From an earlier post (No. 184) and edited down: ' Lessons Learnt: “Islamic, Independent, Perfect and Strong”: Parsing the Taliban’s Strategic Intentions, 2001-2011' by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn.

The authors spoke at IISS in February and a podcast (1hr 2 mins)is on:http://www.iiss.org/events-calendar/2012-events-archive/february-2012/the-myth-of-the-taliban-al-qaeda-merger/