Download or read book India s Afghan Muddle written by Harsh V. Pant and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 2014. Afghanistan's biggest watershed since 2001, the year the war on terror began, is upon it. American forces are in themiddle of a pullout that is likely to result in a much smaller US military foorprint after this year. On the face of it, the stage is set for India-a regional power with global aspirations-to rise to the occasion, bank on its goodwill, and help rebuild the nation. But presented with a golden opportunity, India has been found wanting. This book examines the changing trajectory of Indian policy owards Afghanistan and argues that New Delhi has beenresponding to a strategic environment shaped by other actors, without developing an autonomous posture. By refusing to be proactive, India has lost the initiative and done some long-term damage to its vital interests, the least of which is gaining access to the energy-rich central Asian region while the biggest is to foil Pakistan and the Taliban's designs of once again rising to prominence in Afghanistan.The way in which India's foreign policy shapes up this year-or if it does at all-will determine the consequences for Indian security once Western forces depart. As Afghanistan braces for the most important year in its political history since 2001, India's Afghan Muddle sets the terms for the debate on why2014 is no less important for India as well.
Download or read book Shifting Equations in Indias Neighbourhood written by Clay Schrader and published by Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last seven decades since independence, successive prime ministers have ushered in changes in India’s foreign policy in response to shifting global geopolitical dynamics, aggregating transformation in bilateral relations. This overview places the past against the changes being brought in by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a more forceful foreign policy practitioner than his predecessors. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif met in Ufa, Russia on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last month. They issued a joint statement in which they “condemned terrorism in all its forms and agreed to cooperate with each other to eliminate the menace of terrorism from South Asia. Prime Minister Modi could not have been more different in style and projection from the diffident Singh. In assessing Modi’s foreign policy it is important to appreciate that the pace of change in global affairs has picked up speed. Past ideological rivalries have been substituted by challenges to democracies like India and the US from one-party states, such as China; so-called “illiberal democracies”, such as Russia; and the rise of right wing parties in Europe. In this book is Bhutan made the transition from monarchy to constitutional democracy, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Myanmar moved from praetorian to civilian regimes. Monarchy came to an end in Nepal and Maldives became a presidential republic even as Afghanistan, India, and Sri Lanka witnessed their democracies at crossroads. It is hoped that the book will be able to provide rich material for serious students of Indian foreign policy planners administrators and politicians alike.
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 Muddle of the Middle East written by Nikshoy C. Chatterji and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 1973 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Deadly Triangle written by William Dalrymple and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent historian looks to the present and future of Afghanistan as the U.S. withdraws from the longest war in its history. THE BROOKINGS ESSAY: In the spirit of its commitment to high-quality, independent research, the Brookings Institution has commissioned works on major topics of public policy by distinguished authors, including Brookings scholars. The Brookings Essay is a multi-platform product aimed to engage readers in open dialogue and debate. The views expressed, however, are solely those of the author. Available in ebook only.
Download or read book The Great Game in Afghanistan written by Kallol Bhattacherjee and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a complex multinational diplomacy had proposed setting up a coalition government in Kabul as a solution to the 'Afghan problem'. Even as all sides worked on the coalition, the US took steps that India considered a 'stab in the back'. With the help of the official papers collected by US ambassador John Gunther Dean and conversations with Ronen Sen, Rajiv Gandhi's diplomatic aide during those crucial years, the author recreates the falling apart of the India-US cooperation and the catastrophic effect it had on South Asian history.
Download or read book Humanitarian Invasion written by Timothy Nunan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian Invasion provides a history of international development and humanitarianism in Cold War Afghanistan.
Download or read book Directorate S written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
Download or read book My Enemy s Enemy written by Avinash Paliwal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archetype of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', India's political and economic presence in Afghanistan is often viewed as a Machiavellian ploy aimed against Pakistan. Challenging deeply held beliefs about an India-Pakistan proxy war, this work offers a nuanced explanation of India's strategic intent and actions, which is critical to resolving the seemingly unending war in Afghanistan, as well as wider bilateral disputes between the two South Asian rivals
Download or read book India s Spatial Imaginations of South Asia written by Shibashis Chatterjee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since India attained independence, its foreign policy discourse has imagined its South Asian neighbourhood through the politics of realism. This imagination explicates state interest in South Asia by establishing it as a space of sovereign territoriality. Even today, India’s foreign and security policies are primarily shaped by geopolitical centrism, and remain unaffected by economic prosperity and community concerns. As a part of the Oxford International Relations in South Asia series, this volume examines alternative conceptions of South Asian space in terms of geo-economics and community, and justifies why they have been unable to replace its dominant understanding, irrespective of the political regime. This volume probes reasons behind the relevance of differentiated cartography of territorial nationalism in our shared understanding of space, politics, society, and the community.
Download or read book The City and the Country in Early India written by P. K. Basant and published by Primus Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa is about the emergence of urban centres in the sixth century bce, and analyses the processes and spatiality of urbanization, taking Malwa as its case study. Earlier research on urbanism has focussed on either literary or archaeological sources. While literary sources tend to locate the agency for change exclusively in preachers and rulers, in archaeology, the forces of change become nameless and faceless. The study of inscriptions from Malwa helps in restoring agency to common people. The beginnings of urbanism are to be found in the pre-literate past, and, therefore, require an analysis of archaeological data. Using insights from anthropology and studies of early states, in the first half of the book an attempt has been made to look for new ways to account for urbanization. The second half of the book tries to understand the process of urbanization by examining epigraphic and literary sources. The process of the emergence of urban centres created new forms of division of space: urban centres were surrounded by villages which in turn were surrounded by wilderness. This book tries to recover the histories of their complex interrelations. Since caste and kinship are considered central to the world of Indian sociology, an attempt has also been made to understand the relationships between caste, kinship and urbanism. Changes in the attitude of the literati towards the city and the country have also been examined.
Download or read book After We Kill You We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests written by Ted Rall and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unflinching account—in words and pictures—of America's longest war by our most outspoken graphic journalist Ted Rall traveled deep into Afghanistan—without embedding himself with U.S. soldiers, without insulating himself with flak jackets and armored SUVs—where no one else would go (except, of course, Afghans). He made two long trips: the first in the wake of 9/11, and the next ten years later to see what a decade of U.S. occupation had wrought. On the first trip, he shouted his dispatches into a satellite phone provided by a Los Angeles radio station, attempting to explain that the booming in the background—and sometimes the foreground—were the sounds of an all-out war that no one at home would entirely own up to. Ten years later, the alternative newspapers and radio station that had financed his first trip could no longer afford to send him into harm's way, so he turned to Kickstarter to fund a groundbreaking effort to publish online a real-time blog of graphic journalism (essentially, a nonfiction comic) documenting what was really happening on the ground, filed daily by satellite. The result of this intrepid reporting is After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests—a singular account of one determined journalist's effort to bring the realities of life in twenty-first-century Afghanistan to the world in the best way he knows how: a mix of travelogue, photography, and award-winning comics.
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 War Will and Warlords written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares the reasons for and the responses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan since October 2001. Also examines the lack of security and the support of insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1970s that explain the rise of the Pakistan-supported Taliban. Explores the border tribal areas between the two countries and how they influence regional stability and U.S. security. Explains the implications of what happened during this 10-year period to provide candid insights on the prospects and risks associated with bringing a durable stability to this area of the world.
Download or read book An American Bride in Kabul written by Phyllis Chesler and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.
Download or read book Negotiating Cultural Diversity in Afghanistan written by Omar Sadr and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the problematique of governance and administration of cultural diversity within the modern state of Afghanistan and traces patterns of national integration. It explores state construction in twentieth-century Afghanistan and Afghan nationalism, and explains the shifts in the state’s policies and societal responses to different forms of governance of cultural diversity. The book problematizes liberalism, communitarianism, and multiculturalism as approaches to governance of diversity within the nation-state. It suggests that while the western models of multiculturalism have recognized the need to accommodate different cultures, they failed to engage with them through intercultural dialogue. It also elaborates the challenge of intra-group diversity and the problem of accommodating individual choice and freedom while recognising group rights and adoption of multiculturalism. The book develops an alternative approach through synthesising critical multiculturalism and interculturalism as a framework on a democratic and inclusive approach to governance of diversity. A major intervention in understanding a war-torn country through an insider account, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, especially those concerned with multiculturalism, state-building, nationalism, and liberalism, as well as those in cultural studies, history, Afghanistan studies, South Asian studies, Middle East studies, minority studies, and to policymakers.
Download or read book Indian Summer written by Alex Von Tunzelmann and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary story of romance, history, and divided loyalties--set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic events of the 20th century--"Indian Summer" reveals how Britain ceased to be a superpower after it lost India as a colony.
