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Democratization: the Challenges to State Legitimacy in Afghanistan
Wali Shaaker evaluates the theory of statehood and state legitimacy within the context of the fledgling Afghan democracy. Shaaker argues that warlords' participation in Afghanistan's democratic process has undermined the legitimacy of the state. Human rights violations, drug trade and institutional corruption constitute the perimeters of a triangle set by warlords within which the state falls short of the moral authority necessary to assert legitimacy. On one hand, in order to survive it has to compromise with and appease the warlords; on the other, it struggles to eradicate drugs and uproot corruption. To achieve these objectives, the state has adopted paradoxical policies and taken contradictory measures simultaneously. This in turn, has resulted in ineffectual governance and the weakness of its status as a legitimate body in the eyes of the public.
Democracy's Dilemma
Wali Shaaker evaluates the theory of state legitimacy within the context of the fledgling Afghan democracy. Against specific criteria outlined in this book, he examines the degree to which the Afghan democratic state has achieved legitimacy since inception. Shaaker argues that warlords' participation in Afghanistan's democratic process has undermined the legitimacy of the state. Human rights violations, drug trade and institutional corruption constitute the perimeters of a triangle set by warlords within which the state falls short of the moral authority necessary to assert legitimacy. On one hand, in order to survive it has to compromise with and appease the warlords; on the other, it struggles to eradicate drugs and uproot corruption. To achieve these objectives, the state has adopted paradoxical policies and taken contradictory measures simultaneously. This in turn, has resulted in ineffectual governance and the weakness of its status as a legitimate body in the eyes of the public.
Taliban Narratives
Why has the Taliban been so much more effective in presenting messages that resonate with the Afghan population than the United States, the Afghan government and their allies? This book, based on years of field research and the assessment of hundreds of original source materials, examines the information operations and related narratives of Afghan insurgents, especially the Afghan Taliban, and investigates how the Taliban has won the information war. Taliban messaging, wrapped in the narrative of jihad, is both to the point and in tune with its target audiences. On the other hand, the United States and its Kabul allies committed a basic messaging blunder, failing to present narratives that spoke to or, often, were even understood by their target audiences. Thomas Johnson systematically explains why the United States lost this "battle of the story" in Afghanistan, and argues that this defeat may have cost the US the entire war, despite its conventional and technological superiority.
The River Village
Embark on a journey through time while learning about Afghan culture, history, and politics. The unforgettable story of Masih, a teenage boy, who struggles to find his place amidst a chaotic atmosphere of war and political upheaval during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. -Kabul, Afghanistan -- On a winter night in 1980, intelligence officers of the Marxist regime raid Dr. Sharif's house and arrest him. They accuse Sharif of having ties with the mujahidin, anti-government forces. After his arrest, his fourteen-year-old son Masih aspires to quit school and join his mujahidin cousins in Deh Darya, The River Village near Kabul in order to fight against the invading Soviet army. However, Nadia, his mother and a strong-minded woman, opposes his decision. She is determined to keep her son, her only child alive
U.S. Military Information Operations in Afghanistan
The U.S. Marine Corps, which has long recognized the importance of influencing the civilian population in a counterinsurgency environment, requested an evaluation of the effectiveness of the psychological operations element of U.S. military information operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010 based on how well messages and themes were tailored to target audiences. This monograph responds to that request.
One Story, Thirty Stories
"From a society shredded by violence and a generation caught between Afghanistan and America, Saed and Muradi have sewn together a vibrant patchwork of memory and imagination. At turns raw and affecting, One Story, Thirty Stories is a chronicle of loss and reunion, offering a firsthand look at how communities are fractured and remade, with all the frustration and tenderness that exile evokes."---Tara Bahrampour, To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America "One Story, Thirty Stories is exquisite documentary, a kaleidoscope of fragmented lives, losses, and attempts at remaking. The editors have assembled a collection that manages to be both literature and history, heartbreaking and hopefu...
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, has improbably been at the center of international geopolitics for four decades. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1980, Afghanistan descended into an unending conflict that featured at various points most of the world's major powers. In the mid-1990s, the country entered a new phase, when the Taliban took power and imposed order based on a harsh, repressive version of Islamic law. Infamously, the sheltered Osama bin Laden, whose attack on 9/11 Towers ushered in the Global War on Terror, drew tens of thousands of American troops to the country, where they remain today. In Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), leading scholar Barnett R. Rubin provides an overview of this complicated nation. After providing a concise history of Afghanistan, he explores the various peoples and cultures of the country and its relations with neighbors like Pakistan and Iran. He also provides an authoritative overview of the conflicts that have plagued the country since the Soviet invasion. Both wide-ranging and pithy, this book explains why Afghanistan matters and what its possible future might look like.
Approaches to Arabic Popular Culture
Over recent years, Arabic popular culture has become a focal point of West Asian and North African studies. Most of the new research dealing with it concentrates on the ?popular? as opposed to an intellectual ?high? culture far from the harsh and hierarchically organized reality many Arabic-speaking societies face today. Popular cultural practices are thus seen as a rejection of the elite and a stance against those who have ?something to loose? within paralyzed and conservative communities. Albeit not denying the subversive political potential associated with these practices, this volume intends to take a more nuanced and broader perspective. Arabic popular culture might engage with emancipa...
From Quills to Tweets
While today's presidential tweets may seem a light-year apart from the scratch of quill pens during the era of the American Revolution, the importance of political communication is eternal. This book explores the roles that political narratives, media coverage, and evolving communication technologies have played in precipitating, shaping, and concluding or prolonging wars and revolutions over the course of US history. The case studies begin with the Sons of Liberty in the era of the American Revolution, cover American wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and conclude with a look at the conflict against ISIS in the Trump era. Special chapters also examine how propagandists shaped A...
Building Special Operations Relationships with Fragile Partners:
Relationships empower Special Operations Forces (SOF) to perform as a highly skilled and reliable cadre in collaboration with local partner forces to prevent and solve shared problem sets, often accomplishing more with less. Since 9/11, however, relationships between SOF and their partners have not always been properly built and maintained. The authors trace the causal effects of constraints, trainings, and incentives and their impact on the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) SOF approach of building enduring relationships. Motivated by numerous deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, with recurring problem sets, we chose to conduct a struc-tured-focused comparison betwee...
