Download or read book Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan written by Noah Coburn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume shows how Afghani elections since 2004 have threatened to derail the country’s fledgling democracy. Examining presidential, parliamentary, and provincial council elections and conducting interviews with more than one hundred candidates, officials, community leaders, and voters, the text shows how international approaches to Afghani elections have misunderstood the role of local actors, who have hijacked elections in their favor, alienated communities, undermined representative processes, and fueled insurgency, fostering a dangerous disillusionment among Afghan voters.
Download or read book Hubris Self Interest and America s Failed War in Afghanistan written by Thomas P. Cavanna and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the conduct of the US-led post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. Adopting a long-term perspective, it argues that even though Washington initially had an opportunity to achieve its security goals and give Afghanistan a chance to enter a new era, it compromised any possibility of success from the very moment it let bin Laden escape to Pakistan in December 2001, and found itself locked in a strategic overreach. Given the bureaucratic and rhetorical momentum triggered by the war on terror in America, the Bush Administration was bound to deploy more resources in Afghanistan sooner or later (despite its focus on Iraq). The need to satisfy unfulfilled counter-terrorism objectives made the US dependent on Afghanistan’s warlords, which compromised the country’s stability and tarnished its new political system. The extension of the US military presence made Washington lose its leverage on the Pakistan army leaders, who, aware of America’s logistical dependency on Islamabad, supported the Afghan insurgents – their historical proxies - more and more openly. The extension of the war also contributed to radicalize segments of the Afghan and Pakistani populations, destabilizing the area further. In the meantime, the need to justify the extension of its military presence influenced the US-led coalition into proclaiming its determination to democratize and reconstruct Afghanistan. While highly opportunistic, the emergence of these policies proved both self-defeating and unsustainable due to an inescapable collision between the US-led coalition’s inherent self-interest, hubris, limited knowledge, limited attention span and limited resources, and, on the other hand, Afghanistan’s inherent complexity. As the critical contradictions at the very heart of the campaign increased with the extension of the latter’s duration, scale, and cost, America’s leaders, entrapped in path-dependence, lost their strategic flexibility. Despite debates on troops/resource allocation and more sophisticated doctrines, they repeated the same structural mistakes over and over again. The strategic overreach became self-sustaining, until its costs became intolerable, leading to a drawdown which has more to do with a pervasive sense of failure than with the accomplishment of any noble purpose or strategic breakthrough.
Download or read book Losing Afghanistan written by Noah Coburn and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan mobilized troops, funds, and people on an international level not seen since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and tens of billions of dollars flowed into the country. But what was gained for Afghanistan—or for the international community that footed the bill? Why did development money not lead to more development? Why did a military presence make things more dangerous? Through the stories of four individuals—an ambassador, a Navy SEAL, a young Afghan businessman, and a wind energy engineer—Noah Coburn weaves a vivid account of the challenges and contradictions of life during the intervention. Looking particularly at the communities around Bagram Airbase, this ethnography considers how Afghans viewed and attempted to use the intervention and how those at the base tried to understand the communities around them. These compelling stories step outside the tired paradigms of 'unruly' Afghan tribes, an effective Taliban resistance, and a corrupt Karzai government to show how the intervention became an entity unto itself, one doomed to collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy and contradictory intentions.
Download or read book Modern Afghanistan written by M. Nazif Shahrani and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-10 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : the impact of four decades of war and violence on afghan society and political culture / Nazif Shahrani -- Technologies of power-competing discourses on national identity, statehood, and state stability -- Afghanistan : a turbulent state in transition / Amin Saikal -- Afghanistan's "traditional" Islam in transition : the deep roots of Taliban extremism / Bashir Ahmad Ansari -- Language, poetry, and identity in Afghanistan : poetic texts, changing contexts / Mohammad Omar Sharifi -- Lineages of the urban state : locating continuity and change in post-2001 Kabul / Khalid Homayun Nadiri and M. Farshid Alemi Hakimyar -- Webs and spiders : four decades of violence, intervention, and statehood in Afghanistan (1978-2016) / Timor Sharan -- Merchant-warlords : changing forms of leadership in Afghanistan's unstable political economy / Noah Coburn -- Borders, access to strategic resources, and challenges to state stability / Ahmad Shayeq Qassem -- Brought to you by foreigners, warlords, and local activists : TV and the Afghan culture wars / Wazhmah Osman -- Personal and collective identities, gender relations, and the trust deficit -- "The war destroyed our society" : masculinity, violence, and shifting cultural idioms among Afghan Pashtun / Andrea Chiovenda -- Engendering the Taliban / Sonia Ahsan -- Anticipating discontinuous change : Afghanistan in retrospect and prospect / Robert L. Canfield and Fahim Masoud -- Adapting to a new political ecology of uncertainties at the margins -- Badakhshanis since the Saur revolution : struggle, triumph, hope, and uncertainty / M. Nazif Shahrani -- Hazara civil society activists and local, national, and international political institutions / Melissa Kerr Chiovenda -- Adapting to three decades of uncertainty : the flexibility of social institutions among Baloch groups in Afghanistan / Just Boedeker -- Party institutionalization meets women's empowerment? Acquiring power and influence in Afghanistan / Ann Larson -- Violence, social services delivery, and the rising trust deficit -- Childbirth and social change in Afghanistan / Kylea Laina Liese -- Signatures of distrust in contemporary Afghanistan : more than a decade of development effort for vulnerable groups : the case of disability / Parul Bakhshi and Jean-Francois Trani
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 Last Days of the Afghan Republic written by Arsalan Noori and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A nuanced and human portrait of a generation of young Afghans who bought into the promise of the international intervention and were caught in the structures of the Forever War"--
Download or read book Transition in Afghanistan written by William Maley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, by one of the most experienced authorities on the subject, presents a deep analysis of the very difficult current situation in Afghanistan. Covering a wide range of important subjects including state-building, democracy, war, the rule of law, and international relations, the book draws out two overarching key factors: the way in which the prevailing neopatrimonial political order has become entrenched, making it very difficult for any other political order to take root; and the hostile region in which Afghanistan is located, especially the way in which an ongoing ‘creeping invasion’ from Pakistani territory has compromised the aspirations of both the Afghan government and its international backers to move the country to a more stable position.
Download or read book Losing Afghanistan written by Noah Coburn and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2016 study of the Afghanistan international intervention from perspective of an ambassador, a Navy SEAL, an Afghan businessman & a wind energy engineer. The US-led intervention in Afghanistan mobilized troops, funds, and people on an international level not seen since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and tens of billions of dollars flowed into the country. But what was gained for Afghanistan—or for the international community that footed the bill? Why did development money not lead to more development? Why did a military presence make things more dangerous? Through the stories of four individuals—an ambassador, a Navy SEAL, a young Afghan businessman, and a wind energy engineer—Noah Coburn weaves a vivid account of the challenges and contradictions of life during the intervention. Looking particularly at the communities around Bagram Airbase, this ethnography considers how Afghans viewed and attempted to use the intervention and how those at the base tried to understand the communities around them. These compelling stories step outside the tired paradigms of ‘unruly’ Afghan tribes, an effective Taliban resistance, and a corrupt Karzai government to show how the intervention became an entity unto itself, one doomed to collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy and contradictory intentions. Praise for Losing Afghanistan “Coburn’s experienced eye demonstrates that understanding local culture is a two-way street. Highly recommended for Afghans, or anyone puzzled by the policies of international military and civilian institutions and in need of practical advice on how to cope with their strange ways of thinking.” —Thomas Barfield, Boston University “Rich in description and thick with ironies, Losing Afghanistan reveals the insanities of a war run by and for contractors, and by soldiers posing as development agents. In this first-hand account of war-time Afghanistan, Coburn navigates the various and sometimes shared assumptions of walled off foreigners and the world they created in which Afghans play but minor parts. A quiet indictment.” —Catherine Lutz, Brown University “Losing Afghanistan provides a unique window into the longest, most costly US and international intervention since the Second World War. Having spent over a decade researching and writing about Afghanistan, living with ordinary Afghans, and a bewildering array of international actors, Coburn illuminates the chasm between what ordinary Afghans think and want, and what international actors assume and do, and the frustration and disillusionment that resulted.” —Michael Keating, Associate Director, Chatham House, and Former UN Deputy Envoy to Afghanistan, Kabul
Download or read book Constitutional Law and the Politics of Ethnic Accommodation written by Bashir Mobasher and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-29 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores whether the legal and political institutions of Afghanistan were able to incorporate diverse ethnic groups into the political process. Ethnic accommodation has gained central stage in the literature on institutional design and democratic consolidation. However, some divided societies are more explored than others, and Afghanistan is one understudied country that is critically important for testing and improving our theories of institutional design in a democratizing, plural society. This work examines the Constitution of 2004 and those provisions of electoral laws and political party laws that together devised Afghan political institutions including those of the presidential system, unitary government, electoral systems as well as the party system. It argues that due to their incongruence in design and effects, the Afghan political institutions failed to fully accommodate ethnic groups in the political process. This book adopts a holistic approach, while also paying careful attention to the details of each of the individual pieces of political institutions designed by the Constitution of 2004. Taken together, this approach yields insights into the boundaries and interactions of institutional design and how their interactions hinder or advance ethnic accommodation in varying contexts. The book will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policy makers interested in constitutional law and politics.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Democracy Promotion in US Foreign Policy written by Matthew Alan Hill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-02-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rise and Fall of Democracy Promotion in US Foreign Policy employs a transformational change framework to understand US democracy promotion from 1977 until the present day. American exceptionalism is a framework that has driven the US since the founding days of the republic, charging the US to promote the universal values of liberty and the pursuit of happiness around the world. Providing a frame of continuity for successive administrations, it reinforces the mythology of American exceptionalism in the eyes of the American people and the world. In different eras, different presidential worldviews, along with different international and domestic factors, have shaped how each administration has acted in the international arena and yet all have employed this language regardless of the policies pursued. This timely volume maps-out and interrogates through four key indicators the rise and fall of democracy promotion at the conceptualisation, rhetorical, and implementation levels. It argues that there were two transformational changes during this period. The first was the expansion of democracy promotion in US foreign policy confirmed with the election of Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1977. The second was the rejection of liberal ideology and institutions confirmed with Donald Trump’s election in 2016. It is nuanced in that it shows how these changes in the acceptance and then rejection of democracy promotion as a foreign policy tool played out. In examining these two administrations, and those in-between, this work also observes that the rise and fall of democracy promotion as an effective foreign policy tool mirrored the relative dominance of the US in the international arena. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of American foreign policy, international relations, and American history.
Download or read book The Social Origins of Electoral Participation in Emerging Democracies written by Danielle F. Jung and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the enormous challenges they face, why do so many citizens in developing countries routinely turn out to vote? This Element explores a new explanation grounded in the social origins of electoral participation in emerging democracies, where mobilization requires local collective action. This Element argues that, beyond incentives to express ethnic identity and vote-buying, perceptions of social sanctioning from community-based formal and informal actors galvanize many to vote who might otherwise stay home. Sanctioning is reinforced by the ability to monitor individual turnout given the open layout and centralized locations of polling stations and the use of electoral ink that identifies voters. This argument is tested using original survey and qualitative data from Africa and Afghanistan, contributing important insights on the nature of campaigns and elections in the promotion of state-building and service delivery, and the critical role voters play reducing fears of global democratic backsliding.
Download or read book The Rule of Law in Afghanistan written by Whit Mason and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How, despite the enormous investment of blood and treasure, has the West's ten-year intervention left Afghanistan so lawless and insecure? The answer is more insidious than any conspiracy, for it begins with a profound lack of understanding of the rule of law, the very thing that most dramatically separates Western societies from the benighted ones in which they increasingly intervene. This volume of essays argues that the rule of law is not a set of institutions that can be exported lock, stock and barrel to lawless lands, but a state of affairs under which ordinary people and officials of the state itself feel it makes sense to act within the law. Where such a state of affairs is absent, as in Afghanistan today, brute force, not law, will continue to rule.
Download or read book Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Winter Spring 2016 written by Mike Fox and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Each issue of the journal provides readers with a diverse array of timely, peer-reviewed content penned by top policymakers, business leaders, and academic luminaries. In this issue, the Forum section addresses the plight of international refugees, questions about migration and cultural integration, and assylum policy. Other topics addressed in this issue include US-Iran relations, corruption in Indonesia, Chinese direct investment in Africa, and much more.
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 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2020. The work follows a narrative format to go through the 2001 US invasion, the state-building of 2002-2005, the Taliban offensive of 2006, the US surge of 2009-2011, the subsequent drawdown, and the peace talks of 2019-2020
Download or read book Australia and Canada in Afghanistan written by Jack Cunningham and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Australia and Canada joined the U.S. and other Western allies in attacking al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. In the book, a stellar group of academic and political experts explore the Canadian and Australian experiences in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Afghanistan Under Siege written by Bojan Savic and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, based on field work undertaken in Afghanistan itself and through engagement with postcolonial theory, Bojan Savic critiques western intervention in Afghanistan by showing how its casting of Afghan natives as “dangerous” has created a power network which fractures the country – in echoes of 19th and 20th century colonial powers in the region. Savic also offers an analysis of how and by what means global security priorities have affected Afghan lives.
Download or read book US Nation Building in Afghanistan Open Access written by Conor Keane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has the US so dramatically failed in Afghanistan since 2001? Dominant explanations have ignored the bureaucratic divisions and personality conflicts inside the US state. This book rectifies this weakness in commentary on Afghanistan by exploring the significant role of these divisions in the US’s difficulties in the country that meant the battle was virtually lost before it even began. The main objective of the book is to deepen readers understanding of the impact of bureaucratic politics on nation-building in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on the Bush Administration. It rejects the ’rational actor’ model, according to which the US functions as a coherent, monolithic agent. Instead, internal divisions within the foreign policy bureaucracy are explored, to build up a picture of the internal tensions and contradictions that bedevilled US nation-building efforts. The book also contributes to the vexed issue of whether or not the US should engage in nation-building at all, and if so under what conditions.
