Queen's University Belfast - Taliban Turbans and The Smartphone.

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  1. 09/25/2025 ·  Video

    Taliban, turbans and smartphones season 4, episode 5.

    Season 4, Episode 5 - The Ministry for Vice and Virtue This episode considers the role of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Forbidding of Vice within the Taliban state-building project. We look at the moral code which Vice and Virtue enforcers are charged with policing. We describe the power which V&V men wield within state institutions where they act as ideological commissars. We conclude that the ministry and the law governing its actions are integral to Taliban Amir’s vision of achieving a society permanently mobilised for violent jihad.

  2. 09/25/2025 ·  Video

    Taliban, turbans and smartphones season 4, episode 5.

    Season 4, Episode 5 - The Ministry for Vice and Virtue. This episode considers the role of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Forbidding of Vice within the Taliban state-building project. We look at the moral code which Vice and Virtue enforcers are charged with policing. We describe the power which V&V men wield within state institutions where they act as ideological commissars. We conclude that the ministry and the law governing its actions are integral to Taliban Amir’s vision of achieving a society permanently mobilised for violent jihad.

  3. 07/23/2025 ·  Video

    Talibans turbans and smartphones Season 4, Episode 4

    Season 4, Episode 4. “Taliban transforming the education system” The Taliban are pursuing an ambitious education policy, covering the country’s schools, madrassahs and universities. As well as excluding girls from secondary and tertiary education, the Taliban have taken an impressive range of measures designed to end western cultural influence and produce a new generation of Afghans who “think like Taliban”. This could be described as the world’s largest extremism promotion project. Michael and Tamim explore the ambitiousness of the Taliban educational reforms.

  4. 06/02/2025 ·  Video

    Taliban, turbans and smartphones - Season4, Episode 3

    Season 4, Episode 3 - Feuds, job cuts and morality policing – latest developments in the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate and the Afghan response”. This episode is a catch-up on developments in the Islamic Emirate. Michael and Tamim talk through the harsh realities which the Taliban, the general population and opposition are being forced to confront. The Taliban, struggling with a budget shortfall, are implementing mass redundancies, cutting salaries and failing to pay many of their bills. The population faces harassment at the hands of the Taliban and immiseration as economic conditions deteriorate. And the opposition struggles to find a way to scale up resistance to Taliban rule. Although armed resistance for now poses no threat to the Emirate, the general alienation from the regime hints at possible future challenges.

  5. 03/25/2025 ·  Video

    Taliban turbans and smartphones - Season 4, Episode 2

    Season, 4, Episode 2 - “Unprecedented? The latest Taliban in-fighting and what it tells us about the state of the Emirate”. We consider the cold war between the Taliban’s Amir and the faction led by Interior Minister Seraj Haqqani. Why Seraj disappeared from view for seven weeks. The issues in dispute – power, resources and policy. What options both sides have. Assessment of the leadership’s prospects for maintaining unity versus the risk of a split and direct challenge to the authority of the Amir.

  6. 01/24/2025 ·  Video

    Taliban turbans and smartphones - Season 4, Episode 1

    Season 4, Episode 1 - “Emirate Studies – what every Talib is meant to know about their movement”. We discuss a new book, entitled Emirate Studies and published in Pashto. It is written by a Taliban member of the insurgency-era Culture Commission. Emirate Studies presents the latest official Taliban’s perspective of Afghan history, the anti-Soviet jihad, the post-2001 insurgency, the Taliban’s periods in power and their worldview. We examine what the text tells us about Taliban attitudes and domestic and foreign policies.

  7. 11/01/2024 ·  Video

    Taliban turbans and smartphones. Season 3 Episode 9

    Season 3, Episode 9 - How serious are the Taliban on counter-narcotics policy? As part of the series of Doha dialogues convened by the UN, a working group on counter-narcotics has been formed. This is supposed to bring together international officials and Emirate representatives. Ahead of another possible round of dialogue this episode does reality check on the Emirate’s track record. We try to reconcile satellite observations of reduced opium poppy cultivation with other reporting that suggests that the Taliban remain deeply involved in narcotics trafficking.

  8. 09/12/2024 ·  Video

    Taliban turbans and smartphones Season 3 Episode 8

    Series 3, Episode 8 - “The Taliban’s relations with Afghanistan’s tough region” The episode considers the Taliban’s performance in managing Afghanistan’s regional relations. It considers their declared strategy, which is economy led, and under which they have opened up for inward investment from the neighbours, in particular China. But the undeclared strategy is shaped by their harbouring of militant groups opposed to each of the neighbouring countries. The result is a proliferation of hedging approaches adopted by countries in the region, who deal with the Taliban as the de facto power in Afghanistan but are not necessarily banking on the Emirate being around for long.

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