Download or read book The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan written by Vartan Gregorian and published by . This book was released on 2013-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long heralded as a seminal work on the history of Afghanistan, this book traces the evolution of the modern Afghan state by studying the politics of reform and modernization that started in 1880 through World War II. In this reissue, Vartan Gregorian offers a new introduction that places the key themes of the book in the context of contemporary events, addressing questions of tribalism, nationalism, Islam, and modernization, as well as the legacies of the Cold War and the various exit strategies of occupying powers. The book remains as distinctive today as when it was first published. It is the only broad work on Afghan history that considers ethnicity as the defining influence over the course of the country's history, rather than religion. In light of today's ongoing struggle to develop a coherent national identity, the question of Afghan nationalism remains a particularly significant issue.
Download or read book The History of Afghanistan written by Meredith L. Runion and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chronological account traces the history of Afghanistan from pre-civilization to present-day events and considers the future of democracy in Afghanistan. For centuries, Afghanistan has endured control by a gamut of political regimes as a result of its strategic location along the trade route between Asia and the Middle East. The area has been at the center of constant conflict and only in recent years has recovered from the vestiges of warfare. The second edition of this popular reference offers a fresh glimpse at the country, showing modern Afghanistan to be a melting pot of cultures, tribes, and political influences all under the guiding belief of Islam. In addition to thorough coverage of the country's political, economic, and cultural history, the book provides students with an account of recent events in Afghanistan since 2007, such as the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and the removal of NATO soldiers. Other changes include a revised timeline, an updated glossary, additions to the notable figures appendix, and an expanded bibliography that includes electronic resources.
Download or read book Modern Afghanistan written by Amin Saikal and published by Harvard Common Press. This book was released on 2006-10-09 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan's history is a sad one. This book provides an understanding of this troubled country that grounds Afghanistan's problems in rivalries stemming from a series of dynastic alliances within the successive royal families, from the end of the eighteenth century to the pro-Communist coup of 1978.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Jonathan L. Lee and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 797 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colossal history of Afghanistan from its earliest organization into a coherent state up to its turbulent present. Located at the intersection of Asia and the Middle East, Afghanistan has been strategically important for thousands of years. Its ancient routes and strategic position between India, Inner Asia, China, Persia, and beyond has meant the region has been subject to frequent invasions, both peaceful and military. As a result, modern Afghanistan is a culturally and ethnically diverse country, but one divided by conflict, political instability, and by mass displacements of its people. In this magisterial illustrated history, Jonathan L. Lee tells the story of how a small tribal confederacy in a politically and culturally significant but volatile region became a modern nation-state. Drawing on more than forty years of study, Lee places the current conflict in Afghanistan in its historical context and challenges many of the West’s preconceived ideas about the country. Focusing particularly on the powerful Durrani monarchy, which united the country in 1747 and ruled for nearly two and a half centuries, Lee chronicles the origins of the dynasty as clients of Safavid Persia and Mughal India: the reign of each ruler and their efforts to balance tribal, ethnic, regional, and religious factions; the struggle for social and constitutional reform; and the rise of Islamic and Communist factions. Along the way, he offers new cultural and political insights from Persian histories, the memoirs of Afghan government officials, British government and India Office archives, and recently released CIA reports and Wikileaks documents. He also sheds new light on the country’s foreign relations, its internal power struggles, and the impact of foreign military interventions such as the “War on Terror.”
Download or read book The Road to Home written by Vartan Gregorian and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vartan Gregorian's tale starts with a childhood of poverty, deprivation, and enchantment in the Armenian quarter of Tabriz, Iran. As the world reeled from depression into six years of warfare, his mother died, leaving his grandmother Voski as the loving staff of his life. Through unlettered example and instruction, he learned about the first of his many worlds: the strenuousness required for survival, the fairy tale that explained existence, the place and name of his own star in the night sky, how to maneuver as a member of a Christian minority in a benevolent Muslim kingdom, the beauty and inspiration of Armenian Church liturgy, the exciting foreign world of ten-year-old American westerns, the richness of life on the streets. He learned the magic of the innumerable worlds he could find in books -- and he wanted to visit them all. As the spell books cast on him grew more powerful, so did the constraints imposed by his father's indifference to his dreams of redirecting his life through learning. So, one day when he was fifteen years old, he presented himself at an Armenian-French lycee in Beirut, Lebanon, to start the arduous task of becoming a person of learning and consequence. This book tells not only how he reached that school but also about the many people who guided, supported, taught, and helped him on an extravagantly absorbing and varied journey from Tabriz to Beirut to Palo Alto to Tenafly to London, from Stanford University to San Francisco State University to the University of Texas at Austin to the University of Pennsylvania to the New York Public Library to Brown University and, currently, to the presidency of Carnegie Corporation of New York. With witty stories and memorable encounters, Dr. Gregorian describes his public and private lives as one education after another. He has written a love story about life.
Download or read book War in Afghanistan written by Matt Doeden and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2014 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Describes the people and events of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The reader's choices reveal the historical details"--
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Martin Ewans and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews the emergence and fall of the Taliban, their ideology and their place within Islam, and examines Afghanistan's relevance to issues relating to Islamic extremism, the international drugs trade and international terrorism.
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 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What impact does 40 years of war, violence, and military intervention have on a country and its people? As the "global war on terror" now stretches into the 21st century with no clear end in sight, Identity and Politics in Modern Afghanistan collects the work of interdisciplinary scholars, aid workers, and citizens to assess the impact of this prolonged conflict on Afghanistan. Nearly all of the people in Afghan society have been affected by persistent violent conflict. Identity and Politics in Modern Afghanistan focuses on social and political dynamics, issues of gender, and the shifting relationships between tribal, sectarian, and regional communities. Contributors consider topics ranging from masculinity among the Afghan Pashtun to services offered for the disabled, and from Taliban extremism to the role of TV in the Afghan culture wars. Prioritizing the perspective and experiences of the people of Afghanistan, new insights are shared into the lives of those who are hoping to build a secure future on the rubble of a violent past.
Download or read book Islam written by Vartan Gregorian and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003-05-29 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After World War II, leading western powers focused their attention on fighting the "Red Menace," Communism. Today, as terrorist activity is increasingly linked to militant Islamism, some politicians and scholars fear a "Green Menace," a Pan-Islamic totalitarian movement fueled by monolithic religious ideology. Such fears have no foundation in history, according to Vartan Gregorian. In this succinct, powerful survey of Islam, Gregorian focuses on Muslim diversity and division, portraying the faith and its people as a mosaic, not a monolith. The book begins with an accessible overview of Islam's tenets, institutions, evolution, and historical role. Gregorian traces its origins and fundamental principles, from Muhammad's call to faith nearly 1,400 years ago to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, and the subsequent abolition of the Caliphate. He focuses particular attention on the intense struggle between modernists and traditionalists, interaction between religion and nationalism, and key developments that have caused bitter divisions among Muslim nations and states: the partitions of Palestine, the break up and Islamization of Pakistan, the 1978 revolution in Iran, and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Today Islamist views range across the entire spectra of religious and political thought, and Islamism is anything but a unified movement. While religious extremists have attempted to form a confederacy of like-minded radicals in many countries, much of the Muslim population lives in relatively modern, secular states. Gregorian urges Westerners to distinguish between activist Islamist parties, which promote—sometimes violently—Islam as an ideology in a theocratic state, and Islamic parties, whose traditional members want their secular political systems to co-exist with the moral principles of their religion. Gregorian emphasizes the importance of religion in today's world and urges states,societies, and intellectuals to intervene in order
Download or read book A Brief History of Afghanistan written by Shaista Wahab and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located along the busy trade routes between Asia and Europe, Afghanistan was for centuries a place where a diverse set of cultures met and exchanged goods and ideas.
Download or read book Games without Rules written by Tamim Ansary and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Destiny Disrupted: an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation
Download or read book Afghanistan Rising written by Faiz Ahmed and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone and the rule of law as a secular-liberal monopoly, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence, codify its own laws, and ratify a constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Afghanistan Rising illustrates how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Kabul--far from being a landlocked wilderness or remote frontier--became a magnet for itinerant scholars and statesmen shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing the country's longstanding but often ignored scholarly and educational ties to Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed explains how the court of Kabul attracted thinkers eager to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shariʿa, and international norms of legality. From Turkish lawyers and Arab officers to Pashtun clerics and Indian bureaucrats, this rich narrative focuses on encounters between divergent streams of modern Muslim thought and politics, beginning with the Sublime Porte's first mission to Afghanistan in 1877 and concluding with the collapse of Ottoman rule after World War I. By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's founding national charter, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on archival research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly as a center of constitutional politics, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and contested visions of reform in the greater Islamicate world.
Download or read book A Military History of Afghanistan written by Ali Ahmad Jalali and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Afghanistan is largely military history. From the Persians and Greeks of antiquity to the British, Soviet, and American powers in modern times, outsiders have led military conquests into the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, leaving their indelible marks on this ancient land at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In this book Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister of Afghanistan, taps a deep understanding of his country's distant and recent past to explore Afghanistan's military history during the last two hundred years. With an introductory chapter highlighting the major military developments from early times to the foundation of the modern Afghan state, Jalali's account focuses primarily on the era of British conquest and Anglo-Afghan wars; the Soviet invasion; the civil war and the rise of the Taliban; and the subsequent U.S. invasion. Looking beyond persistent stereotypes and generalizations—e.g., the "graveyard of empires" designation emerging from the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century and the Soviet experience of the 1980s—Jalali offers a nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of the way of war pursued by both state and non-state actors in Afghanistan against different domestic and foreign enemies, under changing social, political, and technological conditions. He reveals how the structure of states, tribes, and social communities in Afghanistan, along with the scope of their controlled space, has shaped their modes of fighting throughout history. In particular, his account shows how dynastic wars and foreign conquests differ in principle, strategy, and method from wars initiated by non-state actors including tribal and community militias against foreign invasions or repressive government. Written by a professional soldier, politician, and noted scholar with a keen analytical grasp of his country's military and political history, this magisterial work offers unique insight into the military history of Afghanistan—and thus, into Afghanistan itself.
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 Afghanistan s Endless War written by Larry P. Goodson and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going beyond the stereotypes of Kalashnikov-wielding Afghan mujahideen and black-turbaned Taliban fundamentalists, Larry Goodson explains in this concise analysis of the Afghan war what has really been happening in Afghanistan in the last twenty years. Beginning with the reasons behind Afghanistan’s inability to forge a strong state -- its myriad cleavages along ethnic, religious, social, and geographical fault lines -- Goodson then examines the devastating course of the war itself. He charts its utter destruction of the country, from the deaths of more than 2 million Afghans and the dispersal of some six million others as refugees to the complete collapse of its economy, which today has been replaced by monoagriculture in opium poppies and heroin production. The Taliban, some of whose leaders Goodson interviewed as recently as 1997, have controlled roughly 80 percent of the country but themselves have shown increasing discord along ethnic and political lines.
Download or read book A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan written by Sara Koplik and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan by Sara Koplik describes the situation of Jews in that country during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly 1839-1952. It examines the political, economic and social conditions they faced as religious minorities. The work focuses upon harsh governmental economic policies of the 1930s and 1940s spearheaded by 'Abd al-Majid Khan Zabuli which caused the impoverishment and suffering of both the local community and refugees from Soviet Central Asia. The question of Nazi influence in Afghanistan is addressed, with the author arguing that it was mainly limited to the economic sphere. An examination of the appeal of Zionism and the community's immigration to Israel is included.
Download or read book The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan written by Vartan Gregorian and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
