Small Wars Journal

As US Mission Winds Down, Afghan Insurgency Grows More Complex

Fri, 02/13/2015 - 8:59am

As US Mission Winds Down, Afghan Insurgency Grows More Complex by Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post

The Taliban in this northern province allows girls to attend school. It doesn’t execute soldiers or police. Its fighters are not Pashtun, the main ethnic group that bred and fueled the insurgency. Some members are even former mujahideen, or freedom fighters, who once despised the Taliban and fought against its uprising.

“The Taliban here are against the ideology of the Taliban in the south,” explained Maizuddin Ahmedi, 20, a former Taliban member who reflects the local faction’s atypical nature: He has a Facebook page, tweets regularly and wears a beanie emblazoned with “NY.”

“They don’t behead soldiers,” he said…

Read on.