Includes bibliographical references.

Summary: “This book races the Taliban movement’s origins, its rise to power, and the tensions and contradictions which made it impossible to accommodate within the modern international system. It exposes some of the misunderstandings which led various powers, including the United States, to believe that the Taliban could bring peace to Afghanistan and permit its reconstruction after years of destructive conflict. More significantly, it also highlights steps that can be taken to assist the Afghan people to recover from the consequences of the fragmentation of their society, and its subordination to an anti-modernist force of a kind unprecedented in Afghanistan’s recent history”—back cover.