christia, Egorov, and Enikolopov. “Electoral Rules and the Quality of Politicians: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan”; Condra and Shapiro. "Who takes the Blame? The Strategic Effects of Collateral Damage.”; Lyall, Zhou. and Imai “Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan.”

4 Data source for visualization: “Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project” (ACLED), v. February 11, 2022. https://acleddata.com

5 Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe; Knuppe, “Blowback or Overblown: Why Civilians under Threat Support Invasive Foreign Intervention.”

6 Kaplan, Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves.

7 See: Kaltenthaler, Miller, and Fair, “Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban.”; Lyall, Blair, and Imai, “Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan.”

8 Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence.

9 Nagl, Amos, Sewall, and Petraeus, The US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

10 Hazelton, Bullets not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare.

11 Berman, Felter, Shapiro. Small Wars, Big Data.

12 Ibid, 148–149.

13 Berman, Shapiro, and Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq.”

14 Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye, “Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance, Leadership Change, and Support for Violent Groups in Iraq.”

15 Lyall, Zhou. and Imai “Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan.”

16 Stollenwerk “Securing Legitimacy? Perceptions of Security and ISAF’s Legitimacy in Northeast Afghanistan.”

17 Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye, “Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance, Leadership Change, and Support for Violent Groups in Iraq.”

18 Böhnke, J., Koehler, J., & Zürcher, C. “State Formation as it Happens: Insights from a Repeated Cross-Sectional Study in Afghanistan, 2007–2015.”

19 Beth, Christia, Egorov, and Enikolopov. “Electoral Rules and the Quality of Politicians: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan.”

20 Hanania, “Establishing Causality in Counter-Insurgency Doctrine: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Population-Centric War.”

21 Lyall, J., Blair, G., & Imai, K. “Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan;” Shaver, A., & Shapiro, J. “The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War.”

22 Shaver and Shapiro, “The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War.”

23 Condra and Shapiro, "Who Takes the Blame? The Strategic Effects of Collateral Damage."

24 Condra, Felter, Iyengar, and Shapiro, The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

25 Lyall, J., Blair, G., & Imai, K. “Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan.”

26 Karl Kaltenthaler, Daniel Silverman, and Munqith Dagher, “Identity, Ideology, and Information: The Sources of Iraqi Public Support for the Islamic State,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 41 10 (2018): 801–824.

27 Karl Kaltenthaler, and William Miller, “Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38, no. 11 (2015): 938–957.

28 Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds, and the Barrel of a Gun: The Taliban’s Shadow Government.”

29 Farrell, and Giustozzi, “The Taliban at War: Inside the Helmand Insurgency, 2004–2012”; Jones, “The Rise of Afghanistan’s Insurgency: State Failure and Jihad”; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan.

30 Kruglanski, Gelfand, and Gunaratna, “Terrorism as Means to an end: How Political Violence Bestows Significance”; Kruglanski, A., Gelfand, M., Bélanger, J., Sheveland, A., Hetiarachchi, M., and Gunaratna, R. “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism.”; Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks.

31 Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna, The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Networks.

32 Walter, Barbara. How Civil Wars Start.

33 Johnson, Thomas S. Taliban Narratives. The Use and Power of Stories in the Afghanistan Conflict. 88–91.

34 Tajfel, “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination.”; Tajfel,” Individuals and Groups in Social Psychology.”; Branscombe, Wann, Noel, and Coleman, “In-Group or Out-Group Extremity: Importance of the Threatened Social Identity.”; Ellemers, Spears, and Doosje, “Self and Social Identity.”

35 Tanis, and Postmes, “A Social Identity Approach to Trust: Interpersonal Perception, Group Membership and Trusting Behaviour.”

36 As Blair (2020) notes, legitimacy is tricky to differentiate fom other modes of voluntary compliance because it often confounds with coercion, persuasion, self-interest, personal morality and social control.

37 Felbab-Brown, “Order from Chaos: Will the Taliban Regime Survive?” See also, Felbab-Brown, Trinkunas, and Hamid, Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder.

38 Replication code and data are available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository for this project.

39 See Kuran (1997) for the distinction between stated and revealed preferences.

40 Nanes and Lau, “Surveys and Countering Violent Extremism: A Practitioner Guide.”

41 Johnson, and DuPee “Analyzing the New Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha): An Assessment of Changing Perspectives and Strategies of the Afghan Taliban,” X.

42 Layha, article 57, clauses ii and iii; See also Munir, “The Layha for the Mujahideen: An Analysis of the Code of Conduct for the Taliban Fighters under Islamic Law.”

43 Biddle and Zhukov, “Afghanistan’s Security Forces Unraveled This Month. What Broke Their Seven-Year Stalemate with the Taliban?”

44 Felbab-Brown, “Order from Chaos: Will the Taliban Regime Survive?”