From Taliban 2.0 to EU DisInfolab – The outreach of Global Jihadism

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Abstract

There are no moderate Taliban – Dr Massouda Jalal so entitled her anticipatory 2011 Wall Street Journal article. Jalal, the first woman running for the Office of President, who also served as a minister for woman affairs in Afghanistan, highlighted that ‘[s]eeking to negotiate with an implacable enemy could be seen either as foolish or foresighted.’ She thus explicitly warned the international community, especially decision makers in both Washington and Brussels, that the ‘[…] willingness to compromise with the Taliban is shortsighted’ and ‘[t]here is no such thing as a moderate Taliban […]’: ‘If Western political leaders had lived through the savagery themselves, and experienced the fear and the hopelessness of the Taliban's rule, I imagine they would be somewhat less naïve’. Unfortunately, it appeared that some kind of “guided naivety and selective cognition” was (and mostlikely still is) quite convenient for governments in formulating, propagating, and executing their Afghan exit strategy. [...]