Afghanistan At War

Author : Craig Whitlock,The Washington Post
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2022-08-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781982159016

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The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock,The Washington Post Pdf

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.

Author : Murray Brewster
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2011-12-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781118122068

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The Savage War by Murray Brewster Pdf

On the tenth anniversary of Canada's involvement, a leading journalist offers a fascinating assessment of Canada's past and present role in the Afghan war Of the 33,000 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan in October 2006, 12,000 were Americans and 2,500 were Canadians. Deployed to southern Afghanistan, the Canadian forces were charged with ending the violent insurgency in Kandahar Province. The Savage War offers a compelling look at how the war has been conducted by Canada and its allies on the ground and at the highest echelons. With unprecedented access to classified documents and the exceptional storytelling skills that have made him an award-winning reporter, Murray Brewster offers a powerful new perspective on the war. Told in the first person by a journalist who's spent more time in the trenches than any of his peers, The Savage War provides a candid look at the war's principal figures captured in off-camera moments and the daily, gritty reality of ordinary soldiers and Afghans. And as Canada prepares to take on a new mission in Afghanistan, this is the first comprehensive account of the five most significant years of the war and the key moments in it that shaped history. Murray Brewster provides tough-minded analysis and a critique of bureaucracy as well as revelations about corruption—sure to incite commentary and stir controversy Includes eyewitness accounts, exclusive interviews, and access to classified documents An unflinching, unvarnished analysis of Canada's role in the war, told in first-person by a journalist who has sat in trenches with soldiers, and also in the living room of 24 Sussex Drive with the prime minister Taking readers beyond punditry and political spin, The Savage War is the first comprehensive account of the key moments in the Afghan war that have shaped history. Many have asked what went wrong. The Savage War tackles this question head on.

Author : Carter Malkasian
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 601 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780197550793

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The American War in Afghanistan by Carter Malkasian Pdf

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.

Author : Larry P. Goodson
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2011-07-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780295801582

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Afghanistan's Endless War by Larry P. Goodson Pdf

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 state -- its myriad cleavages along ethnic, religious, social, and geographical fault lines -- Goodson then examines the devastating course of the war itself. He charts its utter destruction of the country, from the deaths of more than 2 million Afghans and the dispersal of some six million others as refugees to the complete collapse of its economy, which today has been replaced by monoagriculture in opium poppies and heroin production. The Taliban, some of whose leaders Goodson interviewed as recently as 1997, have controlled roughly 80 percent of the country but themselves have shown increasing discord along ethnic and political lines.

Author : Abdulkader H. Sinno
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2011-01-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780801459306

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Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond by Abdulkader H. Sinno Pdf

"After we had exchanged the requisite formalities over tea in his camp on the southern edge of Kabul's outer defense perimeter, the Afghan field commander told me that two of his bravest mujahideen were martyred because he did not have a pickup truck to take them to a Peshawar hospital. They had succumbed to their battle wounds. He asked me to tell his party's bureaucrats across the border that he needed such a vehicle desperately. I double-checked with my interpreter that he was indeed making this request. I wasn't puzzled because the request appeared unreasonable but because he was asking me, a twenty-year-old employee of a humanitarian organization, to intercede on his behalf with his own organization's bureaucracy. I understood on this dry summer day in Khurd Kabul that not all militant and political organizations are alike."—from Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond While popular accounts of warfare, particularly of nontraditional conflicts such as guerrilla wars and insurgencies, favor the roles of leaders or ideology, social-scientific analyses of these wars focus on aggregate categories such as ethnic groups, religious affiliations, socioeconomic classes, or civilizations. Challenging these constructions, Abdulkader H. Sinno closely examines the fortunes of the various factions in Afghanistan, including the mujahideen and the Taliban, that have been fighting each other and foreign armies since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Focusing on the organization of the combatants, Sinno offers a new understanding of the course and outcome of such conflicts. Employing a wide range of sources, including his own fieldwork in Afghanistan and statistical data on conflicts across the region, Sinno contends that in Afghanistan, the groups that have outperformed and outlasted their opponents have done so because of their successful organization. Each organization's ability to mobilize effectively, execute strategy, coordinate efforts, manage disunity, and process information depends on how well its structure matches its ability to keep its rivals at bay. Centralized organizations, Sinno finds, are generally more effective than noncentralized ones, but noncentralized ones are more resilient absent a safe haven. Sinno's organizational theory explains otherwise puzzling behavior found in group conflicts: the longevity of unpopular regimes, the demise of popular movements, and efforts of those who share a common cause to undermine their ideological or ethnic kin. The author argues that the organizational theory applies not only to Afghanistan-where he doubts the effectiveness of American state-building efforts—but also to other ethnic, revolutionary, independence, and secessionist conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

Author : Alex Klaits,Gulchin Gulmamadova-Klaits
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2011-01-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781583229750

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Love & War in Afghanistan by Alex Klaits,Gulchin Gulmamadova-Klaits Pdf

Love and War in Afghanistan presents true stories of fourteen ordinary men and women living in Northern Afghanistan. In a quarter-century of uninterrupted war, the people of Afghanistan have endured foreign invasions, ethnic strife, a fundamentalist Islamic totalitarian regime, and the unending crossfire of rival warlord factions. The country remains an object of fascination for journalists, academics, and filmmakers from around the world. In the midst of it all it is a startlingly powerful experience to discover, here, the voices of the Afghan people themselves. Young lovers who elope against the wishes of their kin; a mullah whose wit is his only defense against his armed captors; a defector from the Soviet army; a woman who is forced to stand up to gangsters in Tajikistan—their dramatic stories emerge in their own unforgettable words. Whether in the sudden awakening of mercy in a Taliban militiaman, the lingering contempt of a woman for her husband’s first wife, the pain and confusion of flight into exile, or the resourcefulness of a child who must provide for an entire family, the real focus of these narratives is the strength of solitary individuals faced daily with their own vulnerability. Men, women, orphans, widows, widowers, Tajiks, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Turkmens, schoolteachers, mullahs, former Taliban, mujahideen, big brothers, little sisters, captive wives, lovers in flight: Love and War in Afghanistan tells their stories, putting human faces onto a country torn by war.

Author : Tariq Ali
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2021-11-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781839768170

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The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan by Tariq Ali Pdf

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.

Author : Hugh Chisholm
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1016 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1911
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN : UOM:39015015204509

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The Encyclopaedia Britannica by Hugh Chisholm Pdf

Author : Mustafa Hamid,Leah Farrall
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781849045940

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The Arabs at War in Afghanistan by Mustafa Hamid,Leah Farrall Pdf

A former senior mujahidin figure and an ex-counter-terrorism analyst cooperating to write a book on the history and legacy of Arab-Afghan fighters in Afghanistan is a remarkable and improbable undertaking. Yet this is what Mustafa Hamid, aka Abu Walid al-Masri, and Leah Farrall have achieved with the publication of their ground-breaking work. The result of thousands of hours of discussions over several years, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan offers significant new insights into the history of many of today's militant Salafi groups and movements. By revealing the real origins of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the jostling among the various jihadi groups, this account not only challenges conventional wisdom, but also raises uncomfortable questions as to how events from this important period have been so badly misconstrued.

Author : N. Nojumi
Publisher : Springer
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2016-04-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780312299101

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The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan by N. Nojumi Pdf

This book describes the turbulent political history of Afghanistan from the communist upheaval of the 1970s through to the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. It reviews the importance of the region to external powers and explains why warfare and instability have been endemic. The author analyses in detail the birth of the Taliban and the bloody rise to power of fanatic Islamists, including Osama bin Laden, in the power vacuum following the withdrawal of US aid. Looking forward, Nojumi explores the ongoing quest for a third political movement in Afghanistan - an alternative to radical communists or fanatical Islamists and suggests the support that will be neccessary from the international community in order for such a movement to survive.

Author : Jean-Christophe Boucher,Kim Richard Nossal
Publisher : UBC Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780774836302

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The Politics of War by Jean-Christophe Boucher,Kim Richard Nossal Pdf

When Canada committed forces to the military mission in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, little did Canadians foresee that they would be involved in a war-riven country for over a decade. The Politics of War explores how and why Canada’s Afghanistan mission became so politicized. Through analysis of the public record and interviews with officials, Boucher and Nossal show how the Canadian government sought to frame the engagement in Afghanistan as a “mission” rather than what it was – a war. This book analyzes the impact of political elites, Parliament, and public opinion on the conflict and demonstrates how much of Canada’s involvement was shaped by the vagaries of domestic politics.

Author : Antonio Giustozzi
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Afghanistan
ISBN : 9780190092399

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The Taliban at War by Antonio Giustozzi Pdf

Introduction --The collapse of the Emirate and the early regrouping, 2002-4 --The apogeum of the Quetta Shura, 2005-9 --The emergence of alternative centres of power to Quetta --The crisis of the Quetta Shura 2009-13 --The Taliban's tactical adaptation --Organisational adaptation --The troubled comeback of the Quetta Shura 2014 --Conclusion.The impossible centralisation of an anti-centralist movement --Epilogue.

Author : Kevin Patterson,Jane Warren
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2010-06-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307370853

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Outside the Wire by Kevin Patterson,Jane Warren Pdf

A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. Visceral, intimate and captivating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat, and an introductory reflection by Roméo Dallaire. Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone. Throughout each piece the passion of those engaged in rebuilding this shattered country shines through, a glimmer of optimism and determination so rare in multinational military actions–and so particularly Canadian. In Outside the Wire, award-winning author Kevin Patterson and co-editor Jane Warren have rediscovered the valour and horror of sacrifice in this, the definitive account of the modern Canadian experience of war.

Author : Ray Wiss
Publisher : D & M Publishers
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-23
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781926812373

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FOB Doc by Ray Wiss Pdf

Military doctors serving in Afghanistan usually spend their entire tour in the relatively safe confines of the main base. FOB Doc is the story of one Canadian doctor who spent nearly his entire tour in combat. Captain Ray Wiss was stationed at Forward Operating Bases — FOBs — in Khandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban and the most intense zone combat in Afghanistan. He shares the 'terror and boredom' of the front-line soldier's life in this candid personal diary. One day, he might be participating in combat operations, treating severe and bloody injuries and coping with the deaths of fellow soldiers, both Afghans and NATO allies; another day, he might be writing about the challenges of going to the latrine in sub-zero weather. FOB Doc is heartbreaking and hilarious, often on the same page.

Author : Tom Lansford
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9781598847604

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Afghanistan at War by Tom Lansford Pdf

Covering wars and conflicts of Afghanistan from the modern founding of the country in the 1700s to the contemporary struggle with the Taliban, this single-volume reference analyzes the causes and results of Afghanistan's wars and examines leading political and military figures, weapons, and tactics. Afghanistan has been embroiled in war and conflict throughout the latter part of the 20th century as well as the current millennium, but due to its location at the crossroads of Central Asia, Afghanistan has also endured repeated conquests throughout its turbulent earlier times. Examining Afghanistan's long military history through this book will enable readers to grasp the wider sociopolitical history of the country; appreciate the impact of these wars on Southwest Asia and superpowers such as Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States; and understand why Afghanistan remains a controversial battleground today. The alphabetically organized entries examine the major wars and conflicts of Afghanistan from the modern founding of the country during the Durrani Dynasty in the 1700s through the contemporary struggle with the Taliban. The book spotlights the role of key individuals in starting, pursuing, or ending conflicts, as well as their broader contributions to—or negative impact on—Afghanistan and the international arena. The work also presents essays that examine key subtopics such as weapons, tactics, ethnic groups, religion, and foreign relations. This allows the reader—whether a student, scholar, or member of a nonacademic audience—to examine a topic in depth and see how the event, figure, or movement fits into the broader history of Afghanistan.