How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021
World witnessed strange events in Afghanistan in august 2021 when over three hundred thousand "well-equipped" Afghan Security Forces, failed to offer any meaningful resistance to the Taliban attacks. The Taliban virtually took over entire Afghanistan including the Capital Kabul in a matter of days,surprisingly without any resistance from Afghan forces. Most US and western writers and military experts blamed Afghan Forces and their civilian leadership for the collapse of resistance and in a way took the blame away from the US-led coalition. This article suggests that the Taliban's surprise and almost bloodless victory has less to do with immediate factors around August 2021. The surprise was slowly manufactured by the Taliban through their strong effort caused by the narratives, spread over two decades of the war. Such consistent narratives created an environment which caused the immediate collapse of Afghan Forces even before the US could complete evacuation out of Afghanistan.
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War on Terrorism, Afghanistan, Taliban, Narratives, US-Led Coalition, Surprise
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(1) Raja Wasim Shahid
PhD. Scholar, Centre for International Peace and Stability (CIPS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan.
Cite this article
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APA : Shahid, R. W. (2022). How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. Global Foreign Policies Review, V(II), 52-65. https://doi.org/10.31703/gfpr.2022(V-II).06
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CHICAGO : Shahid, Raja Wasim. 2022. "How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021." Global Foreign Policies Review, V (II): 52-65 doi: 10.31703/gfpr.2022(V-II).06
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HARVARD : SHAHID, R. W. 2022. How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. Global Foreign Policies Review, V, 52-65.
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MHRA : Shahid, Raja Wasim. 2022. "How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021." Global Foreign Policies Review, V: 52-65
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MLA : Shahid, Raja Wasim. "How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021." Global Foreign Policies Review, V.II (2022): 52-65 Print.
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OXFORD : Shahid, Raja Wasim (2022), "How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021", Global Foreign Policies Review, V (II), 52-65
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TURABIAN : Shahid, Raja Wasim. "How Narratives Helped the Taliban's Surprise Takeover of Afghanistan in 2021." Global Foreign Policies Review V, no. II (2022): 52-65. https://doi.org/10.31703/gfpr.2022(V-II).06