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In 1839 18,000 British troops marched into Afghanistan. Three years later, only one man emerged to tell the tale.. A towering history of the first Afghan war by bestselling historian William Dalrymple.
In autumn 2001, U.S. and NATO troops were deployed to Afghanistan to unseat the Taliban rulers, repressive Islamic fundamentalists who had lent active support to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda jihadists. The NATO forces defeated and dismantled the Taliban government, scattering its remnants across the country. But despite a more than decade-long attempt to eradicate them, the Taliban endured—regrouping and reestablishing themselves as a significant insurgent movement. Gradually they have regained control of large portions of Afghanistan even as U.S. troops are preparing to depart from the region. In his authoritative and highly readable account, author Hassan Abbas examines how the Taliban not only survived but adapted to their situation in order to regain power and political advantage. Abbas traces the roots of religious extremism in the area and analyzes the Taliban’s support base within Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In addition, he explores the roles that Western policies and military decision making—not to mention corruption and incompetence in Kabul—have played in enabling the Taliban’s return to power.
Contemporary societies are marked by new global trends-economic, cultural, technological, and environmental shifts that are part of a rapid and uneven wave of globalization. The growing global interdependence that characterizes our time calls for a generation of individuals who can engage in effective global problem solving and participate simultaneously in local, national, and global civic life. Put simply, preparing our students to participate fully in today's and tomorrow's world demands that we nurture their global competence.This document introduces a definition of global competence developed by the Global Competence Task Force-a group of state education agency leaders, education schola...
Presents a thematically indexed bibliography devoted to Afghanistan. Following the pattern established by one of its major data sources, viz, the acclaimed Index Islamicus, both journal articles and book publications are included and indexed.
The Battle for Pakistan showcases a marriage of convenience between unequal partners. The relationship between Pakistan and the United States since the early 1950s has been nothing less than a whiplash-inducing rollercoaster ride. Today, surrounded by hostile neighbors, with Afghanistan increasingly under Indian influence, Pakistan does not wish to break ties with the United States. Nor does it want to become a vassal of China and get caught in the vice of a US-China rivalry, or in the Arab-Iran conflict. Internally, massive economic and demographic challenges as well as the existential threat of armed militancy pose huge obstacles to Pakistan's development and growth. Could its short-run po...
On December 27, 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to save an endangered communist regime. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, founded in 1965 but almost immediately riven into two hostile wings, had been induced by Moscow into unifying in 1977 in order to seize power the following year. Within weeks, however, the majority Khalqi faction had driven out the rival Parchamis, only to discover that its rigid Marxism-Leninism was no match for Islam. As the Khalqi position deteriorated, Moscow thought to regain control by forceful replacement of the PDPA leaders with Parchamis. Instead, their invasion only consolidated popular determination to eject an alien ideology. In Afghanistan's Tw...
An authoritative study of the administrative, social, and economic structure of Afghanistan at the beginning of the twentieth century. Government and Society in Afghanistan covers a decisive stage in the country’s history. The period covered—the reign of the “Iron” Amir Rahman Khan—was in many ways the beginning of modern Afghanistan as a cohesive nation. It was under the Amir that its borders were established, its internal unification completed, and the modern concept of nationhood implanted. Hsan Kawun Kakar considers both the internal and the external forces that influenced Afghanistan’s development. Thus, modernization, centralization, and nationalization are seen as both defensive reactions to European imperialism and a necessary step toward capital formation and industrialization. The first part of the book covers the government of the Amir, from the personality of the ruler to a comprehensive overview of taxation and local government. The second part views these economic and social institutions from the perspective of the major segments of the populace—including nomads, townsmen, tribes, women, slaves, landowners, mullahs, merchants, and others.
The contributors to this volume treat the United States as an object to be historically and politically scrutinized rather than as the norm from which all else is to be evaluated. Their essays assess the Third World through its history of colonialism and neocolonialism rather than focusing on issues of culture and morality.
Ethnic and tribal loyalties in Afghanistan provided the lethal cocktail for the violent conflict that engulfed the country following the collapse of the Soviet backed government in 1992. The ensuing fighting between mujahideen groups paved the way for the tectonic social and political shifts, which continue to shape events today. What accounts for the emergence of ethnicity, as the main cause of conflict in Afghanistan? What moved people to respond with such fervour and intensity to calls for ethnic solidarity? This book attempts to make sense of ethnicity’s decisive role in Afghanistan through a comprehensive exploration of its nature and perception. Based on new data, generated through interviews, field notes and participant observations, Sharma maps the increased role of ethnicity in Afghan national politics. Key social, political and historical processes that facilitated its emergence as the pre-dominant fault-line of conflict are explored, moving away from grand political and military narrative to instead engage with zones of conflict as social spaces. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in politics, ethnic studies and security studies.