Empires Of Mud

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Empires of Mud

Author : Antonio Giustozzi
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2012-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0199326789

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Empires of Mud by Antonio Giustozzi Pdf

Warlords, namely charismatic military leaders who exploit the weakness of central authorities to seize control of and autonomously rule a sub-national area, have earned much notoriety in recent years on account of the excesses of civil wars in Liberia, Somalia and Afghanistan. But notwithstanding their bad reputation, warlords have often participated in state formation. In Empires of Mud, Giustozzi analyses the dynamics of warlordism in Afghanistan within the context of such debates. He approaches this complex task by first analysing aspects of the Afghan environment that might have been conductive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords and then accounts for the emergence of warlordism in the 1980s and subsequently the lion's share of this book consists of an in-depth analysis of the systems of rule--political, economic, military--which developed under Afghanistan's two foremost warlords, Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, both of whom still wield considerable power even after the intervention of Allied forces in Afghanistan in 2001. Their two systems are compared, highlighting convergences and divergences, in order to explain how warlords administer the areas that they control within so-called "failed states", in the process challenging much of the received wisdom in scholarly and policy circles about warlordism. The author also discusses Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose "system" incorporated elements of rule not dissimilar from that of the warlords. Giustozzi concludes that although charismatic leaders play a key role in shaping the specific characteristics of each warlord polity, there are some common elements that underlie the emergence of warlordism. In particular, the role of local military leaders and their gradual acquisition of a form of "class consciousness" appear to be key processes in allowing the formation of warlord polities, while the latter have repeatedly shown the ability over time to evolve in to more sophisticated, state-like, or political party-like, structures.

Networks of Rebellion

Author : Paul Staniland
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2014-04-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780801471025

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Networks of Rebellion by Paul Staniland Pdf

Insurgent cohesion is central to explaining patterns of violence, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, and civil war outcomes. Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups. Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988–2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

Warlord Survival

Author : Romain Malejacq
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781501746437

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Warlord Survival by Romain Malejacq Pdf

How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen. Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim). He shows how they have successfully negotiated complicated political environments to survive ever since the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan war. The picture he paints in Warlord Survival is one of astute political entrepreneurs with a proven ability to organize violence. Warlords exert authority through a process in which they combine, instrumentalize, and convert different forms of power to prevent the emergence of a strong, centralized state. But, as Malejacq shows, the personal relationships and networks fundamental to the authority of Ismail Khan, Dostum, Massoud, and Fahim are not necessarily contrary to bureaucratic state authority. In fact, these four warlords, and others like them, offer durable and flexible forms of power in unstable, violent countries.

Afghanistan

Author : Musa Khan Jalalzai
Publisher : Vij Books India Pvt Ltd
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2021-02-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789390439546

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Afghanistan by Musa Khan Jalalzai Pdf

Writers and analysts have uncovered the illegal role of private militias’ commanders in Afghanistan. These commanders and self-styled leaders were driven overwhelmingly by their personal power, and they were not only considered illegitimate on the domestic political scene, and viewed as irrelevant. The present Afghan government is a mix of all types of its efforts, including war criminals, and militia commanders who smuggle narcotics, drugs, arm, and kill women and children. War criminals and militias commanders have developed complex survival and legitimation strategies beyond their territorial realms. After years of its establishment, the Afghan local police (ALP) was undermined due to its failure to stabilize remote regions of the country. The US proxy militias are the source of consternation. The US Army established an incompetent intelligence agency (NDS) to serve its interest. The NDS established regional militias to support the CIA and Pentagon war mission against the people of the country. The NDS established Unit-01 for Central Region, Unit-02 for Eastern Region, Unit-03 for Southern Region, and Unit-04, as a Khost Protection Force (KPF), and committed war crimes in these regions with the support of the US Army and CIA. This book has documented the role of all internal and external actors, warlords and stakeholders.

Militia Order in Afghanistan

Author : Matthew P. Dearing
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-07-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000406771

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Militia Order in Afghanistan by Matthew P. Dearing Pdf

This book offers a new insight into when and why paramilitary groups in Afghanistan engage in protective or predatory behavior against the civilians they purportedly defend. In Afghanistan’s counterinsurgency environment, America leaned on militias to provide order and stabilize communities cut off from weak central government institutions. However, the lucrative market of protection challenged militia loyalty, as many engaged in banditry, vendettas, and predation. This book examines the varying militia experiments in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 and their outcomes through three sub-national case studies. It argues that successful militia experiments in Afghanistan involved inclusion of local orders, where communities had well-established social structures and accountability mechanisms in place, and state patrons relied upon those structures as a restraint against militia behavior. Complementary management ensured patrons leaned on communities for strong accountability systems. But such environments were far from the norm. When patrons ignored community controls, militias preyed on civilians as they monopolized the market of protection. This book adds to the rich literature on the U.S. experience in Afghanistan, but differs by focusing on the interplay between states, communities, and militias. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, Asian politics, security studies and International Relations.

Globalization and Human Rights

Author : Jesús Ballesteros,Encarnación Fernández Ruiz-Gálvez,Pedro Talavera
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2012-04-14
Category : Law
ISBN : 9789400740204

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Globalization and Human Rights by Jesús Ballesteros,Encarnación Fernández Ruiz-Gálvez,Pedro Talavera Pdf

Globalisation turns out to be untenable because it does not guarantee minimum social equity, peace and respect for the environment, and therefore does not guarantee the effective accomplishment of human rights. This book analyzes this issue and raises proposals for a new perspective. The first part describes the soft threats to human rights, derived from the devaluation of the politics and the productive economy with regard to the finance. It entails the concealment of the reality in the shape of exploitation as the tax havens and in the shape of marginalization of the persons with different abilities. The second part include a study of hard threats to human rights and examines two cases of failed states: Afghanistan and Somalia, in which the violence has supplanted the politics and the economy. In view of these situations it is necessary to rethink the force of classic ius gentium and the humanitarian right. The third part presents the European Union as a legal and political space in which conditions of a worthy life are better defended by means of the Primacy of Practical Reason and Social State of Law, and by the requirement of peace as the main rule of international relations.

Perspectives on the American Way of War

Author : Thomas A. Marks,Kirklin J. Bateman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2020-06-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000713046

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Perspectives on the American Way of War by Thomas A. Marks,Kirklin J. Bateman Pdf

Perspectives on the American Way of War examines salient cases of American experience in irregular warfare, focusing upon the post-World War II era. This book asks why recent misfires have emerged in irregular warfare from an institutional, professional, and academic context which regularly produces evidence that there is in fact no lack of understanding of both irregular challenges and correct responses. Expert contributors explore the reasoning behind the inability to achieve victory, however defined, and argue that what security professionals have failed to fully recognize, even today, is that what is at issue is not warfare suffused with politics but rather the very opposite, politics suffused with warfare. Perspectives on the American Way of War will be of great interest to scholars of war and conflict studies, strategic and military studies, insurgency and counterinsurgency, and terrorism and counterterrorism. The book was originally published as a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Adventurous Empires

Author : Phillip E. Sims
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 729 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2013-01-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781783468836

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Adventurous Empires by Phillip E. Sims Pdf

This is a story from a bygone age recalling the most successful flying-boat airliner ever built. Designed to a specification for Imperial Airways, then Britains national airline, it carried passengers and, more importantly, mail throughout the British Empire. The airliner offered luxurious travel for the privileged few, every journey being an adventure shared by passengers and crew.Short Brothers built 42 Empires at their factory in Rochester during the late 1930s. Imperial Airways were expanding their network to the furthermost outposts of the British Empire, whilst laying down the principles of scheduled airline operation.This is the tale of the realization of a dream and the efforts of those who made it possible. During World War II, the military Sunderland version became an icon.

Between Empires

Author : Greg Fisher
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2011-04-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191618949

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Between Empires by Greg Fisher Pdf

In Between Empires Greg Fisher tackles the problem of pre-Islamic Arab identity by examining the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Empire of Sasanian Iran, and a selection of their Arab allies and neighbours, the Jafnids, Nasrids, and Hujrids. Fisher focuses on the last century before the emergence of Islam and stresses the importance of a Near East dominated by Rome and Iran for the formation of early concepts of Arab identity. In particular, he examines cultural and religious integration, political activities, and the role played by Arabic as factors in this process. He concludes that interface with the Roman Empire, in particular, played a key role in helping to lay the foundation for later concepts of Arab identity, and that the world of Late Antiquity is, as a result, of enduring interest in our understanding of what we now call the Middle East.

Resistance at the Edge of Empires

Author : Cameron A. Petrie
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 797 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781785703041

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Resistance at the Edge of Empires by Cameron A. Petrie Pdf

From 1985 to 2001, the collaborative research initiative known as the Bannu Archaeological Project conducted archaeological explorations and excavations in the Bannu region, in what was then the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This Project involves scholars from the Pakistan Heritage Society, the British Museum, the Institute of Archaeology (UCL), Bryn Mawr College and the University of Cambridge. This is the third in a series of volumes that present the final reports of the exploration and excavations carried out by the Bannu Archaeological Project. This volume presents the first synthesis of the archaeology of the historic periods in the Bannu region, spanning the period when the first large scale empires expanded to the borders of South Asia up until the arrival of Islam in the subcontinent at the end of the first and beginning of the second millennium BC. The Bannu region provides specific insight into early imperialism in South Asia, as throughout this protracted period, it was able to maintain a distinctive regional identity in the face of recurring phases of imperial expansion and integration.

The Great Empires of the Ancient East

Author : George Rawlinson
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 2228 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2023-11-17
Category : History
ISBN : EAN:8596547669142

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The Great Empires of the Ancient East by George Rawlinson Pdf

The Ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, ancient Iran Asia Minor and Armenian Highlands, the Levant, Cyprus and the Arabian Peninsula. This book covers the history of the entire region through the period of over three millennia. It brings political and cultural history of eight most important kingdoms and empires of the region: Egypt, Parthia, Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylon, Persia and Sasanian Empire. Content: Egypt Phoenicia Chaldea Assyria Media Babylon Persia Parthia Sasanian Empire The Kings of Israel and Judah The History of Herodotus: The Original Source

Arabs and Empires before Islam

Author : Greg Fisher
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 656 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2015-07-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191056994

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Arabs and Empires before Islam by Greg Fisher Pdf

Arabs and Empires before Islam illuminates the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam, collating nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts originally written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than twenty international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history provide detailed commentary on and analysis of this diverse selection of material. Richly illustrated with sixteen colour plates, fifteen maps, and over seventy in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. It offers a full consideration of the traces which the Arabs have left in the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records, and sheds light on their relationship with their often more-powerful neighbours: the states and empires of the ancient Near East. Arabs and Empires before Islam gathers together a host of material never before collected into a single volume - some of which appears in English translation for the very first time - and provides a single point of reference for a vibrant and dynamic area of research.

Memory of Empires: Ancient Egypt - Ancient Greece - Persian Empire - Roman Empire - Byzantine Empire

Author : Elie Faure,Victoria Charles
Publisher : Parkstone International
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2020-02-27
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781644618172

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Memory of Empires: Ancient Egypt - Ancient Greece - Persian Empire - Roman Empire - Byzantine Empire by Elie Faure,Victoria Charles Pdf

Empires are born. Empires reach their peak. Empires die, but leave their mark through their architecture and artistic achievements. From these specks of dust of memory, 40 centuries of history shape our world of the 21st century. The power of ancient Egypt was followed by the influence of Greece, which brought the Persian East together in the conquests of Alexander the Great. After Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, Rome became the power that ruled part of the world, finally dying out in the fall of the Byzantine Empire on 29 May 1453. The authors take the reader on a journey through time and space and highlight the succession of these civilisations that rubbed shoulders, even fought against each other and led us towards a more enlightened humanity.

Empire of Mud

Author : J. D. Dickey
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2014-09-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781493013937

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Empire of Mud by J. D. Dickey Pdf

Washington, DC, gleams with stately columns and neoclassical temples, a pulsing hub of political power and prowess. But for decades it was one of the worst excuses for a capital city the world had ever seen. Before America became a world power in the twentieth century, Washington City was an eyesore at best and a disgrace at worst. Unfilled swamps, filthy canals, and rutted horse trails littered its landscape. Political bosses hired hooligans and thugs to conduct the nation's affairs. Legendary madams entertained clients from all stations of society and politicians of every party. The police served and protected with the aid of bribes and protection money. Beneath pestilential air, the city’s muddy roads led to a stumpy, half-finished obelisk to Washington here, a domeless Capitol Building there. Lining the streets stood boarding houses, tanneries, and slums. Deadly horse races gouged dusty streets, and opposing factions of volunteer firefighters battled one another like violent gangs rather than life-saving heroes. The city’s turbulent history set a precedent for the dishonesty, corruption, and mismanagement that have led generations to look suspiciously on the various sin--both real and imagined--of Washington politicians. Empire of Mud unearths and untangles the roots of our capital’s story and explores how the city was tainted from the outset, nearly stifled from becoming the proud citadel of the republic that George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant envisioned more than two centuries ago.

The Politics of Aristocratic Empires

Author : John H. Kautsky
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2017-09-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781351303279

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The Politics of Aristocratic Empires by John H. Kautsky Pdf

The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflictthe politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order.