Book Review: The Taliban: Afghanistan’s most lethal insurgents

• Date: 01 January 2018
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17718551
• Subject Matter: Book Review

Book Review

Book Review

Silinsky, M. (2014). The Taliban: Afghanistan’s most lethal insurgents. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

263 pp. $52.00 (hardcover), ISBN 9780313398971.

Reviewed by: William Kelly, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17718551

Various countries including the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United

States have found occupying Afghanistan quite challenging and controversial.

Silinsky renders a valuable service by concentrati ng on an insurgent group that

poses serious and dangerous challenges to the United States and coalition forces.

On the basis of his past professional background with the defense intelligence

community and academic achievements from the National Intelligence University,

the Naval War College, the National Defense University, and the Afghanistan

Counterinsurgency Academy lo cated near Kabul, the author pre sents a work of

commendable value to contemporary political society and the study of international

politics.

The United States plans to withdraw military forces from Afghanistan after

occupying that country for many years seeking to eliminate or lessen the influence

of the Taliban in the region; unfortunately, the United States failed to fulfill this

objective as the Taliban continues to exercise considerable influence in Afghanistan.

Silinsky (2014) explains many of the difficulties that the United States and coalition

forces faced in their attempts to neutralize the influence of the Taliban: “The insur-

gents intend to cripple the economy, terrorize their enemies, expand their support

base, solidify their external base, and collapse the will of nations, particularly the

United States” (p. 99).

The author develops an in-depth analysis of the Taliban as an organization,

commenting on its history, successes, failures, problems, structure, and future pos-

sibilities. An interesting insight from this work is that the Taliban are not uniquely

cruel and that compared to other 20th-century ideologies such as national socialism

and communism, they have killed less people and rarely been charged with genocide

(Silinsky, 2014, p. ix.)

The U.S. policy makers and others concerned with military strategy aimed at

countering insurgent groups will learn much from this work; for example, the beha-

vior of occupying forces can have a profound effect on whether the population of a

Armed Forces & Society

2018, Vol. 44(1) 178-180

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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