Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Afghanistan's Endless War
Going beyond the stereotypes of Kalashnikov-wielding Afghan mujahideen and black-turbaned Taliban fundamentalists, Larry Goodson explains in this concise analysis of the Afghan war what has really been happening in Afghanistan in the last twenty years. Beginning with the reasons behind Afghanistan’s inability to forge a strong state -- its myriad cleavages along ethnic, religious, social, and geographical fault lines -- Goodson then examines the devastating course of the war itself. He charts its utter destruction of the country, from the deaths of more than 2 million Afghans and the dispersal of some six million others as refugees to the complete collapse of its economy, which today has been replaced by monoagriculture in opium poppies and heroin production. The Taliban, some of whose leaders Goodson interviewed as recently as 1997, have controlled roughly 80 percent of the country but themselves have shown increasing discord along ethnic and political lines.
Ghaffar Khan
Born into the Muhammadzai tribe, from the Charsadda valley in the Pakhtun heartland, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a passionate believer in the nonviolent core of Islam and sought to wean his people-the fierce warrior Pakhtuns or Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province-from their violent traditions and fight for a separate Pakhtun homeland that would no longer be a buffer between Russia and Britain in the Great Game. In 1929 came Mahatma Gandhi's call for nonviolent resistance against British rule and Badshah Khan responded by raising the Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God), an army of 1,00,000 men who pledged themselves to the service of mankind and nonviolence as a creed. For this, and ...
The Taliban Courts in Afghanistan
How did the Taliban gain the trust of the Afghan population through decades of conflict? How did they put themselves in a position to regulate social relations? And with what consequences for Afghan society? The Taliban Courts in Afghanistan: Waging War by Law explores how the Taliban used the law as a resource in its conflict with militarily and technologically superior Western armies. While the international coalition set up an inadequate and corrupt legal system, the Taliban set up hundreds of courts in the countryside. By insisting on due process, impartiality of judges, and the enforcement of verdicts, this system of justice established itself as one of the few sources of predictability...
The Muslim Secular
Concerned with the fate of the minority in the age of the nation-state, Muslim political thought in modern South Asia has often been associated with religious nationalism and the creation of Pakistan. The Muslim Secular complicates that story by reconstructing the ideas of three prominent thinker-actors of the Indian freedom struggle: the Indian National Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad, the popular Kashmiri politician Sheikh Abdullah, and the nonviolent Pashtun activist Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Revising the common view that they were mere acolytes of their celebrated Hindu colleagues M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, this book argues that these three men collectively produced a distinct Muslim se...
The Defiant Border
This book explores why the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands have remained largely independent of state controls throughout the twentieth century.
Ethnicity, Authority, and Power in Central Asia
The peoples of Greater Central Asia – not only Inner Asian states of Soviet Union but also those who share similar heritages in adjacent countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang – have been drawn into more direct and immediate contact since the Soviet collapse. Infrastructural improvements, and the race by the great powers for access to the region’s vital natural resources, have allowed these peoples to develop closer ties with each other and the wider world, creating new interdependencies, and fresh opportunities for interaction and the exercise of influence. They are being integrated into a new, wider economic and political region which is i...
The Boundaries of Afghans’ Political Imagination
In this book, The Boundaries of Afghans’ Political Imagination, the author seeks an answer to the question of how tradition, specifically its normative-axiological aspects, shapes the political attitudes and actions of the Afghans. The author points to two different concepts of social order which are moulded by the Pashtunwali: on the one hand, a tribal code which is part of Pashto language tradition; and on the other hand, by Sufism, the religious and philosophical current in Islam expressed mainly in the Dari (Persian) language. The two systems offer a different hierarchy of values, and organize social reality by referring to two different models of order: the circle and the pyramid. Whi...
Frontier of Faith
"Frontier of Faith" examines the history of Islam-especially that of local "mullahs," or Muslim clerics-in the North-West Frontier. A largely autonomous zone straddling the boundary of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Tribal Areas was established as a strategic buffer zone for British India, and the resulting autonomy allowed local mullahs to assume roles of tremendous power. After Partition in 1947, the Tribal Areas maintained its status as an autonomous region, and for the next fifty years the "mullahs" supported armed mobilizations in exchange for protection of their vested interests in regional freedom. Consequently the Frontier has become the hinterland of successive, contradictory "jihads" in support of Pashtun ethnicism, anti-colonial nationalism, Pakistani territorialism, religious revivalism, Afghan anti-Soviet resistance, and anti-Americanism. Considering this territory is said to be the current hiding place of Osama bin Laden, there couldn't be a better time for a sourcebook detailing the intricacies of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands today and the function of the "mullahs" and their allies.
Pakistan in Regional and Global Politics
Pakistan is at currently at the centre of regional and global geo-strategic issues as a frontline state in the global war on terrorism. It is seeking to project itself as a modern Islamic state that can engage both the Islamic bloc and the western world in the post 9/11 era. This book addresses some questions under the broad rubric of International Relations and Security. It focuses on four themes: Pakistan and global security; Pakistan’s international relations; politics and identity in Pakistan; and economic development of Pakistan. Leading international experts have contributed articles within the framework of these themes.
The Limits of Culture
Experts analyze the effect of cultural interests on the foreign policy of states in the Caspian region, including Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.
