Yale University Press, 2023. — 325 p. The first account of the new Taliban—showing who they are, what they want, and how they differ from their predecessors. Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have effective control of Afghanistan—a scenario few Western commentators anticipated. But after a twenty-year-long bitter war against the Republic of Afghanistan,...
Fourth Edition. — Scarecrow Press, 2011. — 665 p. Afghanistan has long been a coveted land of great strategic importance. Early in its history it served as a gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk Road, which carried trade from the Mediterranean to China. In the 16th century the Persian Safavid Empire in the west, the Turkic Uzbek state to the north, and the Moghul...
Fourth Edition. — Scarecrow Press, 2011. — 665 p. Afghanistan has long been a coveted land of great strategic importance. Early in its history it served as a gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk Road, which carried trade from the Mediterranean to China. In the 16th century the Persian Safavid Empire in the west, the Turkic Uzbek state to the north, and the Moghul...
Scarecrow Press, 2005. — 450 p. Since its foundation in 1747, Afghanistan has seen seemingly limitless wars waged by the central government to consolidate its control over the country as well as rampant tribal warfare. There have been three Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839-42, 1878-79 and 1919); a Russian-backed Marxist government in Kabul battled a coalition of tribal armies, which was...
Naval Institute Press, 2016. — 224 p. The Dust of Kandahar represents a unique contribution to USNI's growing number of books on the conflict in Afghanistan, largely because it views events primarily from a civilian perspective. Attached to the Third Infantry Division based in Kandahar during its year-long deployment in southern Afghanistan, the author served as a link between...
Columbia University Press, 2016. — 256 p. Applying cutting-edge psychiatric theories to an analysis of online Taliban literature in four languages, Neil Krishan Aggarwal constructs a game-changing narrative of the organization's broad appeal and worldview. Aggarwal, a cultural psychiatrist, focuses on the Taliban's creation of culture, evoking religion in Arabic and English...
Harvard University Press, 2017. — 448 p. Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone or marginal frontier, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence from the British Empire, form a fully sovereign government, and promulgate an original constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Far from a...
Verso, 2021. — 272 p. The NATO occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance-sheet can be drawn. These essays on war and peace in the region reveal Tariq Ali at his sharpest and most prescient. Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan became the 'good...
Hoover Institution Press, 1985. — 224 p. On December 27, 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to save an endangered communist regime. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, founded in 1965 but almost immediately riven into two hostile wings, had been induced by Moscow into unifying in 1977 in order to seize power the following year. Within weeks, however, the majority...
Second Edition. — Princeton University Press, 2022. — 457 р. 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...
Harvard University Press, 2012. — 336 p. In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. Under the Drones looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to...
Harper Collins, 2017. — 307 p. At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a complex multinational diplomacy had proposed setting up a coalition government in Kabul as a solution to the 'Afghan problem'. Even as all sides worked on the coalition, the US took steps that India considered a 'stab in the back'. With the help of the official papers collected by US...
Oxford University Press, 1999. — 443 p. Henry S. Bradsher, whose 1983 study of the Afghanistan situation was widely praised, sheds new light on the entire period of Afghan Communism, from its origins in the 1950s to the collapse of the Najibullah regime in 1992. Extensive interviewing, a wide range of source materials, and access to Soviet archives make this a comprehensive...
I.B. Tauris, 2015. — 304 p. Over the last three decades Afghanistan has been plagued by crisis – from Soviet invasion in 1979 and Taliban rule to US invasion following the events of 9/11. Here the top specialists on Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy, Ahmad Rashid and Jonathan Goodhand, provide a unique overview of the evolution, causes and future of the Afghan crisis. Covering...
Stanford University Press, 2016. — 260 p. The U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan mobilized troops, funds, and people on an international level not seen since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and tens of billions of dollars flowed into the country. But what was gained for Afghanistan―or for the international community that footed the bill? Why did development...
National Defense University Press, 2011. — 137 p. This monograph aims to provide military leaders, civil servants, diplomats, and students with the intellectual basis they need to prepare for further study or for assignments in Afghanistan, a nation that has been at war for 33 years. Officers in the Af-Pak Hands Program may also find it a useful starting point, but their...
Harvard University Press, 2015. — 330 p. Rugged, remote, riven by tribal rivalries and religious violence, Afghanistan seems to many a forsaken country frozen in time. Robert Crews presents a bold challenge to this misperception. During their long history, Afghans have engaged and connected with a wider world, occupying a pivotal position in the Cold War and the decades that...
Harvard University Press, 2009. — 443 p. 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...
Harper Collins, 2021. — 352 p. For twenty years, the Taliban was the number one enemy of Western forces in Afghanistan. But it was an enemy that they knew little about. And they knew even less about its founder and leader, Mullah Omar. With only a fuzzy black-and-white photo of the man, investigative journalist Bette Dam decided to track down the reclusive Taliban chief. But in...
University of California Press, 2002. — 377 p. My objective here is to place the history of the present against the history of the past in order to gauge what happened in Afghanistan and why the forces that in the first years of the war seemed between them to control the destiny of the country have all been destroyed. The originative form of history for Afghans is the...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. — 317 p. This book explores how the bureaucratic ruling elites in the state apparatus, lacking public support, relied on imperial powers for economic, military, and political assistance, and how an assortment of established and rising imperial powers since the eighteenth century exploited the situation to advance their own agendas. It undertakes an...
Routledge, 2002. — 278 p. Sir Martin Ewans, former Head of the British Chancery in Kabul, puts into an historical and contemporary context the series of tragic events that have impinged on Afghanistan in the past fifty years. The book examines the roots of these developments in Afghanistan's earlier history and external relationships, as well as their contemporary relevance,...
Brookings Institution Press, 2012. — 357 p. After more than a decade of great effort and sacrifice by America and its allies, the Taliban still has not been defeated, and many Afghans believe that a civil war is coming. Aspiration and Ambivalence analyzes the U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan and offers detailed recommendations for dealing with the precarious...
Da Capo Press, 2011. — 416 p. Fifteen years ago, southern Afghanistan was in even greater chaos than it is now. The Russians, who had occupied the country throughout the 1980s, were long gone. The disparate ethnic and religious leaders who had united to eject the invaders - the famous mujaheddin - were at each others' throats. For the rural poor of Kandahar province, life was...
I.B. Tauris, 2020. — 241 p. Influential fundraising groups and senators in the US made enormous efforts in the First Afghan War to present the Mujahedeen as 'freedom fighters' - even while the CIA secretly armed them with surface to air missiles and other weapons. A mass propaganda effort was launched, aimed at portraying parts of Afghanistan as victims of communist aggression....
Oxford University Press, 1950. — 359 p. Afghanistan’s history has produced a deeply entrenched political culture that affects its future development. Its most striking feature is a longstanding court heritage of power focused on a single ruler who sets policy and distributes resources, and whose approval is sought by all those in government. Those outside government are deemed...
Haus Publishing, 2021. — 368 p. 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...
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. — 320 p. The Mughals, British and Soviets all failed to subjugate Afghanistan, failures which offer valuable lessons for today. Taking a long historical perspective from 1520 to 2012, this volume examines the Mughal, British, Soviet and NATO efforts in Afghanistan, drawing on new archives and a synthesis of previous counter-insurgency experiences....
Georgetown University Press, 2000. — 334 p. This book is the first to analyze the institutions, successes, and failures of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the pro-Soviet regime that sought to dominate the country during the years of the Soviet military presence. Antonio Giustozzi explores the military, political, and social strategies of the predominantly urban...
University of Washington Press, 2011. — 279 p. Going beyond the stereotypes of Kalashnikov-wielding Afghan mujahideen and black-turbaned Taliban fundamentalists, Larry Goodson explains in this concise analysis of the Afghan war what has really been happening in Afghanistan in the last twenty years. Beginning with the reasons behind Afghanistan's inability to forge a strong...
Webster University Press, 2019. — 470 p. Author and translator Marcela Grad explores the life of the late Afghan leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, through personal stories told to her by those who accompanied Massoud during his struggle to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion and the Taliban, and by others from around the world who knew and helped Massoud. Ahmad Shah Massoud...
Dundurn Press, 2021. — 416 p. A clear-eyed view of the conflict in Afghanistan and its century-deep roots. The war in Afghanistan has consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, causing the Western powers to seek an exit without achieving victory. Seemingly never-ending, the conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues ― global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the...
Westview Press, 1983. — 262 p. This book looks not just at the 1979 Coup and the subsequent Afghan-Soviet War but also provides a history of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan since the October Revolution. Because of its position Afghanistan has always been of interest to the USSR, but the Soviets did not necessarily need or want a communist state there. Because this book dates...
Routledge, 2020. — 282 p. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 stunned the world and ushered in a new period of superpower confrontation. Research into Afghan society was severely curtailed, and the ability to research the Afghan resistance was non-existent. This book, first published in 1988, was the result of a Swedish seminar that focused on the results of the war on...
Pegasus Books, 2011. — Veteran defense analyst and Afghanistan expert David Isby provides an insightful and meticulously researched look at the current situation in Afghanistan, its history, and what he believes must be done so that the US-NATO coalition can succeed in one of the poorest countries in the world, rife with divisions that dwarf current schisms in Iraq, led by...
Vij Books, 2020. — 405 p. The Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Air Force (AAF) stand today as products of the 2001 war and Western intervention in Afghanistan. This is not only because they were established in 2002 by the government brought to power by that intervention, but even more importantly because they were funded, designed and trained by the intervening...
Duke University Press, 2011. — 227 p. Globalizing Afghanistan offers a kaleidoscopic view of Afghanistan and the global networks of power, influence, and representation in which it is immersed. The military and nation-building interventions initiated by the United States in reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, are the background and motivation for this collection, but...
Fifth edition. — Rowman and Littlefield, 2021. — 781 p. Afghanistan is an extremely complex and nuanced country that has been one of the centers of imperial conflict at least for 150 years. From the Czarist Russia’s march south in the 19th Century threatening British India, three Anglo-Afghan Wars, the Soviet Invasion and occupation of Afghanistan starting in December 1979 and...
Oxford University Press, 2018. — 417 p. Throughout the history of warfare, armed groups have organized, recruited, and extended the duration of conflict by tapping into a myriad of socio-economic grievances, ethno-cultural values, customs, and tropes to help unify their ranks and cultivate powerful doctrines able to withstand opposing forts to break warrior morale and spirit....
Brill, 1996. — 780 p. — (Islamic History and Civilization 15). This work is a chronological account of the struggle between the Afghan Amirs of Kabul and the Manghit Dynasty of Bukhara for Balkh province ( wilayat) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing extensively on India Office Records, Persian and native oral sources, the book provides a unique insight into...
Routledge, 2014. — 195 p. This book identifies some of the main lessons for civil-military interactions that can be derived from the experiences of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan. The book has three main themes. Firstly, the volume analyses why the ways in which civil and military actors interact in theatres of operations such as Afghanistan matter ― for...
Oxford University Press, 2017. — 280 p. In the immediate aftermath of the 2007 "Surge" of American troops in Iraq, the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar Province was widely hailed as one of America's signature victories. US Marines and soldiers fought for years there, in grinding battles such as Fallujah and Ramadi that define the experience of Iraq. Eventually, the...
Oxford University Press, 2013. — 348 p. If you want to understand Afghanistan, writes Carter Malkasian, you need to understand what has happened on the ground, in the villages and countryside that were on the frontline. These small places are the heart of the war. Modeled on the classic Vietnam War book, War Comes to Long An, Malkasian's War Comes to Garmser promises to be a...
Cambridge University Press, 2020. — 265 p. Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space, and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In this innovative examination, Nivi Manchanda uncovers and critically explores...
Cambridge University Press, 2021. — 230 p. Although today's richest countries tend to have long histories of secure private property rights, legal-titling projects do little to improve the economic and political well-being of those in the developing world. This book employs a historical narrative based on secondary literature, fieldwork across thirty villages, and a nationally...
Greenhaven Press, 2013. — 219 p. Title explores decades of occupation and civil war in Afghanistan, from the Soviet occupation until the present day, addressing: atrocities committed both by the Soviet military and the Afghan mujahedeen fighters; the effect of US involvement in Afghanistan; The histories of nations across the globe are marked by dark periods of mass murder,...
Routledge, 1997. — 465 p. With the exception of two short periods of direct British intervention during the Anglo-Afghan Wars of 1839-1842 and 1878-1880, the history of nineteenth-century Afghanistan has received little attention from western scholars. This study seeks to shift the focus of debate from the geostrategic concern with Afghanistan as the bone of contention between...
Rand Corporation, 2011. — 127 p. Security force assistance is central to the counterinsurgency campaign of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. The outcome will hinge on the effectiveness of the assistance provided to the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, and other security forces. This report provides an overview of Soviet efforts to improve and facilitate the...
Edinburgh University Press, 2021. — 221 p. Exploring the physical, embodied landscape of the military-peace complex in Afghanistan This book focuses on the military and state-building components of the international project in Afghanistan since 2001. It posits and discusses the military-peace complex as a framework through which to understand the international project in...
Melbourne University Press, 2022. — 304 p. As night fell on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a 20-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, the...