'Afghanistan is just like Iraq – hot, dusty and full of people who want to kill you', SSgt Simon Fuller, Royal Engineer Search Advisor Bomb Hunters tells the story of the British army's elite bomb disposal experts, men who face death every day in the most dangerous region of the most lethal country on earth – Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why. It could have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province. So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship. He explains the origins of the war, details the campaigns over the subsequent years, and examines the West's failure to understand the dynamics of local conflict and learn the lessons of history that ultimately led to devastating costs and repercussions still relevant today. 'The best book so far on Britain's...war in Afghanistan' International Affairs 'Masterful, irrefutable... Farrell records all these military encounters with the irresistible pace of a novelist' Sunday Times
War Memories explores the patchwork formed by collective memory, public remembrance, private recollection, and the ways in which they form a complex composition of observations, initiatives, and experiences. Offering an international perspective on war commemoration, contributors consider the process of assembling historical facts and subjective experiences to show how these points of view diverge according to various social, cultural, political, and historical perspectives. Encompassing the representations of wars in the English-speaking world over the last hundred years, this collection presents an extensive, yet integrated, reflection on various types of commemoration and interpretations of events. Essays respond to common questions regarding war memory: how and why do we remember war? What does commemoration tell us about the actors in wars? How does commemoration reflect contemporary society’s culture of war? War Memories disseminates current knowledge on the performance, interpretation, and rewriting of facts and events during and after wars, while focusing on how patriotic fervour, resistance, conscientious objection, injury, trauma, and propaganda contribute to the shaping of individual and collective memory. Contributors include Joan Beaumont (Australian National University, Canberra), Gilles Chamerois (University of Brest, France), Subarno Chattarji (University of Delhi, India), Nicole Cloarec (Rennes 1 University, France), Corinne David-Ives (European University of Brittany – Rennes 2, France), Jeffrey Demsky (San Bernardino Valley College, California), Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University), Georges Fournier (Jean Moulin University, France), Annie Gagiano (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa), David Haigron (Rennes 2 University, France), Judith Keene (University of Sydney, Australia), Melissa King (San Bernardino Valley College, California), Christine Knauer (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany), Liliane Louvel (University of Poitiers), Michelle P. Moore (Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre, Kingston, Ontario), John Mullen (University of Rouen, France), Lorie-Anne Duech-Rainville (Caen University, France), Elizabeth Rechniewski (Australian Research Council Discovery Project), Raphaël Ricaud (University ‘Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense’, France), Laura Robinson (Royal Military College of Canada), and Isabelle Roblin (Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale, France).
Drugs, war and terrorism were the unholy trinity that brought the US-led air campaign crashing down on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October 2001 in Operation Enduring Freedom, and this photographic history is a graphic introduction to it. The immediate aim was to eject the Taliban from power, and to capture or kill the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his supporters whom the Taliban were sheltering. The decade-long war that followed, first against the Taliban regime, then against Taliban insurgents, is one of the most controversial conflicts of recent times. It has also seen the deployment of thousands of coalition troops and a huge range of modern military equipment, and these are the main focus of Anthony Tucker-Jones's account. He covers the entire course of the conflict, from the initial air war, the battle for the White Mountains and Tora Bora, the defeat of the Taliban, the escape of bin Laden and the grim protracted security campaign that followed an asymmetrical war of guerrilla tactics and improvised explosive devices that is going on today.
Britain is often revered for its extensive experience of waging ‘small wars’. Its long imperial history is littered with high profile counter-insurgency campaigns, thus marking it out as the world’s most seasoned practitioner of this type of warfare. This is the first book to detail the tactical and operational dynamics of Britain’s small wars, arguing that the military’s use of force was more heavily constrained by wider strategic and political considerations than previously admitted. Outlining the civil-military strategy followed by the British in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Defending the realm? argues that Britain’s small wars since 1945 were fought against the backdrop of an irrevocable decline in British power. Written from a theoretically-informed perspective, grounded in rich archival sources, oral testimonies and a revisionist reading of the literature on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, this is the definitive account of the politics of Britain’s small wars.
This volume addresses the problem of small, irregular, and unconventional war across time and around the globe. The use of non-uniformed and often civilian combatants, with tactics eschewing pitched battles, is the most common form of warfare throughout history and comes in many forms. The collection works back in time beginning with the ‘Long War’ in present day Afghanistan and concluding with warfare in classical Greece. Along the way it engages with conflicts as diverse as the American Civil War and regional rebellion in Tudor England. Each case study provides unique insights into the practices, experiences, and discourses that have shaped this ubiquitous type of conflict. Readers interested in rebellion and repression, cultural and tactical interpretations of conflict, civilian strategies in wartime, the supposed ‘western way of war’, and the ways in which participants have framed and related their actions across a variety of spheres will find much of interest in these pages.
Military working dogs are silently winning the war against the world’s deadliest insurgents; day after day saving soldiers’ lives in the most dangerous countries on the planet. Many have been rescue animals, neglected or mistreated by their owners before being given a new lease of life on the front line. From the featureless plains of Helmand and Kandahar to military bases in Germany, army dog teams work day and night to keep us safe but, until recently, their courage and sacrifice has not been fully understood or appreciated. Award-winning journalist Stephen Paul Stewart employs in-depth interviews together with years of research and frontline reportage to tell their gripping and emotional stories for the first time. ‘A fascinating insight into a little-known subject, A Soldier’s Best Friend is a moving and engrossing read.’ — Niall Edworthy
This book seeks to provide a comparative assessment of the significance of ‘human factors’ in effective counter-terrorism. The phrase ‘human factors’ is used to describe personal relationships, individual capabilities, effective leadership, technical interface, organisational culture and the community engagement necessary to effectively minimise, counter and control the threat of terrorism. Unlike many works in the field, this book is constructed around the input of ‘experienced knowledge’ from over 170 semi-structured interviews of specialist military, policing, intelligence and security practitioners - those actors actually involved in countering terrorism. These practitioners come from seven countries – the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Israel, Turkey and the United States – all of which have suffered over the years from different types of terrorist threat and responded with a mixture of counter-terrorist measures. Where military practitioners also discussed overseas counter-insurgency measures, that material has been included, since terrorism forms a key aspect of such wider insurgencies. The resulting interview data was analysed through a variant of ‘Grounded Theory’ to identify key emerging themes and issues, both positive and negative, relevant to ‘human factors’ in the individual countries and more generically. This book incorporates the informed operational experiences and insights of the interviewees while seeking to provide examples of successful counter-terrorist measures at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. This book will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism, defence studies and security studies in general.
A growing number of scholars have sought to re-centre emotions in our study of international politics, however an overarching book on how emotions matter to the study of politics and war is yet to be published. This volume is aimed at filling that gap, proceeding from the assumption that a nuanced understanding of emotions can only enhance our engagement with contemporary conflict and war. Providing a range of perspectives from a diversity of methodological approaches on the conditions, maintenance and interpretation of emotions, the contributors interrogate the multiple ways in which emotions function and matter to the study of global politics. Accordingly, the innovative contribution of this volume is its specific engagement with the role of emotions and constitution of emotional subjects in a range of different contexts of politics and war, including the gendered nature of war and security; war traumas; post-conflict reconstruction; and counterinsurgency operations. Looking at how we analyse emotions in war, why it matters, and what emotions do in global politics, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of critical security studies and international relations alike.
How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.
