Afghanistan in World Politics
Afghanistan in World Politics

Author: Mohammad Khalid Ma'aroof

Publisher: Gyan Publishing House

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9788121200974

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Afghanistan a landlocked developing country, is geographically contiguous to Soviet Union, but a distant country to the United States. The analysis of relationship between a small developing country like Afghanistan and a geographically distant Super Power like the United States, presents a unique study in many respects. The analysis of Afghan-US relations has almost remained a neglected area of serious academic research. The plethora of literature available on Afghanistan has not even provided a cursory treatment to this most crucial and significant aspect. A cursory analysis of the available literature leaves many questions unanswered. Can a small country like Afghanistan be usurped by a Super Power? How the small and weak nations can survive? Will the inaction by the non-aligned movement (NAM) and the United Nations in getting the Russian aggression vacated from Afghanistan, further encourage the Russians to annex other non-aligned countries? Can United States, as a Super Power, help in restoration of the non-aligned status of Afghanistan safeguard its territorial integrity and sovereignty etc. The author has made an humble endeavour to probe all the aspects in detail in the present book. It is not only an attempt providing answers to various fundamental questions arising in the aftermath of Russian invasion of Afghanistan but also provides a detailed background of Afghanistan s relations with the United States.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan

Author: Thomas Barfield

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-03-25

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0691154414

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Traces the political history of Afghanistan from the sixteenth century to the present, looking at what has united the people as well as the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

The Political Economy of War and Peace
The Political Economy of War and Peace

Author: Murray Wolfson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1461549612

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

cancer n. any malignant tumor . . . Metastasis may occur via the bloodstream or the lymphatic channels or across body cavities . . . setting up secondary tumors . . . Each individual primary tumor has its own pattern . . . There are probably many causative factors . . . Treatment. . . depends on the type of tumor, the site of the primary tumor and the extent of the spread. (Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary 1996, 97) Let us begin by stating the obvious. Acts of organized violence are not necessarily of human nature, but they are endogenous events arising within the an intrinsic part evolution of complex systems of social interaction. To be sure, all wars have features in common - people are killed and property is destroyed - but in their origin wars are likely to be at least as different as the social structures from which they arise. Consequently, it is unlikely that there can be a simple theory of the causes of war or the maintenance of peace. The fact that wars are historical events need not discourage us. On the contrary, we should focus our understanding of the dimensions of each conflict, or classes of conflict, on the conjuncture of causes at hand. It follows that the study of conflict must be an interdisciplinary one. It is or a penchant for eclecticism that leads to that conclusion, but the not humility multi-dimensionality of war itself.

Oil and World Politics
Oil and World Politics

Author: John Foster

Publisher: James Lorimer & Company

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 145941344X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Petroleum is the most valuable commodity in the world and an enormous source of wealth for those who sell it, transport it and transform it for its many uses. As the engine of modern economies and industries, governments everywhere want to assure steady supplies. Without it, their economies would grind to a standstill. Since petroleum is not evenly distributed around the world, powerful countries want to be sure they have access to supplies and markets, whatever the cost to the environment or to human life. Coveting the petroleum of another country is against the rules of international law — yet if accomplished surreptitiously, under the cover of some laudable action, it's a bonanza. This is the basis of "the petroleum game," where countries jockey for control of the world's oil and natural gas. It's an ongoing game of rivalry among global and regional countries, each pursuing its own interests and using whatever tools, allies and organizations offer possible advantage. John Foster has spent his working life as an oil economist. He understands the underlying role played by oil and gas in international affairs. He identifies the hidden issues behind many of the conflicts in the world today. He explores military interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria), tensions around international waterways (Persian Gulf, South China Sea), and use of sanctions or political interference related to petroleum trade (Iran, Russia, Venezuela). He illuminates the petroleum-related reasons for government actions usually camouflaged and rarely discussed publicly by Western politicians or media. Petroleum geopolitics are complex. When clashes and conflicts occur, they are multi-dimensional. This book ferrets out pieces of the multi-faceted puzzle in the dark world of petroleum and fits them together.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan

Author: Thomas J. Barfield

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0691248052

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A major history of Afghanistan and its changing political culture Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and why the United States failed to avoid the same fate.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan

Author: Niamatullah Ibrahimi

Publisher: Contemporary Middle East

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138320918

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers an overview of the formation of the Afghan state and of the politics, economic challenges and international relations of contemporary Afghanistan. It opens with an account of some of the key features that make Afghanistan unique and proceeds to discuss how the Afghan state acquired a distinctive character as a rentier state. In addition, the authors outline a complex range of domestic and external factors that led to the breakdown of the state, and how that breakdown gave rise to a set of challenges with which Afghan political and social actors have been struggling to deal since the 2001 international intervention that overthrew the anti-modernist Taliban regime. It then presents the different types of politics that Afghanistan has witnessed over the last two decades; examines some of the most important features of the Afghan economy; and demonstrates how Afghanistan's geopolitical location and international relations more broadly have complicated the task of promoting stability in the post-2001 period. It concludes with some reflections on the factors that are likely to shape Afghanistan's future trajectory and notes that if there are hopes for a better future, they largely rest on the shoulders of a globalised generation of younger Afghans. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Middle East and Central Asian studies, international relations, politics, development studies and history.

Poppies, Politics, and Power
Poppies, Politics, and Power

Author: James Tharin Bradford

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-06-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1501738348

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

Buffer States In World Politics
Buffer States In World Politics

Author: John Chay

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-13

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0429712375

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Buffer states—countries geographically and/or politically situated between two or more regional or global powers—function to maintain peace between the larger powers. Contributors to this book, the first devoted to the buffer state concept, analyze the geographical and political factors necessary for the establishment and maintenance of a buffer state and examine its role in helping to maintain world peace. The problems and prospects of buffer states and buffer zones and the multiple roles played by the buffer in international politics are also explored. Using information from a number of countries, including Lebanon, Afghanistan, Korea, and Uruguay, the contributors argue that the function of the buffer state has not diminished with the advance of modern technology, but that the prospects for a long life for any particular buffer state are tenuous. Nevertheless, they conclude that although the international benefits from any one buffer state tend to be short term, the continued existence of the system will be an important element in preventing armed conflict in many parts of the world.

The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan
The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan

Author: Robert D. Crews

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0674262867

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Taliban remain one of the most elusive forces in modern history. A ragtag collection of clerics and madrasa students, this obscure movement emerged out of the rubble of the Cold War to shock the world with their draconian Islamic order. The Taliban refused to surrender their vision even when confronted by the United States after September 11, 2001. Reinventing themselves as part of a broad insurgency that destabilized Afghanistan, they pledged to drive out the Americans, NATO, and their allies and restore their "Islamic Emirate." The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan explores the paradox at the center of this challenging phenomenon: how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future? Grounding their analysis in a deep understanding of the country's past, leading scholars of Afghan history, politics, society, and culture show how the Taliban was less an attempt to revive a medieval theocracy than a dynamic, complex, and adaptive force rooted in the history of Afghanistan and shaped by modern international politics. Shunning journalistic accounts of its conspiratorial origins, the essays investigate broader questions relating to the character of the Taliban, its evolution over time, and its capacity to affect the future of the region. Offering an invaluable guide to "what went wrong" with the American reconstruction project in Afghanistan, this book accounts for the persistence of a powerful and enigmatic movement while simultaneously mapping Afghanistan's enduring political crisis.

Dynamics of Political Development in Afghanistan
Dynamics of Political Development in Afghanistan

Author: H. Emadi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-10-18

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0230112005

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines how dependent development and struggles for power within and outside the state apparatus led to formation of alliances with imperial powers and how the latter used these alliances to manipulate political development in Afghanistan to their own advantage.