12. See, for example, Action Memo from Steven Casteel (Senior Adviser to the Iraq Ministry of Interior) to L. Paul Bremer (Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority), Ransom Payments for Hostages, April 21, 2004. According to the memo, the Japanese government paid $750,000 per hostage for the release of three Japanese hostages captured on April 8, 2004, near Fallujah, and the French government paid $600,000 for the release of journalist Alexandre Jordanov.
13. Letter from L. Paul Bremer (Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority) to Foreign Embassies in Iraq, Ransom Payments for Hostages, April 21, 2004.
14. See, for example, Ian Fisher, “Italy Paid Ransom for Journalist, It Confirms,” International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2007, p. 1; Peter Kiefer, “Italian Leader Faces New Attack on Prisoner Swap After Reported Death of Journalist’s Aide,” New York Times, April 10, 2007, p. A12; Massoud Ansari, “Taliban Funds Blitz on British Troops with Hostage Cash,” The Sunday Telegraph (London), October 14, 2007; Saeed Ali Achakzai, “Korea Pays Taliban $24m for Hostages,” The Sunday Mail (Australia), September 2, 2007, p. 46.
15. “Taliban Military Chief Threatens to Kill U.S. Captives.”
16. Lester Grau, ed., The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996); Grau, Artillery and Counterinsurgency: The Soviet Experience in Afghanistan (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 1997); U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Operation Enduring Freedom: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, December 2003).
17. Statement of Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, Commander, Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan, Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Washington, DC, June 28, 2006; Memorandum from General Barry R. McCaffrey (ret.) to Colonel Mike Meese and Colonel Cindy Jebb, United States Military Academy, “Trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan,” June 2006, p. 4; Operation Enduring Freedom: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures; Opposing Militant Forces: Elections Scenario (Kabul: ISAF, 2005).
18. “The Rule of Allah,” Video by Al Qa’ida in Afghanistan, produced in 2006; “Taliban Execute Afghan Woman on Charges of Spying for U.S. Military,” Afghan Islamic Press, August 10, 2005; “Afghan Taliban Report Execution of Two People on Charges of Spying for U.S.,” Afghan Islamic Press, July 12, 2005.
19. Taliban Says Responsible for Pro-Karzai Cleric’s Killing, Warns Others,” The News (Islamabad), May 30, 2005; “Taliban Claim Responsibility for Killing Afghan Cleric,” Kabul Tolo Television, May 29, 2005. Also see the killings of other clerics, such as Mawlawi Muhammad Khan, Mawlawi Muhammad Gol, and Mawlawi Nur Ahmad in “Pro-Karzai’ Cleric Killed by Bomb in Mosque in Khost Province,” Pajhwok Afghan News, October 14, 2005; “Karzai Condemns Murder of Clerics,” Pajhwok Afghan News, October 18, 2005. Also see Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (London: Hurst & Company, 2007), p. 46.
20. “Taliban Threatens Teachers, Students in Southern Afghan Province,” Pajhwok Afghan News, January 3, 2006. Also see “Gunmen Set Fire to Schools in Ghazni, Kandahar Provinces,” Pajhwok Afghan News, December 24, 2005.
21. Afghan Islamic Press interview with Mofti Latifollah Hakimi, August 30, 2005.
22. Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); William Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban (New York: New York University Press, 2001).
23. Commander British Forces, Counterinsurgency in Helmand: Task Force Operational Design, January 2008.
24. Estimates of insurgents are notoriously difficult for two reasons. First, it is difficult to count the number of insurgents, since they hide in urban and rural areas to evade foreign and domestic intelligence and security forces. Second, the number of insurgents is often fluid. Some are full-time fighters but many are not. In addition, there is a significant logistics, financial, and political support network for insurgent groups, making it virtually impossible to reliably estimate the total number of guerrillas and their support base. These reasons make it more difficult to estimate the number of insurgents than to estimate the size of state military forces. On the Taliban numbers, the author interviewed U.S., European, and Afghan officials on numerous occasions throughout 2004, 2005, and 2006.
25. United Nations, A Review of the Taliban and Fellow Travelers as a Movement: Concept Paper Updating PAG Joint Assessment of June 2006 (Kabul: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, August 2007), p. 3.
26. Amrullah Saleh, Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan (Kabul: National Directorate of Security, 2006), p. 2.
27. Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection, translated by John King (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 13.
28. Al Jazeera interview with Mullah Dadullah, February 2006. Also see, for example, “Taliban Spokesman Condemns Afghan Parliament as ‘Illegitimate,’” Sherberghan Aina Television, December 19, 2005.
29. “Spokesman Rejects Afghan Government’s Amnesty Offer for Taliban Leader,” Afghan Islamic Press, May 9, 2005.
30. See, for example, “Al Jazeera Airs Hikmatyar Video,” Al Jazeera TV, May 4, 2006.
31. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, May 2007, recorded DVD response to Agence France Presse questions. Also see, for example, Sardar Ahmad, “Afghan Insurgency Here for a Long Time: Rebel Leader,” Agence France Presse, May 6, 2007.
32. Parts of the video clip were released in such Pakistan newspapers as Dawn. See, for example, “US Can’t Stay for Long in Afghanistan: Hekmatyar,” Dawn (Pakistan), February 22, 2007.
33. The video clip was released in 2003. See, for example, Aileen McCabe, “Attack Seen as ‘Payback’ for Drug Raid,” National Post (Canada), January 28, 2004, p. A2. Hekmatyar’s comments were regularly anti-American. In an address to U.S. President George W. Bush, he noted: “You must have realized that attacking Afghanistan and Iraq was a historic mistake. You do not have any other option but to take out your forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and give the Iraqis and Afghans the right to live their own way.” Zarar Khan, “Afghan Warlord Splits with Taliban, Hints at Talks with Karzai Government,” Associated Press, March 8, 2007.
34. Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, pp. 77–78.
35. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 141–43.
36. Author interview with Ambassador Said Jawad, August 24, 2007.
37. United Nations, A Review of the Taliban and Fellow Travelers as a Movement: Concept Paper Updating PAG Joint Assessment of June 2006 (Kabul: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, August 2007), p. 4.
38. Author interview with Robert Grenier, November 6, 2007
39. See, for example, Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, p. 1.
40. The term salafi jihadist initially began to occur in the literature of the Islamic Armed Group in Algeria. See, for example, Alain Grignard, “La lit-terature politique du GIA, des origines a Djamal Zitoun—Esquisse d’une analyse,” in F. Dassetto, ed., Facettes de l’Islam belge (Louvain- la-Neuve, Belgium: Academia-Bruylant, 2001).
41. Video clip of Abu Laith al-Libi, released in September 2007.
42. Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, p. 14
43. See, for example, Thomas H. Johnson, “The Taliban Insurgency and an Analysis of Shabnamah (Night Letters),” Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 18, no. 3, September 2007, pp. 317–44.
44. “Taliban Military Chief Threatens to Kill U.S. Captives.”
45. Saleh, Strategy of Insurgents and Terrorists in Afghanistan, p. 8.
