Alex Strick van Linschoten

Alex Strick van Linschoten is a researcher and writer whose work examines Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the modern history of southern Afghanistan. He worked in Afghanistan from 2006 and completed a doctorate in War Studies at King's College London on the Taliban's place between village and state during 1979 through 2001. With Felix Kuehn, he co-edited The Taliban Reader for Oxford University Press in 2018; its subtitle is War, Islam and Politics in Their Own Words. The volume assembles translated speeches, statements, poems, and other primary material so readers can trace changes in Taliban identity and political thought. Their collaboration also produced An Enemy We Created, Poetry of the Taliban, and editorial work on Abdul Salam Zaeef's memoir My Life with the Taliban. Strick van Linschoten's scholarship consistently privileges archival material and texts produced by Afghan actors. That method gives his books value as documentary collections as well as interpretive studies of conflict, ideology, and political organization.