This as the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban agree to join forces in the face of the upcoming American troop increase, reports Carlotta Gall in today's New York Times.
As it happens, we're releasing a new paperback edition of Crews and Tarzi's The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan, a collection of essays in which leading scholars explore the ins and outs of the Taliban in an attempt to show how the movement, far from representing pure anachronism, in fact constitutes a dynamic, complex, and adaptive force rooted in the history of Afghanistan and shaped by modern international politics. Essential reading for those who wish to understand the region beyond the necessarily here-and-now picture established by even the best current affairs reporting.
