Hat tip to Kings of War blog for providing a link to a new paper ' Lessons Learnt: “Islamic, Independent, Perfect and Strong”: Parsing the Taliban’s Strategic Intentions, 2001-2011' by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn. Note the duo have recently published a book (see Post 111 Talking to the Taliban:an elusive peace in Afghanistan).

It is a very short paper and the Executive Summary states:
This paper aims to answer the question of what the Taliban wants. In doing so it illuminates some important points about the Taliban as an organisation – it is neither a unified nor a static organisation. The fluidity of people of influence within the Taliban, the shifts in views that can be seen to be core to it, and the mystery surrounding its figurehead, Mullah Omar, are all aspects that can only usefully be brought out by experiences gleaned within Afghanistan. This paper provides an historical context to the current position, and then goes onto explore some of the Taliban’s strategic goals, offering some valuable context in which future negotiations with the Taliban might occur.
Link:http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/Policy/D...rntTaliban.pdf