| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 3, 2013 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM | Seminar Room 208N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
Much has been written about the origins of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan during the early 1990s. Most scholars point to the important role that Pakistan played in the sponsorship of the Taliban during its early formative period. However, these analyses cannot explain why other comparable groups that received substantial external support from Pakistan and other regional powers failed to achieve the same degree of political power that the Taliban movement did. To address this puzzle, I propose a microeconomic explanation of the Afghan civil war during the 1990s, focusing particularly on the role of the local business community in financing sub-state armed groups. I argue that the Taliban’s initial momentum was a product of a business-Islamist alliance, rooted in the rational, strategic calculations of members of the Pakistan-Afghanistan transit trade industry. This analysis highlights the important and often overlooked role of local business interests in affecting civil war outcomes.
Aisha Ahmad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She specializes in international security and has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia. She holds a PhD from McGill University and was a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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