Networks, Social Capital, and Social Liability: The Case of Pakistani ISI, the Taliban and the War against Terrorism

摘要

Pakistan is one of the most important players as well as a playground frontier of the global war on terrorism beginning from September 11 to the present. In this paper we delineate the complexities of the war against terrorism taking a social network approach. The paper argues that one of the main challenges for fighting terrorism in places such as Pakistan is the social network ties which exit between the different constituencies, sometimes constituencies which are seemingly on opposing sides. The paper uses social capital of organizations to map the capital and liabilities of strong and weak ties between the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) and the Taliban and how they change over time.