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to keep them out of sight. Humanitarian aid
workers objected to a ban on women in hos-
pitals, threatening to leave a withdrawal that
would cripple hospital care in Kabul, includ-
ing care for children. The Taliban's response
was to tell them to go.
asked why the Taliban were willing to go to
such lengths to seclude women in Kabul, one
commander implied that the strictest possi-
ble prohibitions on women allowed him to
control his troops. The commander did not
explain how this worked, but our defection-
constraint argument can.
fraternizing and possibly defecting is severely
undermined. The more the local population
hates the soldiers, the less of a discipline
problem commanders would have in the cit-
ies, especially in the relatively cosmopolitan
city of Kabul.
for controlling its local governors. It was not
uncommon among Afghan mujahi-
deen for factions and subfactions to
defect in return for some payment,
often by foreigners. The Taliban ap-
parently rotated local governors to the
battlefront or back to headquarters in
Kandahar if they showed signs of cre-
ating a local power base, which would
have allowed them the strength to
population could remain longer.
was a former college student from a well-off
family. Osama bin Laden is a multimillion-
was the scion of a rich banker.] Isn't this evi-
dence against the club approach, which im-
plies that poor operatives are more likely to
be loyal than rich operatives, since the poor
one have worse outside options?
know about the rank and file of the organiza-
tions they belong to. And those individuals
tend to be in need of the material services
that clubs provide.
provide services to non-members as well as
members. But those services are provided in a
highly discriminatory way, with core mem-
bers receiving more support than ordinary
members, who in turn receive more than
non-members a tiered structure resembling