The war against the taliban: Tactical operations and strategic moves

Abstract

The Afghanistan war exhibits two special features. First, it is exemplified not only as the most recent example of “Irregular Warfare”, or IW, but as the prime example for the kind of armed conflict the West has to expect in the twenty-first century. Whichever definition of IW one looks at, its paramount characteristic is a (strong) asymmetry of the opponents’ objective functions. In order to achieve overall, i.e. politically sustainable, victory, it no longer suffices to defeat the enemy army but other aspects such as culture, religion or the problem of dealing with less perfect Third World-style “democracies” in general have to be taken into account.