The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan

The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan
Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1839768177

The 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 war.” But a stalemate ensued, and the Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse of the puppet regime in Kabul, what does the future hold for a traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence in the country? Tariq Ali has been following the wars in Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military interven- tion in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce critic of its NATO sequel, Operation Enduring Freedom. In a series of trenchant commentaries, he has described the tragedies inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions have proved accurate. The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan: A Chronicle Foretold brings together the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.

Our Latest Longest War

Our Latest Longest War
Author: Aaron B. O'Connell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2017-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 022626579X

American and Afghan veterans contribute to this anthology of critical perspectives—“a vital contribution toward understanding the Afghanistan War” (Library Journal). When America went to war with Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, it did so with the lofty goals of dismantling al Qaeda, removing the Taliban from power, remaking the country into a democracy. But as the mission came unmoored from reality, the United States wasted billions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. Our Latest Longest War is a chronicle of how, why, and in what ways the war in Afghanistan failed. Edited by prize-winning historian and Marine lieutenant colonel Aaron B. O’Connell, the essays collected here represent nine different perspectives on the war—all from veterans of the conflict, both American and Afghan. Together, they paint a picture of a war in which problems of culture, including an unbridgeable rural-urban divide, derailed nearly every field of endeavor. The authors also draw troubling parallels to the Vietnam War, arguing that ideological currents in American life explain why the US government has repeatedly used military force in pursuit of democratic nation-building. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this created a dramatic mismatch of means and ends that neither money, technology, nor weapons could overcome.

15 years in Afghanistan

15 years in Afghanistan
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2019-03-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9251309361

Emerging from decades of war in 2002, Afghanistan and its rich agricultural history were in need of urgent repair and reinvigoration. Since that time, FAO has been operating in the country to rehabiliate irrigation infrastructure, build new dairy and wheat seed industries, improve livestock health, help smallholders diversify their crops and add higher-value products, halt deforestation and help the country adapt to climate change. This report presents highlights from the work carried out over the past 15 years, featuring stories and testimonials from satisfied FAO beneficiairies. It is organized to reflect the priorities that the Government of Afghanistan has outlined in its current agricultural development plan, while also showing how FAO's work cuts across many sectors of agriculture. The report demonstrates that, despite some setbacks, FAO has brought increased prosperity, sustainability and self-reliance to the farmers, pastoralists and farm product processors of Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan Papers

The Afghanistan Papers
Author: Craig Whitlock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982159014

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.

August in Kabul

August in Kabul
Author: Andrew Quilty
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2023-04-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1350370320

Told through the eyes of witnesses to the fall of Kabul, Walkley award-winning journalist Andrew Quilty's debut book offers a remarkable record of this historic moment. 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, world superpower, this was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control. August in Kabul is the story of how America's longest mission came to an abrupt and humiliating end, told through the eyes of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down: a young woman who harbours dreams of a university education; a presidential staffer who works desperately to hold things together as the government collapses around him; a prisoner in the notorious Bagram Prison who suddenly finds himself free when prison guards abandon their post. Andrew Quilty was one of only a handful of Western journalists who stayed in Kabul as the city fell. This is his first-hand account of those dramatic final days.

The American War in Afghanistan

The American War in Afghanistan
Author: Carter Malkasian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197550797

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.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Author: Thomas Barfield
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2012-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691154414

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.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Author: Paula Bronstein
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781477309391

Winner, International Photography Award, 1st Place, Professional: Book, Documentary, 2016 The Afghan people are standing at a crucial crossroads in history. Can their fragile democratic institutions survive the drawdown of US military support? Will Afghan women and girls be stripped of their modest gains in freedom and opportunity as the West loses interest in their plight? While the media have largely moved on from these stories, Paula Bronstein remains passionately committed to bearing witness to the lives of the Afghan people. In this powerful photo essay, she goes beyond war coverage to reveal the full complexity of daily life in what may be the world's most reported on yet least known country. Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear presents a photographic portrait of this war-torn country's people across more than a decade. With empathy born of the challenges of being an American female photojournalist working in a conservative Islamic country, Bronstein gives voice to those Afghans, particularly women and children, rendered silent during the violent Taliban regime. She documents everything from the grave trials facing the country—human rights abuses against women, poverty and the aftermath of war, and heroin addiction, among them—to the stirrings of new hope, including elections, girls' education, and work and recreation. Fellow award-winning journalist Christina Lamb describes the gains that Afghan women have made since the overthrow of the Taliban, as well as the daunting obstacles they still face. An eloquent portrait of everyday life, Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear is the most complete visual narrative history of the country currently in print.

Games without Rules

Games without Rules
Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2014-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610393198

By the author of Destiny Disrupted: an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation

Losing Afghanistan

Losing Afghanistan
Author: Brian Brivati
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785907328

"Those who wonder how the international community failed so dramatically in Afghanistan need look no further ... Losing Afghanistan explores the arguments for and against intervention and highlights the difficulty of establishing unity of purpose and effort in such demanding circumstances. Above all, it poses a question: how can we in the West claim we know so much, yet demonstrate in Afghanistan that we understand so little?" – General (retd) Sir Jack Deverell OBE, former Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces Northern Europe "A wonderful book of insightful essays on Afghanistan from an outsider lens." – Ezatullah Adib, head of research at Integrity Watch Afghanistan and national country representative at the World Association for Public Opinion Research "The strategic question posed by these brilliant essays is: how can the doctrine of liberal intervention be reframed to ensure the West intervenes overseas to manage future humanitarian calamities for reasons beyond just national security?" – Brigadier (retd) Justin Hedges OBE *** When Taliban forces took Kabul on 15 August 2021, it marked the end of the Western intervention that had begun nearly twenty years earlier with the US-led invasion. The fall of Afghanistan triggered a seismic shock in the West, where US President Joe Biden announced an end to America's involvement in conflicts overseas. In Afghanistan itself it produced terror for the future for those who had worked with and grown up under the coalition-supported administration. Now, with the country spiralling into economic collapse and famine, Losing Afghanistan is a plea for us to keep our gaze on the plight of the people of Afghanistan and to understand how action and inaction in the West shaped the fate of the nation. Why was Afghanistan lost? Can it be regained? And what happens next? Edited by international development expert Brian Brivati, this collection of twenty-one essays by analysts, politicians, soldiers, commentators and practitioners – interspersed with powerful eyewitness testimony from Afghan voices – explains what happened in Afghanistan and why, and what the future holds both for its people and for liberal intervention.