Seeing things differently: nang, tura, zolm, and other cultural factors in Taliban attitudes to drones

This article addresses the question of what the Taliban think about drones. Western literature on this question is predominately anti-war, anti-drone, or critical of the lack of transparency, which means little to the Taliban. The discussion here focuses on their literature, exploring it through the frames of how Pashtuns understand war and bravery in combat, how Pashtuns have created meta narratives to discuss the relationship between US and allied use of force and how that connects to a wider understanding of the legitimacy. This has important policy implications because the primacy that the drone has in the West as a totemic weapon of war does not exist for the Taliban. Their dislike of drones is indivisibly and culturally bound, not specific to the instrument as distinct from other means of aerial and indirect fire.