The Taliban

Decades of varied selection pressure turned the Taliban into a hybrid criminal organization whose religious framing conceals a strategy of profit and control.

The paper traces the Taliban from its origins among Pashtun Sunni clerics and seminary students after the Soviet-Afghan war — a movement that chose its name, the plural of 'talib', precisely to distance itself from the Mujahideen — through its capture of Kandahar and Kabul, to its relationship with al-Qaeda.