Download or read book The Lost Kingdom written by His Royal Highness Prince Ali Seraj of Afghanistan and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His Royal Highness Prince Ali Seraj, a member of the royal family of Afghanistan, brings four decades of history to life—from the Cold War era when his famed nightclub in Kabul was a hotspot for global celebrities, jetsetters, and spies, to the communist Soviet takeover that killed members of his family, put a price on Prince Ali’s head, and forced him to make a harrowing escape from his homeland in disguise with his American wife and family. Prince Seraj’s intimate and historic portrait of modern Afghanistan tells the inside story of a proud, ancient culture grappling with a turbulent history of invasion and transformation. His passionate and adventure-filled story opens a new door to understand a nation irrevocably linked to the stability and prosperity of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and to the United States.
Download or read book The Afghan Prince and I written by B. A. Zikria and published by Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839 to 1842, considered the most infamous of all colonial wars, only Dr. Brydon survived out of a 13,000 to 20,000 Kabul army of the British Raj. William Dalrymple, a contemporary English historian writing in his 2013 book Return of a King, points out a number of parallel facts about that war and the present situation in which NATO and American forces are engaged. The British "Army of Sind" replaced King Dost with Shah Shuja, who lived in exile in India for twenty years under British protection. The regime change by the British was successful with the two Afghan kings interchanging residences. Dalrymple states, "Shah Shuja and President Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah's principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribes, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by British troops are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attacks." After two years as renegades, Prince Dost's twenty-three-year-old son Prince Akbar along his comrade Fitzgerald from Pennsylvania, who was the first American in that land, return to fight the British Army of occupation. The Irish-American Fitzgerald mournfully relates the inhumane events of that war and his own adventures in becoming an Afghan prince.
Download or read book The Afghanistan File written by Turki Al-Faisal Al-Saud and published by Arabian Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afghanistan File, written by the former head of Saudi Arabian Intelligence, tells the story of his Department's involvement in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion in 1979 to 9/11/2001. It begins with the backing given by Saudi Arabia to the Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet occupation, and moves on to the fruitless initiatives to broker peace among the Mujahideen factions after the Soviet withdrawal, the rise to power of the Taleban and the shelter the Taleban gave to Osama Bin Laden. A theme that runs through the book is the extraordinary difficulties Saudi Arabia and its allies had in dealing with the Mujahideen. Prince Turki found them magnificently brave, but exasperating. On one occasion in trying to arrange peace among them, he got permission from the King to open the Kaaba in Mecca, and had the leaders go inside, where they were overcome with emotion and swore never to fight each other again. A few hours later on their way to Medina they almost came to blows on the bus. Turki's account gives details of the Saudi attempts in the 1990s to bring its volunteers out of Afghanistan - with chequered success - and his negotiations with the Taleban for the surrender of Osama Bin Laden. The book includes a number of declassified Intelligence Department documents. Prince Turki explains that the nihilistic, apparently pointless terrorism that has been seen in the Middle East in the last twenty years had its origins in Afghanistan with Osama's deluded belief that he had helped defeat the Russians. There is no evidence that he ever fought them at all. Soon after 9/11 Saudi Arabia discovered that it had a home grown terrorist problem involving some of the returnees from Afghanistan. Much of the huge change that has taken place in the Kingdom since has stemmed from the campaign to tackle this.
Download or read book The Opium Prince written by Jasmine Aimaq and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jasmine Aimaq’s stunning debut explores Afghanistan on the eve of a violent revolution and the far-reaching consequences of a young Kochi girl’s tragic death. Afghanistan, 1970s. Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul at the helm of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to eradicating the poppy fields that feed the world’s opiate addiction. But on the drive out of Kabul for an anniversary trip with his wife, Daniel accidentally hits and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. He is let off with a nominal fine, in part because nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law, but also because a mysterious witness named Taj Maleki intercedes on his behalf. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to unravel, running from his crumbling marriage and escalating threats from Taj, who turns out to be a powerful opium khan willing to go to extremes to save his poppies. This groundbreaking literary thriller reveals the invisible lines between criminal enterprises and political regimes—and one man’s search for meaning at the heart of a violent revolution.
Download or read book Opium Season written by Joel Hafvenstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 written by Archibald Forbes and published by IndyPublish.com. This book was released on 1892 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
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 The Man Who Would Be King written by Ben Macintyre and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of the nineteenth-century American Quaker who tried to build a kingdom in Afghanistan: “A thrilling real-life yarn.” —Booklist In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan. He declared himself Prince of Ghor, Lord of the Hazarahs, spiritual and military heir to Alexander the Great. The true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, has never been told before, yet the life and writings of this extraordinary man echo down the centuries. This “riveting, scrupulously researched” book reveals the full history behind the renowned Rudyard Kipling short story and John Huston’s film classic (The New York Times Book Review). “One of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of biography.” —The New York Review of Books “Macintyre recounts Harlan’s travels with dispatch, and draws on unpublished journals to let his subject’s voice seep through.” —The New Yorker “Here is a writer who seems as taken as I am with crackpottery, delusion, grandiosity, chicanery, and impersonation, but who manages to write about it all with amused restraint, without, that is, the air of the ogler.” —The Boston Globe “Macintyre gives readers both Harlan’s story and a thought-provoking perspective on the history of superpower intervention in Afghanistan . . . Harlan’s story alone is fascinating, but its resonance with modern-day struggles—Harlan urging the British to try ‘fiscal diplomacy’ (i.e., gold) instead of ‘invading and subjugating an unoffending people’—makes it compelling.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Before Taliban written by David B. Edwards and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-04-02 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful book, David B. Edwards traces the lives of three recent Afghan leaders in Afghanistan's history--Nur Muhammad Taraki, Samiullah Safi, and Qazi Amin Waqad--to explain how the promise of progress and prosperity that animated Afghanistan in the 1960s crumbled and became the present tragedy of discord, destruction, and despair. Before Taliban builds on the foundation that Edwards laid in his previous book, Heroes of the Age, in which he examines the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century--a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state. In the mid twentieth century, Afghans believed their nation could be a model of economic and social development that would inspire the world. Instead, political conflict, foreign invasion, and civil war have left the country impoverished and politically dysfunctional. Each of the men Edwards profiles were engaged in the political struggles of the country's recent history. They hoped to see Afghanistan become a more just and democratic nation. But their visions for their country were radically different, and in the end, all three failed and were killed or exiled. Now, Afghanistan is associated with international terrorism, drug trafficking, and repression. Before Taliban tells these men's stories and provides a thorough analysis of why their dreams for a progressive nation lie in ruins while the Taliban has succeeded. In Edwards's able hands, this culturally informed biography provides a mesmerizing and revealing look into the social and cultural contexts of political change.
Download or read book The Places in Between written by Rory Stewart and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rory Stewart recounts the experiences he had walking across Afghanistan in 2002, describing how the country and its people have been impacted by the Taliban and the American military's involvement in the region.
Download or read book Afghan Napoleon written by Sandy Gall and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography in a decade of Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the forces of resistance were disparate. Many groups were caught up in fighting each other and competing for Western arms. The exception were those commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military strategist and political operator who solidified the resistance and undermined the Russian occupation, leading resistance members to a series of defensive victories. Sandy Gall followed Massoud during Soviet incursions and reported on the war in Afghanistan, and he draws on this first-hand experience in his biography of this charismatic guerrilla commander. Afghan Napoleon includes excerpts from the surviving volumes of Massoud’s prolific diaries—many translated into English for the first time—which detail crucial moments in his personal life and during his time in the resistance. Born into a liberalizing Afghanistan in the 1960s, Massoud ardently opposed communism, and he rose to prominence by coordinating the defense of the Panjsher Valley against Soviet offensives. Despite being under-equipped and outnumbered, he orchestrated a series of victories over the Russians. Massoud’s assassination in 2001, just two days before the attack on the Twin Towers, is believed to have been ordered by Osama bin Laden. Despite the ultimate frustration of Massoud’s attempts to build political consensus, he is recognized today as a national hero.
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 An Afghan Prince in Victorian England written by R.D. McChesney and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-07-25 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1894 Great Britain invited 'Abd al-Rahman Khan, the amir of Afghanistan, to England for a state visit. Then at the height of its imperial might, Britain sought to strengthen ties with the strategically important Afghanistan, which shared a long frontier, not yet a border, with British India. The amir's aim for the visit was to secure permission for an Afghan legation (embassy) in London while the British, unaware of this goal, hoped to overawe the amir with displays of military and industrial might as well as performances to show the strength and unity of British civil society. The amir, citing illness, ultimately declined the invitation but, in a calculated snub, sent his second son, Prince Nasr Allah Khan, in his place. This book narrates the events of the prince's mission in a number of revealing ways. Using both British and Afghan sources, including the journal of a senior member of the Afghan contingent, McChesney places the visit in its international and historical context and analyzes the internal dynamics of the prince's delegation, the seventy members of whom represented Afghanistan but included two Englishmen and two Englishwomen. A further twenty members, representing the Government of (British) India, were as multi-ethnic and multilingual as the members of the Afghan delegation. This bilateral and complex mission left India in April 1895 and remained together for the next six months. From the beginning it was riven by incidents of misogyny, racism, and class conflict that affected its ability to perform its diplomatic functions. The reader gains insights into the goals and tactics of two asymmetrical yet competing powers as well as a rare look at the human element in this cross-cultural diplomatic encounter.
Download or read book Images of Afghanistan written by Arley Loewen and published by OUP Pakistan. This book was released on 2010-07-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Images of Afghanistan, an edited collection in the non-fiction cultural/ social genre, provides the first-ever overview of the art and literature of Afghanistan. 32 chapters on art, music, film, proverbs, short stories, poetry, cartoons, and folktales in popular style offer key insights into the complexities of Afghan culture and dispel the misperception that Afghanistan is only a haven for terrorists and drug dealers.
Download or read book War Artists in Afghanistan written by Jules George and published by Acc Art Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Each artist's work is accompanied by their own, first-hand account of war in Afghanistan* Captures the vast scale and stunning, fertile beauty of the Afghan landscape'I felt physically sick from the pit of my stomach and to be honest was now feeling vulnerable and completely outside my depth of knowledge. The world had seemingly gone mad and I was having visions of the base now being ransacked; I was confused and unsure what to do. My solution was to do the only thing that I could do. I climbed the nearest sangar and started to draw.' - Jules GeorgeJules George, war artist, traveled to Helmand, Afghanistan, in 2010, in the wake of its bloodiest year for British troops. War Artists in Afghanistan: Beyond the Wire reproduces the remarkable sketches, watercolors and oil paintings born of his experiences with the 2nd Yorkshires (Green Howards). His work captures the vast scale and stunning, fertile beauty of the Afghan landscape, and in its midst, the British soldier, out on patrol, boarding a Chinook or caught in a firefight.The book also features the work of four other war artists in Afghanistan: Douglas Farthing, a former Sergeant Major in the British paratroopers; and Michael Fay, soldier-turned-combat artist for the United States Marine Corps; Arabella Dorman, internationally recognized portrait painter and war artist; and Matthew Cook, trained illustrator, former Times war artist and Territorial Army soldier. Each artist's work is accompanied by their own, first-hand account of war in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Night Letters written by Chris Sands and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, several young men met on a rainy night in Kabul to form an Islamist student group. Their aim was laid out in a simple typewritten statement: to halt the spread of Soviet and American influence in Afghanistan. They went on to change the world. Night Letters tells the extraordinary story of the group's most notorious member, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the guerrilla organzation he came to lead, Hizb-e Islami. By the late 1980s, tens of thousands were drawn to Hekmatyar's vision of a radical Islamic state that would sow unrest from Kashmir to Jerusalem. His doctrine of violent global jihad culminated in 9/11 and the birth of ISIS, yet he never achieved his dream of ruling Afghanistan. The peace deal he signed with Kabul in 2016 was yet another controversial twist in an astonishing life. Sands and Qazizai delve into the secret history of Hekmatyar and Hizb-e Islami: their wars against Russian and American troops, and their bloody and bitter feuds with domestic enemies. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews carried out across the region and beyond, this is the definitive account of the most important, yet poorly understood, international Islamist movement of the last fifty years.
Download or read book The Afghan Cinderella written by Sherzai and published by VIM Books Press. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Princess Masuma lived during the time when Afghanistan was ruled by Kings. In this real-life Cinderella story, as relayed by her granddaughter Dr. Sherzai, Masuma is transformed from a simple Hazara orphan to a princess when she marries the son of Prince Regent Nasrullah Khan. Her fairytale life is filled with both tragedy and triumph as political intrigue, rivalry, assassinations, and arrests directly affect her life and fortune and that of her family. Through Princess Masuma's epic tale, the reader learns of the complicated and dynamic history and culture of Afghanistan from the 19th century to the end of the Mohammadzai Dynasty in 1978.
