The speedy collapse of the Afghan security forces and the tactical offensive of the Taliban has been an intensely discussed issue amongst scholars and practitioners across the world. While the arguments generally boil down to the Taliban’s psychological warfare and the Afghan government’s incapability to defend the state, several of these assertions have missed out on an important aspect that facilitated the Taliban’s march to power ,i.e., the economics of the conflict. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to suggest that it was the very basic economic concepts such as ‘incentives’, ‘public goods’ and ‘free riding’ that determined the victors and the losers in the Afghan battlefield.
Afghanistan. The economics of the Taliban takeover (Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, ORF)
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