Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, “The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010” (Oxford UP, 2014)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Mar 5, 2015 · 1h 1m

Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn‘s An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 (Oxford University Press, reprint edition 2014) offers what is in many ways is an untold, insider’s account of the birth of the Taliban and Al Qaeda during the anti-Soviet jihad, and their subsequent cooperation (or indeed lack thereof) in the pre- and post-9/11 world. By living first in Kabul, and then Kandahar, Afghanistan, the authors gained more privileged access to individuals involved with Afghan history in the 1980s-2000s than perhaps anyone outside of…