The Taliban Sources Project - Incite at Columbia University

Completed Project

The Taliban Sources Project

  • Team Anand Gopal Alex Strick van Linschoten Felix Kuehn
  • Funded by Thesigers

The Taliban Sources Project was a joint effort by Anand Gopal, Alex Strick van Linschoten, and Felix Kuehn to collate, digitise and translate primary source documents associated with the Afghan Taliban movement.

In 2017, the three researchers released the article “Ideology in the Afghan Taliban” that examined the documents and concluded that the Afghan Taliban’s ideology is a) the result of a sophisticated internal logic that has changed in subtle but important ways over the years, b) the origins of the Taliban’s ideology lie in the southern Pashtun village, not the Pakistani refugee camp, and 3) their thinking is heavily infused with Sufism.

Incite provided administrative support to Gopal through a two-year grant from Thesigers.

Related Works

More Projects

  • go to September 11, 2001 Oral Histories
    September 11, 2001 Oral Histories
    Capturing a comprehensive, longitudinal memory of responses to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Rockefeller Fund, and Columbia University
  • go to NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project
    NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project
    Documenting New York City’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Board of Trustees of the American Assembly
  • go to Motherhood and Technology
    Motherhood and Technology
    Exploring technological innovations that have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood in recent decades.
  • go to Terra:Soul
    Terra:Soul
    Environmental storytelling with the concept of reciprocity at its core.