Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan.

• Author: Ulgul, Murat

Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan

By Ashley Jackson

London: Hurst Publishers, 2021, 328 pages, [pounds sterling]30, ISBN: 9781787384859

Although the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan after twenty years was not surprising for many, it nevertheless generated important controversies in American political circles. One of the most important questions is how the Taliban emerged as the victorious party in the Afghanistan conflict a short time after it had been rooted out in 2001. In Negotiating Survival, Ashley Jackson attempts to provide an early response to this question by bringing a mostly ignored actor, the Afghan people, and their interaction with the Taliban movement into the equation. Indeed, as Jackson notes, the great bulk of the literature on the Afghanistan conflict is devoted to security affairs, while the "voices of civilians living under the Taliban (and, to some extent, voices from the Taliban as well) are all too often absent from contemporary narratives of conflict" (p. 9).

Filling this gap in the literature, Jackson explores the bargaining dynamics between the Taliban and Afghan civilians and analyzes how the Taliban was able to win the people's support despite its widely condemned ideology. Jackson's theory of civilian-insurgent bargaining shows that while Talibancivilian bargaining is "deeply lopsided, myopic, unpredictable, and high risk," both sides have certain interests to gain through negotiation. The Taliban bargain with the civilians for political legitimacy, external recognition, and compliance during wartime. The civilians' main benefit from such bargaining is survival. Secondarily, they receive certain collective benefits, including justice, education, and foreign aid, as well as certain individual benefits (pp. 26-30). Therefore, the author explains the Afghan conflict through constructive analysis rather than relying on traditional security- and ideology-focused theories.

The chapters of the book interactively explain four elements that are critical in wartime bargaining: violence/coercion, persuasion, incentives, and social capital. To be used within the bargaining process, Jackson argues, violence should be strategic and selective. Indiscriminate violence is the weapon of the weak, indeed, when the Taliban was weak and under military pressure, their violence was more widespread and less selective, as the group's primary interest was organizational survival. However...