The Taliban’s Political Program - Dan Green, Armed Forces Journal.

At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the political right to lead it.

Thus, the center of gravity in this type of warfare is not the enemy’s forces per se, but the population. The centrality of politics to this type of warfare means that counterinsurgent forces must craft a political strategy that is sensitive to the needs of the population, seeks to secure its loyalty to the government, mobilizes the community to identify, expel or fight the insurgent, and extends the authority and reach of the central government. To achieve these goals, a government must have a political strategy that separates the insurgents from popular support so they can be killed or imprisoned. If a political plan is implemented poorly, or not at all, insurgent forces will capitalize on the grievances and frustrated hopes of the community to entice it away from the government. The community may then assist the insurgent with a safe haven to rest, re-arm, re-equip, recuperate and redeploy to fight another day.

In the long run, because this conflict is not about how many casualties counterinsurgent forces impose on the insurgents but about the will to stay in the fight, foreign counterinsurgents tend to grow weary of the amount of blood and treasure they must expend. The insurgent could lose every military engagement, but still win the war if the government does not win the population over to its program, policies and plans...

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