The book offers a clear, authoritative and readable guide to the modern history of Afghanistan. This remote land made up of many tribes and ethnic peoples on the borders of Central Asia became a focus of Superpower rivalry and international intrigue after the Soviet invasion in 1979. This book shows how Afghanistan's traditional society has been profoundly shaken up in a cruelly destructive war, causing the world's biggest refugee problem and a chronic instability which threatens the wider region.
As the battle for Afghanistan intensifies, with the NATO-led coalition seemingly unable to defeat the Taliban, and struggling in its nation building efforts, Afghanistan expert Peter Marsden looks at why it is that the Great Powers, from 19th-century Britain to the 20th-century Soviet Union to 21st-century America, have so often been frustrated in attempting to impose their will on this strategically vital country. In comparing the three interventions, Marsden uncovers a number of similarities. The rhetoric of 'development' coming from the capitals of the West has, he finds, a well-established heritage. Every would-be occupier has used some form of aid to try and turn Afghanistan into the kind of country that would suit their geopolitical objectives. Marsden, who has worked with British NGOs in Afghanistan for 20 years, draws on his own experience as well as extensive archive research to establish how these grand interventions appear from the Afghan perspective, and why it is that ordinary Afghans seem to be better off when they are attracting less, not more, attention from the world powers. He argues that the Americans have yet to learn the lessons that the Soviets and the British before them learned: that no amount of financial, military or humanitarian aid will 'stabilise' the country if it comes with violence and foreign occupation. Afghanistan - Aid, Armies and Empires offers both an exploration of the relationship between aid and power, and a fresh and original history of Afghanistan through the prism of great power politics.
This copiously illustrated A-Z reference presents the most in-depth information available about the various conflicts the world has endured, local, regional, and international, since World War II. Some 142 conflicts are discussed and analyzed. The Encyclopedia of Conflict since World War II, with its coverage of all the countries of the world, fills a critical need for clear, comprehensive explanations of events not covered in such detail in any other reference source. Entries end with an extensive bibliography; and the encyclopedia includes maps, chronologies, and a general bibliography, as well as an index designed to make the reader understand the correlation and relationships between individual conflicts.
Presents a thematically indexed bibliography devoted to Afghanistan. Following the pattern established by one of its major data sources, viz, the acclaimed Index Islamicus, both journal articles and book publications are included and indexed.
This up-to-date, comprehensive, thematically indexed bibliography devoted to Afghanistan now and yesterday will help readers to efficiently find their way in the massive secondary literature available. Following the pattern established by one of its major data sources, viz. the acclaimed Index Islamicus, both journal articles and book publications are included and expertly indexed. An indispensable entry for all those taking professional or personal interest in a nation so much the focus of attention today.
This study examines the sources, characteristics and implications of post-Khomeini Iran's foreign policy. It concentrates on two geographic 'zones of interest': one composed of the countries which surround Iran; the other comprised of Islamic governments and movements beyond Iran's borders. It argues that fears, not just ambitions, have yielded a policy increasingly co-operative (especially in the economic sphere) yet in some respects still confrontational.
Afghanistan's recent history is a sad one: Soviet invasion in 1979; Pakistan-backed internal conflict in the 1980s; the Taliban regime; and then the US invasion and the multi-national occupation after the events of 11 September 2001. Why does Afghanistan remain so vulnerable to domestic instability, foreign intervention and ideological extremism? In reconstructing the tempestuous narrative of modern Afghanistan, Amin Saikal provides a sweeping new understanding of its troubled past and present. He identifies the country's inability to develop stable political structures as stemming from the inter-dynastic rivalry (complicated by polygamy) that scarred successive royal families from the end of the eighteenth century until the pro-Soviet Communist coup of April 1978, all exacerbated by foreign interventions - feeding on fragile domestic structures - and the rise and fall of different ideological streams. Here, for the first time, is an up-to-date analysis of the era of the Taliban's rule, the effects of US domination in the country and attempts to negotiate a US withdrawal - including talks about talks with the Taliban themselves. This book, which sets the crisis of Afghanistan in the context of the country's modern history and social structures, makes a major and highly original contribution towards a better and more nuanced understanding of this ill-fated land. It is the definitive study of Afghanistan and its troubles in national, regional and international contexts from 1747 to the present day.
