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 Trust in Autonomous Labs
    Trust in Autonomous Labs
    Exploring the implications of autonomous labs in knowledge and society.
  • go to Freedom On The Move
    Freedom On The Move
    Mining historical newspapers to uncover thousands of self-emancipator stories, making these vital records freely accessible to all. Part of the Left Field Fund
  • go to Murals of Memory and Dialogue
    Murals of Memory and Dialogue
    Under Taliban rule, Afghan cultural expression is being systematically erased. Yet stories, memories, and traditions persist. Murals of Memory & Dialogue creates space for those stories to be seen and heard. Part of the Global Change Program
  • go to Phoenix House Oral History
    Phoenix House Oral History
    Capturing the story of how Phoenix House transformed drug rehabilitation in America. Funded by Phoenix House Foundation