Antonio Giustozzi
Biographic Data
| ID | 1696953 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Antonio Giustozzi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Antonio |
| FAMILY NAME | Giustozzi |
| SIGNATURE | GIUSTOZZI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2685-9553 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Taliban and negotiations
The negotiations with the Taliban started along various tracks in 2008, but only accelerated in 2018 to reach the February 2020 agreement between the US and Taliban. Even then, they were marred by a lack of cohesion among the US and its allies and partners, with the result of enabling the Taliban to extract concessions and to marginalise the Afghan government. While this led to accusations of the Taliban being untrustworthy ideological jihadists,…
Foreign sponsorship of pro-government militias fighting Syria’s insurgency
Exploring the role of foreign-sponsored pro-government militias in counter-insurgency efforts, this article shows how the proxy war concept maps onto the Syrian conflict as we demonstrate both its contributions and limitations. Drawing on rare access to Syrian and foreign security actors inside Syria, we argue that the Syrian war, while rightly labelled a proxy war, sits uneasily with and at times even contradicts a set of scholarly assumptions a…
A Struggle for Power
Relying on interviews with members of the organization, the article argues (contrary to the prevailing view) that Al Nusra never split from Al Qaida and even more so from the global jihadist movement. Instead the leadership of Al Nusra was locked in a power struggle with Al Qaida over the control of jihad in Syria and possibly even over the future of Al Qaida itself. Efforts to unify the Syrian opposition, even those limited to jihadist groups, f…
Taliban at War
The Central Asian Militants
Central Asians have long been present within the ranks of organisations linked to the global jihad movement, but has there been an acceleration in their recruitment in recent years? There is growing evidence of substantial numbers of Central Asians (mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks) present in Syria in the ranks of the Islamic State and of a number of organisations linked to Al-Qaida. There is also growing evidence of recruitment inside Kyrgizstan and Ta…
Outsourcing state violence
This article engages with and contributes to a nascent debate on state-sponsored militias by way of an analysis of the formation and deployment of the Syrian regime’s National Defence Force (NDF). This militia emerged from the regime’s rich repertoire in outsourcing violence and allowing ‘heterarchical orders’ to serve regime maintenance purposes at home and abroad. During the Syrian war (2011–...), the key rationale for using such militias is pr…
Counterinsurgency Challenge in Post-2001 Afghanistan
Although the Taliban insurgency was internally divided and unable to coordinate its activities in 2014–2015, the Afghan security forces were not able to contain it and steadily lost ground throughout 2015. Until 2015, there had been little effort to develop an indigenous Afghan counterinsurgency strategy, but a sense of urgency emerged after a string of Taliban victories. At the beginning of 2016, it was still not clear if and when the National U…
Revolution in the Counter-Revolution
Interviews with Taliban cadres and commanders challenge conventional views about the inherently fragmented character of the Taliban insurgency and about the role of the Quetta Taliban leadership in running the military organization of the Taliban. The so-called Haqqani network operated as a largely autonomous force from 2007 until 2015, as did the Peshawar Shura from 2009 onward. However, both the Haqqanis and the Peshawar Shura were able to impo…
The Taliban and the 2014 presidential elections in Afghanistan
The Taliban’s attitude towards the Afghan presidential elections of 2014 differed in a very substantial way from their attitude towards previous elections. Already during 2013 there were discussions within the Taliban, about whether it would not be opportune to support a candidate, in order to get a president elected, who would be more amenable to reconciliation talks with the Taliban. However, the Taliban were unable to reach a consensus on the …
Afghanistan’s decentralised regional foreign policy
Afghanistan's lack of a state monopoly of violence reflects on its foreign policy in a number of ways. First, various non-state organizations developing their own relations with foreign countries. Second, enforcing coherent policy making within the institutions of the Afghan state itself has been sometimes problematic as officials could rely on the patronage of organizations external to the state to delay the implementation of official policies. …
The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary, 2003–2013
The Taliban established their own judicial system in Afghanistan as both an instrument of population control and as a means to project themselves as an effective parallel government. Despite the heavy reliance on coercion, the Taliban’s method of dealing with common criminality and resolving disputes was often welcome, though the weak appeal system and the rapidity of the trials was sometimes criticized. A more structured approach to coercion, fe…
The Taliban's 'military courts
The Taliban's ‘code of conduct’, which lists rules of discipline for the fighters, has been widely discussed, but do the Taliban try to implement it? This article discusses the structures that the Taliban have put in place for this purpose and their evolution over the years. It assesses that while the Taliban's ‘military justice’ system is still work in progress, the fact that it has attracted a significant investment in human resources bears wit…
March towards democracy? The development of political movements in Afghanistan
Although the post-2001 period in Afghanistan has been hailed as a return to an earlier process of democratic opening that was interrupted in the early 1970s, a comparison of the development of political movements up to 1978 and then after 2001 highlights important differences. Until the late 1960s, Afghan political parties were mainly focused on influencing a supposedly enlightened leadership towards faster modernization of the country. Their dis…
The Taliban at war
In seeking to explain why and how the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, most analysis has focused on the western and Afghan government effort. In this article, we examine how the war looks from the perspective of the insurgency. Using Helmand province as a case-study, we draw on a large number of original interviews with Taliban field commanders and fighters to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the Taliban at war. In the first section, we e…
The Taliban's Adaptation 2002-11
The Taliban faced overwhelmingly negative odds in 2002 when they launched their insurgency against the new government installed by American intervention in 2001. They adapted to the challenge in a number of ways. The article argues that some of this efforts to adapt can be described as evolution, although not all of them
Networks and Armies
Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de…
Los grupos étnicos y la movilización política en Afganistán
The article charts the rise of ethnic politics in Afghanistan from the 1930s, when the monarchy hoped that promoting Pashtun nationalism would strengthen its popular base, to the 1980s and 90s, when armed political factions increasingly resorted to ethnic propaganda to mobilize support, and finally to the post-2001 period, when electoral competition once again brought the issue of ethnic identity to the fore
Centre–periphery relations in Afghanistan
The article offers a review of centre–periphery relations and local politics in the Afghan province of Badakhshan from the 1980s to the post-2001 era. It maps the local powerbrokers and charts the transformations that occurred during this period, with particular reference to the impact of the central government's policies on local political alignments and relations of power. The key argument is that President Karzai's and the cabinet's behaviour …
Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan
Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. Internation…
From Soldiers to Politicians
In the transition from war-torn societies to stable multiparty democracies, what is the role of former rebel leaders? Can rebel movements effectively transform themselves from military to political organizations? From Soldiers to Politicians explores when and how militias succeed in reorienting their goals and practices toward legitimate political activities. The authors present eight theoretically grounded country studies, focusing in each on th…
War and Peace Economies of Afghanistan's Strongmen
Afghanistan's war economy started taking its current shape after 1992, when the main politico-military actors had to find alternative sources of revenue, having been dropped by their international sponsors. The same actors integrated into the ‘peace economy’ following the official end to the war in 2001, in a process which resembles the formation of ‘mafia’ networks, in which the narcotics trade appears to play an important role. If the central g…
Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's ‘ANA’ and the Counter-Insurgency Effort, 2002–2006
Afghanistan's fifth effort to form a central army started in 2002, following the fall of the Taleban regime. Mainly run by the US armed forces, the formation of the so-called ‘Afghan National Army’ run into several difficulties, ranging from initially slow recruitment, low educational level of troops and officers, high attrition rates. As the new army began to take shape, it lacked many of the characteristics which had been associated by the prom…
The inverted cycle
Afghan tribes and local communities have been exposed to foreign patronage since at least the 19th century, but the scale of patronage relative to Afghanistan's internal economy increased dramatically after the late 1970s. Inevitably, this had a major impact on Afghanistan's own internal dynamics and on the mechanisms of political legitimisation. This article focuses on the province of Kandahar, which occupies a privileged space in Afghan politic…
The Demodernisation of an Army
After the fall of the communist regime in Afghanistan, remnants of the Afghan regular army organized themselves into one of the factional armies which filled the vacuum created by the collapse of the Afghan state. Initially, this army maintained features similar to those of the regular forces from which it came, but over the years it developed into something closer and closer to the militias which occupied most of the rest of the country. The art…
Outsourcing state violence
This article engages with and contributes to a nascent debate on state-sponsored militias by way of an analysis of the formation and deployment of the Syrian regime’s National Defence Force (NDF). This militia emerged from the regime’s rich repertoire in outsourcing violence and allowing ‘heterarchical orders’ to serve regime maintenance purposes at home and abroad. During the Syrian war (2011–...), the key rationale for using such militias is pr…
Networks and Armies
Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de…
The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary, 2003–2013
The Taliban established their own judicial system in Afghanistan as both an instrument of population control and as a means to project themselves as an effective parallel government. Despite the heavy reliance on coercion, the Taliban’s method of dealing with common criminality and resolving disputes was often welcome, though the weak appeal system and the rapidity of the trials was sometimes criticized. A more structured approach to coercion, fe…
The Taliban at war
In seeking to explain why and how the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, most analysis has focused on the western and Afghan government effort. In this article, we examine how the war looks from the perspective of the insurgency. Using Helmand province as a case-study, we draw on a large number of original interviews with Taliban field commanders and fighters to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the Taliban at war. In the first section, we e…
Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's ‘ANA’ and the Counter-Insurgency Effort, 2002–2006
Afghanistan's fifth effort to form a central army started in 2002, following the fall of the Taleban regime. Mainly run by the US armed forces, the formation of the so-called ‘Afghan National Army’ run into several difficulties, ranging from initially slow recruitment, low educational level of troops and officers, high attrition rates. As the new army began to take shape, it lacked many of the characteristics which had been associated by the prom…
Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan
Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. Internation…
War and Peace Economies of Afghanistan's Strongmen
Afghanistan's war economy started taking its current shape after 1992, when the main politico-military actors had to find alternative sources of revenue, having been dropped by their international sponsors. The same actors integrated into the ‘peace economy’ following the official end to the war in 2001, in a process which resembles the formation of ‘mafia’ networks, in which the narcotics trade appears to play an important role. If the central g…
Revolution in the Counter-Revolution
Interviews with Taliban cadres and commanders challenge conventional views about the inherently fragmented character of the Taliban insurgency and about the role of the Quetta Taliban leadership in running the military organization of the Taliban. The so-called Haqqani network operated as a largely autonomous force from 2007 until 2015, as did the Peshawar Shura from 2009 onward. However, both the Haqqanis and the Peshawar Shura were able to impo…
Foreign sponsorship of pro-government militias fighting Syria’s insurgency
Exploring the role of foreign-sponsored pro-government militias in counter-insurgency efforts, this article shows how the proxy war concept maps onto the Syrian conflict as we demonstrate both its contributions and limitations. Drawing on rare access to Syrian and foreign security actors inside Syria, we argue that the Syrian war, while rightly labelled a proxy war, sits uneasily with and at times even contradicts a set of scholarly assumptions a…
The Taliban's 'military courts
The Taliban's ‘code of conduct’, which lists rules of discipline for the fighters, has been widely discussed, but do the Taliban try to implement it? This article discusses the structures that the Taliban have put in place for this purpose and their evolution over the years. It assesses that while the Taliban's ‘military justice’ system is still work in progress, the fact that it has attracted a significant investment in human resources bears wit…
March towards democracy? The development of political movements in Afghanistan
Although the post-2001 period in Afghanistan has been hailed as a return to an earlier process of democratic opening that was interrupted in the early 1970s, a comparison of the development of political movements up to 1978 and then after 2001 highlights important differences. Until the late 1960s, Afghan political parties were mainly focused on influencing a supposedly enlightened leadership towards faster modernization of the country. Their dis…
A Struggle for Power
Relying on interviews with members of the organization, the article argues (contrary to the prevailing view) that Al Nusra never split from Al Qaida and even more so from the global jihadist movement. Instead the leadership of Al Nusra was locked in a power struggle with Al Qaida over the control of jihad in Syria and possibly even over the future of Al Qaida itself. Efforts to unify the Syrian opposition, even those limited to jihadist groups, f…
Centre–periphery relations in Afghanistan
The article offers a review of centre–periphery relations and local politics in the Afghan province of Badakhshan from the 1980s to the post-2001 era. It maps the local powerbrokers and charts the transformations that occurred during this period, with particular reference to the impact of the central government's policies on local political alignments and relations of power. The key argument is that President Karzai's and the cabinet's behaviour …
The inverted cycle
Afghan tribes and local communities have been exposed to foreign patronage since at least the 19th century, but the scale of patronage relative to Afghanistan's internal economy increased dramatically after the late 1970s. Inevitably, this had a major impact on Afghanistan's own internal dynamics and on the mechanisms of political legitimisation. This article focuses on the province of Kandahar, which occupies a privileged space in Afghan politic…
The Demodernisation of an Army
After the fall of the communist regime in Afghanistan, remnants of the Afghan regular army organized themselves into one of the factional armies which filled the vacuum created by the collapse of the Afghan state. Initially, this army maintained features similar to those of the regular forces from which it came, but over the years it developed into something closer and closer to the militias which occupied most of the rest of the country. The art…
The Central Asian Militants
Central Asians have long been present within the ranks of organisations linked to the global jihad movement, but has there been an acceleration in their recruitment in recent years? There is growing evidence of substantial numbers of Central Asians (mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks) present in Syria in the ranks of the Islamic State and of a number of organisations linked to Al-Qaida. There is also growing evidence of recruitment inside Kyrgizstan and Ta…
The Taliban and the 2014 presidential elections in Afghanistan
The Taliban’s attitude towards the Afghan presidential elections of 2014 differed in a very substantial way from their attitude towards previous elections. Already during 2013 there were discussions within the Taliban, about whether it would not be opportune to support a candidate, in order to get a president elected, who would be more amenable to reconciliation talks with the Taliban. However, the Taliban were unable to reach a consensus on the …
The Demodernisation of an Army
After the fall of the communist regime in Afghanistan, remnants of the Afghan regular army organized themselves into one of the factional armies which filled the vacuum created by the collapse of the Afghan state. Initially, this army maintained features similar to those of the regular forces from which it came, but over the years it developed into something closer and closer to the militias which occupied most of the rest of the country. The art…
From Soldiers to Politicians
In the transition from war-torn societies to stable multiparty democracies, what is the role of former rebel leaders? Can rebel movements effectively transform themselves from military to political organizations? From Soldiers to Politicians explores when and how militias succeed in reorienting their goals and practices toward legitimate political activities. The authors present eight theoretically grounded country studies, focusing in each on th…
War and Peace Economies of Afghanistan's Strongmen
Afghanistan's war economy started taking its current shape after 1992, when the main politico-military actors had to find alternative sources of revenue, having been dropped by their international sponsors. The same actors integrated into the ‘peace economy’ following the official end to the war in 2001, in a process which resembles the formation of ‘mafia’ networks, in which the narcotics trade appears to play an important role. If the central g…
Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's ‘ANA’ and the Counter-Insurgency Effort, 2002–2006
Afghanistan's fifth effort to form a central army started in 2002, following the fall of the Taleban regime. Mainly run by the US armed forces, the formation of the so-called ‘Afghan National Army’ run into several difficulties, ranging from initially slow recruitment, low educational level of troops and officers, high attrition rates. As the new army began to take shape, it lacked many of the characteristics which had been associated by the prom…
The inverted cycle
Afghan tribes and local communities have been exposed to foreign patronage since at least the 19th century, but the scale of patronage relative to Afghanistan's internal economy increased dramatically after the late 1970s. Inevitably, this had a major impact on Afghanistan's own internal dynamics and on the mechanisms of political legitimisation. This article focuses on the province of Kandahar, which occupies a privileged space in Afghan politic…
Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan
Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. Internation…
Centre–periphery relations in Afghanistan
The article offers a review of centre–periphery relations and local politics in the Afghan province of Badakhshan from the 1980s to the post-2001 era. It maps the local powerbrokers and charts the transformations that occurred during this period, with particular reference to the impact of the central government's policies on local political alignments and relations of power. The key argument is that President Karzai's and the cabinet's behaviour …
Networks and Armies
Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de…
Los grupos étnicos y la movilización política en Afganistán
The article charts the rise of ethnic politics in Afghanistan from the 1930s, when the monarchy hoped that promoting Pashtun nationalism would strengthen its popular base, to the 1980s and 90s, when armed political factions increasingly resorted to ethnic propaganda to mobilize support, and finally to the post-2001 period, when electoral competition once again brought the issue of ethnic identity to the fore
The Taliban's Adaptation 2002-11
The Taliban faced overwhelmingly negative odds in 2002 when they launched their insurgency against the new government installed by American intervention in 2001. They adapted to the challenge in a number of ways. The article argues that some of this efforts to adapt can be described as evolution, although not all of them
March towards democracy? The development of political movements in Afghanistan
Although the post-2001 period in Afghanistan has been hailed as a return to an earlier process of democratic opening that was interrupted in the early 1970s, a comparison of the development of political movements up to 1978 and then after 2001 highlights important differences. Until the late 1960s, Afghan political parties were mainly focused on influencing a supposedly enlightened leadership towards faster modernization of the country. Their dis…
The Taliban at war
In seeking to explain why and how the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, most analysis has focused on the western and Afghan government effort. In this article, we examine how the war looks from the perspective of the insurgency. Using Helmand province as a case-study, we draw on a large number of original interviews with Taliban field commanders and fighters to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the Taliban at war. In the first section, we e…
Afghanistan’s decentralised regional foreign policy
Afghanistan's lack of a state monopoly of violence reflects on its foreign policy in a number of ways. First, various non-state organizations developing their own relations with foreign countries. Second, enforcing coherent policy making within the institutions of the Afghan state itself has been sometimes problematic as officials could rely on the patronage of organizations external to the state to delay the implementation of official policies. …
The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary, 2003–2013
The Taliban established their own judicial system in Afghanistan as both an instrument of population control and as a means to project themselves as an effective parallel government. Despite the heavy reliance on coercion, the Taliban’s method of dealing with common criminality and resolving disputes was often welcome, though the weak appeal system and the rapidity of the trials was sometimes criticized. A more structured approach to coercion, fe…
The Taliban's 'military courts
The Taliban's ‘code of conduct’, which lists rules of discipline for the fighters, has been widely discussed, but do the Taliban try to implement it? This article discusses the structures that the Taliban have put in place for this purpose and their evolution over the years. It assesses that while the Taliban's ‘military justice’ system is still work in progress, the fact that it has attracted a significant investment in human resources bears wit…
Revolution in the Counter-Revolution
Interviews with Taliban cadres and commanders challenge conventional views about the inherently fragmented character of the Taliban insurgency and about the role of the Quetta Taliban leadership in running the military organization of the Taliban. The so-called Haqqani network operated as a largely autonomous force from 2007 until 2015, as did the Peshawar Shura from 2009 onward. However, both the Haqqanis and the Peshawar Shura were able to impo…
The Taliban and the 2014 presidential elections in Afghanistan
The Taliban’s attitude towards the Afghan presidential elections of 2014 differed in a very substantial way from their attitude towards previous elections. Already during 2013 there were discussions within the Taliban, about whether it would not be opportune to support a candidate, in order to get a president elected, who would be more amenable to reconciliation talks with the Taliban. However, the Taliban were unable to reach a consensus on the …
Outsourcing state violence
This article engages with and contributes to a nascent debate on state-sponsored militias by way of an analysis of the formation and deployment of the Syrian regime’s National Defence Force (NDF). This militia emerged from the regime’s rich repertoire in outsourcing violence and allowing ‘heterarchical orders’ to serve regime maintenance purposes at home and abroad. During the Syrian war (2011–...), the key rationale for using such militias is pr…
Counterinsurgency Challenge in Post-2001 Afghanistan
Although the Taliban insurgency was internally divided and unable to coordinate its activities in 2014–2015, the Afghan security forces were not able to contain it and steadily lost ground throughout 2015. Until 2015, there had been little effort to develop an indigenous Afghan counterinsurgency strategy, but a sense of urgency emerged after a string of Taliban victories. At the beginning of 2016, it was still not clear if and when the National U…
The Central Asian Militants
Central Asians have long been present within the ranks of organisations linked to the global jihad movement, but has there been an acceleration in their recruitment in recent years? There is growing evidence of substantial numbers of Central Asians (mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks) present in Syria in the ranks of the Islamic State and of a number of organisations linked to Al-Qaida. There is also growing evidence of recruitment inside Kyrgizstan and Ta…
Taliban at War
Foreign sponsorship of pro-government militias fighting Syria’s insurgency
Exploring the role of foreign-sponsored pro-government militias in counter-insurgency efforts, this article shows how the proxy war concept maps onto the Syrian conflict as we demonstrate both its contributions and limitations. Drawing on rare access to Syrian and foreign security actors inside Syria, we argue that the Syrian war, while rightly labelled a proxy war, sits uneasily with and at times even contradicts a set of scholarly assumptions a…
A Struggle for Power
Relying on interviews with members of the organization, the article argues (contrary to the prevailing view) that Al Nusra never split from Al Qaida and even more so from the global jihadist movement. Instead the leadership of Al Nusra was locked in a power struggle with Al Qaida over the control of jihad in Syria and possibly even over the future of Al Qaida itself. Efforts to unify the Syrian opposition, even those limited to jihadist groups, f…
The Taliban and negotiations
The negotiations with the Taliban started along various tracks in 2008, but only accelerated in 2018 to reach the February 2020 agreement between the US and Taliban. Even then, they were marred by a lack of cohesion among the US and its allies and partners, with the result of enabling the Taliban to extract concessions and to marginalise the Afghan government. While this led to accusations of the Taliban being untrustworthy ideological jihadists,…
Law (22 works) · Political science (22 works) · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (11 works) · Afghan (10 works) · Economics (9 works)