Download or read book The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [This book] explores ... how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future ... [It] investigates ... questions relating to the character of the Taliban, its evolution over time, and its capacity to affect the future of the region.--Dust jacket.
Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.
Download or read book Understanding War in Afghanistan written by Joseph J. Collins and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Why We Lost written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.
Download or read book The Arabs at War in Afghanistan written by Mustafa Hamid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former senior mujahidin fighter teams up with an ex-counter terrorism analyst in this remarkable account from the frontlines of the jihad
Download or read book The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan written by N. Nojumi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the turbulent political history of Afghanistan from the communist upheaval of the 1970s through to the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. It reviews the importance of the region to external powers and explains why warfare and instability have been endemic. The author analyses in detail the birth of the Taliban and the bloody rise to power of fanatic Islamists, including Osama bin Laden, in the power vacuum following the withdrawal of US aid. Looking forward, Nojumi explores the ongoing quest for a third political movement in Afghanistan - an alternative to radical communists or fanatical Islamists and suggests the support that will be neccessary from the international community in order for such a movement to survive.
Download or read book Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis written by Adenrele Awotona and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2023-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis provides academics and researchers interested in planning, urbanism and conflict studies with a multidisciplinary, international assessment of the reconstruction and foreign aid efforts in Afghanistan. The book draws together expert contributions from countries across three continents - Asia, Europe and North America - which have provided external aid to Afghanistan. Using international, regional and local approaches, it highlights the importance of rebuilding sustainable communities in the midst of ongoing uncertainties. It explores the efficacy of external aid; challenges faced; the response of multilateral international agencies; the role of women in the reconstruction process; and community-based natural disaster risk management strategies. Finally, it looks at the lessons learned in the conflict reconstruction process to better prepare the country for future potential human, economic, infrastructural and institutional vulnerabilities.
Download or read book Afghan Modern written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rugged, remote, riven by tribal rivalries and religious violence, Afghanistan seems to many a country frozen in time and forsaken by the world. Afghan Modern presents a bold challenge to these misperceptions, revealing how Afghans, over the course of their history, have engaged and connected with a wider world and come to share in our modern globalized age. Always a mobile people, Afghan travelers, traders, pilgrims, scholars, and artists have ventured abroad for centuries, their cosmopolitan sensibilities providing a compass for navigating a constantly changing world. Robert Crews traces the roots of Afghan globalism to the early modern period, when, as the subjects of sprawling empires, the residents of Kabul, Kandahar, and other urban centers forged linkages with far-flung imperial centers throughout the Middle East and Asia. Focusing on the emergence of an Afghan state out of this imperial milieu, he shows how Afghan nation-making was part of a series of global processes, refuting the usual portrayal of Afghans as pawns in the “Great Game” of European powers and of Afghanistan as a “hermit kingdom.” In the twentieth century, the pace of Afghan interaction with the rest of the world dramatically increased, and many Afghan men and women came to see themselves at the center of ideological struggles that spanned the globe. Through revolution, war, and foreign occupations, Afghanistan became even more enmeshed in the global circulation of modern politics, occupying a pivotal position in the Cold War and the tumultuous decades that followed.
Download or read book Zone of Crisis written by Amin Saikal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West Asian states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran have over the last few decades represented an arc of crisis. Characterised by fractured and dysfunctional political elites, fraught economic policies, and ideological struggles between the forces of authoritarianism and democratisation, neo-fundamentalism and pluralism, they embody a mosaic of ethnicities. Amin Saikal, a distinguished Afghan-born scholar of international affairs, provides a sweeping new understanding of the complex contemporary political and social instability encompassing the region. Saikal takes the reader on a journey throughout the history and current affairs of the four countries, highlighting how these states have been repeatedly invaded by major powers such as Tsarist and Soviet Russia, Great Britain and the United States. With each seeking, often in competition with one another, to redirect the domestic and foreign policy objectives and priorities of this region in accordance with their individual geopolitical and ideological preferences, the region finds itself today in a state of crisis. Critically comparing democratisation and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and examining both recent Western intervention and the history of foreign influence in the region, this book looks at how US entanglement has affected Pakistani and Iranian domestic politics and foreign affairs. How has this influenced the success or failure of the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq? What solutions can be taken to ensure regional security? Despite the critical importance of historical legacies in understanding present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, the past has often been overlooked or misunderstood by outsiders, with frequently serious consequences. An improved understanding of the region among foreign policymakers is imperative to enhancing prospects for stability and mutually beneficial international relations. Bearing this in mind, Zone of Crisis offers an informed and balanced overview on a troubled region. This book will fascinate general readers and prove essential reading for specialists.
Download or read book Reconciliation in Afghanistan written by Michael Semple and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely and thorough volume, Michael Semple analyzes the rationale and effectiveness post-2001 attempts at reconciliation in Afghanistan. He explains the poor performance of these attempts and argues that rethinking is necessary if reconciliation is to help revive prospects for peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Little America written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City (winner of the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize) now gives us the startling, behind-the-scenes story of the struggle between President Obama and the US military to remake Afghanistan.
Download or read book Television and the Afghan Culture Wars written by Wazhmah Osman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portrayed in Western discourse as tribal and traditional, Afghans have in fact intensely debated women's rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam as part of their nation building in the post-9/11 era. Wazhmah Osman places television at the heart of these public and politically charged clashes while revealing how the medium also provides war-weary Afghans with a semblance of open discussion and healing. After four decades of gender and sectarian violence, she argues, the internationally funded media sector has the potential to bring about justice, national integration, and peace. Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of many Afghan media producers and people. Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the role of international interventions. Osman analyzes the impact of transnational media and foreign funding while keeping the focus on local cultural contestations, productions, and social movements. As a result, she redirects the global dialogue about Afghanistan to Afghans and challenges top-down narratives of humanitarian development.
Download or read book The American War in Afghanistan written by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Winner of 2022 Lionel Gelber Prize The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners. The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Malkasian is both a leading academic authority on the subject and an experienced practitioner, having spent nearly two years working in the Afghan countryside and going on to serve as the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, the US military commander in Afghanistan and later the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge, understanding of Pashto, and review of primary source documents, Malkasian moves through the war's multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the light American footprint during the 2003 Iraq invasion; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006, the Obama-era surge, and the various resets in strategy and force allocations that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the 2018-2020 peace talks. Malkasian lived through much of it, and draws from his own experiences to provide a unique vantage point on the war. Today, the Taliban is the most powerful faction, and sees victory as probable. The ultimate outcome after America leaves is inherently unpredictable given the multitude of actors there, but one thing is sure: the war did not go as America had hoped. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major attack on the American homeland was carried out after 2001, the United States was unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, which could not survive without US military backing. The American War in Afghanistan explains why the war had such a disappointing outcome. Wise and all-encompassing, The American War in Afghanistan provides a truly vivid portrait of the conflict in all of its phases that will remain the authoritative account for years to come.
Download or read book The Dogs are Eating Them Now written by Graeme Smith and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dogs are Eating Them Now is a highly personal narrative of our war in Afghanistan and how it went dangerously wrong. Written by a respected and fearless former foreign correspondent who has won multiple awards for his journalism (including an Emmy for the video series "Talking with the Taliban") this is a gripping account of modern warfare that takes you into back alleys, cockpits, and prisons —telling stories that would have endangered his life had he published this book while still working as a journalist. Smith was not simply embedded with the military: he operated independently and at great personal risk to report from inside the war, and the heroes of his story are the translators, guides, and ordinary citizens who helped him find the truth. They revealed sad, absurd, touching stories that provide the key to understanding why the mission failed to deliver peace and democracy. From the corruption of law enforcement agents and the tribal nature of the local power structure to the economics of the drug trade and the frequent blunders of foreign troops, this is the no–holds–barred story from a leading expert on the insurgency.
Download or read book Ghost Wars written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Download or read book U S Marines and Irregular Warfare written by Nicholas J. Schlosser and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.S. Marines in Irregular Warfare: Training and Education is a brief history that recounts how the U.S. Marine Corps adapted to fight the Global War on Terrorism during 2000-10. The Marine Corps has a long history of fighting irregular wars, including the Banana Wars in Central America during the 1920s and the Vietnam War during the 1960s. To battle the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps drew upon this experience while also implementing new plans and programs to better prepare Marines to carry out counterinsurgency operations. The Marine Corps updated the curriculum at the Command and Staff College and transformed the annual Combined Arms Exercise into Exercise Mojave Viper: an immersive training program that simulated the urban environments in which Marines would be operating in Southwest Asia. Most importantly, Marines adjusted in the field, as battalion and company commanders drew on their basic training and education to devise innovative tactics to better combat the new threats they now faced. ?us, as this story shows, the Marine Corps did not undergo a radical transformation to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead drew on principles that had defined it as a warfighting organization throughout most of its history. Keywords: United States Marine Corps; United States Marines; U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Marines; Marines; Marine Corps; Global War on Terrorism; global war on terrorism; irregular warfare; military strategy; counterinsurgency; combat; iraq war; Iraq War; Afghanistan; military education; soldier training; combat training and tactics; Southwest Asia
Download or read book War Exile and the Music of Afghanistan written by John Baily and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s John Baily conducted extensive ethnomusicological research in Afghanistan, principally in the city of Herat but also in Kabul. Then, with Taraki’s coup in 1978, came conflict, war, and the dispersal of many musicians to locations far and wide. This new publication is the culmination of Baily’s further research on Afghan music over the 35 years that followed. This took him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the USA, Australia and parts of Europe - London, Hamburg and Dublin. Arranged chronologically, the narrative traces the sequence of political events - from 1978, through the Soviet invasion, to the coming of the Taliban and, finally, the aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2001. He examines the effects of the ever-changing situation on the lives and works of Afghan musicians, following individual musicians in fascinating detail. At the heart of his analysis are privileged vignettes of ten musical personalities - some of friends, and some newly discovered. The result is a remarkable personal memoir by an eminent ethnomusicologist known for his deep commitment to Afghanistan, Afghan musicians and Afghan musical culture. John Baily is also an ethnographic filmmaker. Four of his films relating to his research are included on the downloadable resources that accompanies the text.
