Ashley Jackson

As I was working through the Taliban’s evolution, I became increasingly curious about the performative aspects of insurgency. The main focus of most studies is insurgent violence. Rightly so. But acting like a state becomes at some point almost as important as waging war.

This often manifests in darkly, distractingly absurd ways (why are Talibs mimicking govt electricity bills down to the detail? Is there a Talib copyshop? ... Srsly tho: why all the effort?) But as any student of Foucault knows, real power lies in subtler forms of coercion...

Huge sigh of relief when I read @steven_metz on why people join insurgencies. It strains the bounds of typology b/c its messy, complicated Much like the thing it describes. (Which is probably why it's more useful most other typologies I've read...) http://smallwarsjournal.com/print/12195 

It’s important to have fierce role models in the academic wilderness. And no one is fiercer than the Notorious Nancy Hatch Dupree. So sharp, so much fun to read, so much love and respect for her subject and for Afghanistan. This is one of my favorites: http://www.afghandata.org:8080/xmlui/handle/azu/3092 …

NHD also helped establish @ackuafghanistan -- which is an absolute gift to scholars I spent many hours (procrastinating?) trawling through the catalog. Many vital docs, primary sources I couldn’t find or didn’t even know existed are opensource here http://acku.edu.af 

I used negotiation theory to describe how Talibs and civilians bargain with each other. I built a framework from scratch, so it’s a bit of a patchwork quilt of behavioral theory -- snippets from Ury, Lewiski, Fisher, etc. But this was monumental: https://courses.washington.edu/pbafhall/514/514%20Readings/Malhotra%20&%20Bazerman%202008.pdf …