For over 2,500 years, the forbidding territory of Afghanistan has served as a vital crossroads for armies and has witnessed history-shaping clashes between civilizations: Greek, Arab, Mongol, and Tartar, and, in more recent times, British, Russian, and American. When U.S. troops entered Afghanistan in the weeks following September 11, 2001, they overthrew the Afghan Taliban regime and sent the terrorists it harbored on the run. But America's initial easy victory is in sharp contrast to the difficulties it faces today in confronting the Taliban resurgence. Originally published in 2002, Stephen Tanner's Afghanistan has now been completely updated to include the crucial turn of events since America first entered the country.
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.
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.
The First Anglo-Afghan War began in early 1839 when the British undertook an invasion of Afghanistan from India with the aim of overthrowing the Afghan ruler, Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, and replacing him with the supposedly pro-British former ruler, Shah Shujaʻ. The British were at first successful. They installed Shah Shujaʻ as ruler in Jalalabad and forced Dost Mohammad to flee the country. But in 1841 Dost Mohammad returned to Afghanistan to lead an uprising against the invaders and Shah Shujaʻ. In one of the most disastrous defeats in British military history, in January 1842 an Anglo-Indian force of 4,500 men and thousands of followers was routed by Afghan tribesmen. The British then sent a larger force from India to exact retribution and to recover hostages, before finally withdrawing in October 1842. History of the War in Afghanistan is a two-volume study of the war, based on unpublished letters and journals by British political and military officers who served in the conflict. The author, Sir John William Kaye (1814-76), was a onetime officer in the army of the East India Company who resigned in 1841 to devote himself full time to the writing of military history. The book begins with a detailed analysis of the events of 1800-1837 that led up to the war and of the "Great Game of Central Asia"--the rivalry between Russia and Britain for influence in the region that spurred British intervention in Afghanistan. This is followed by detailed accounts of the major battles and military campaigns. Kaye joins other authors in concluding that the war was a disaster for Britain: "No failure so total and overwhelming as this is recorded in the page of history. No lesson so grand and impressive is to be found in all the annals of the world." Kaye also wrote a novel based on the war, Long Engagements: a Tale of the Affghan Rebellion (1846), and several other major historical works, including The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm (1856) and the three-volume The History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-8, published in 1864-76.
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.
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Offers a candid view of a war that played a significant role in the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union. Presents analysis absolutely vital to Western policymakers, as well as to political, diplomatic, and military historians and anyone interested in Russian and Soviet history. Provides insights regarding current and future Russian struggles in ethnic conflicts both at and within their borders, struggles that could potentially destroy the Russian Federation.
During the 19th century Britain entered into three brutal wars with Afghanistan, each one saw the British trying and failing to gain control of a warlike and impenetrable territory. The first two wars (1839–42 and 1878–81) were wars of the Great Game; the British Empire's attempts to combat growing Russian influence near India's borders. The third, fought in 1919, was an Afghan-declared holy war against British India – in which over 100,000 Afghans answered the call, and raised a force that would prove too great for the British Imperial army. Each of the three wars were plagued by military disasters, lengthy sieges and costly engagements for the British, and history has proved the Afghans a formidable foe and their country unconquerable. This book reveals the history of these three Anglo-Afghan wars, the imperial power struggles that led to conflict and the torturous experiences of the men on the ground. The book concludes with a brief overview of the background to today's conflict in Afghanistan, and sketches the historical parallels.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. A riveting account as seen through the eyes of the men who fought in the war, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
