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The longest war the United States has ever fought is the ongoing war in Afghanistan. But when we speak of "Afghanistan," we really mean a conflict that straddles the border with Pakistan--and the reality of Islamic militancy on that border is enormously complicated. In Talibanistan, an unparalleled group of experts offer a nuanced understanding of this critical region. Edited by Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling books The Longest War and The Osama Bin Laden I Know, and Katherine Tiedemann, these essays examine in detail the embattled territory from Kandahar in Afghanistan to Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. They pull apart the distinctions...
Heroin is universally considered the world's most harmful illegal drug. This is due not only to the damaging effects of the drug itself, but also to the spread of AIDS tied to its use. Burgeoning illegal mass consumption in the 1960s and 1970s has given rise to a global market for heroin and other opiates of nearly 16 million users. The production and trafficking of opiates have caused crime, disease, and social distress throughout the world, leading many nations to invest billions of dollars trying to suppress the industry. The failure of their efforts has become a central policy concern. Can the world heroin supply actually be cut, and with what consequences?The result of a five-year-long ...
The year before Diana Janse went to Kabul, she was a desk officer at the European Security Department in Stockholm. It was an unglamorous and stressful job that entailed working long hours at her desk, writing instructions for the government’s negotiators at the European Union delegation in Brussels. For the first time since her dream of becoming a diplomat was born, in a shabby student dorm on the outskirts of Moscow in the early 1990s, she doubted her choice of career. This was not what she had had in mind. But then what did she have in mind? When a new position at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, with placement in Kabul, Afghanistan, was posted for the third time, it caught her eye. ...
It has been said that Canada is a country with too much geography and too little history. Afghanistan has too much of both. As the war escalates in Afghanistan, more Canadians are asking what we are doing there. For a country that has specialized in peacekeeping, this war is a shock one that we have not yet comprehended. As the casualties mount, Canadians will want to know why we are there. Canada in Afghanistan introduces readers to Afghans and their culture, gives historical background from our involvement since 9/11, and covers operations casualties and the results. Also included is an examination of a new strategic experiment the provincial reconstruction team and the technological advances used in this war. Cautionary predictions conclude the book. Canada in Afghanistan is an introduction to what is happening in Afghanistan and what we can expect through 2009.
Based on unprecedented empirical research conducted with lower levels of the Afghan police, this unique study assesses how institutional legacy and external intervention, from countries including the UK and the US, have shaped the structural conditions of corruption in the police force and the state. Taking a social constructivist approach, the book combines an in-depth analysis of internal political, cultural and economic drivers with references to several regime changes affecting policing and security, from the Soviet occupation and Mujahidin militias to Taliban religious police. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, Singh offers an invaluable contribution to the literature and to anti-corruption policy in developing and conflict-affected societies.
Warlords have come to represent enemies of peace, security, and 'good governance' in the collective intellectual imagination. This book asserts that not all warlords are created equal. Under certain conditions, some become effective governors on behalf of the state. This provocative argument is based on extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, where Mukhopadhyay examined warlord-governors who have served as valuable exponents of the Karzai regime in its struggle to assert control over key segments of the countryside. She explores the complex ecosystems that came to constitute provincial political life after 2001 and exposes the rise of 'strongman' governance in two provinces. While this brand of governance falls far short of international expectations, its emergence reflects the reassertion of the Afghan state in material and symbolic terms that deserve our attention. This book pushes past canonical views of warlordism and state building to consider the logic of the weak state as it has arisen in challenging, conflict-ridden societies like Afghanistan.
The director of the American-Afghan war describes how he orchestrated the defeat of the Taliban in the region by forging separate alliances with warlords, Taliban dissidents, and the Pakistani intelligence service.
Born in Kandahar in 1978, Sultan fled to the United States at age five with her family. Raised in Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens, Sultan saw her life change when she was married by arrangement at the young age of seventeen to a virtual stranger fourteen years her senior -- a marriage she struggled to maintain and then hastily fought, eventually (after three years) being granted a divorce. This very divorce would become one of the first in her close-knit Afgan community, where the subject is considered rare and taboo. Sultan went on to graduate from college summa cum laude with a degree in economics, and in July 2001, she returned to Kandahar, to explore her family roots and find herself. Ther...
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