Kris Hamsun, Professional Diver and Project Manager on offshore Oil & Gas projects, suffers occasionally from memory lapses for brief moments, while submerged for extended periods. Required to obtain fresh Diver certification for himself for a major project in the Indian Ocean region, he sails through the certification, but during the process comes in contact with the delectable Susan Brent, Professor of Psychology, who helps him explore the cause of his various drift events while diving. Their budding romance blossoms into a long term relationship and the explorations they initiate on his drifts, lead Kris on a journey back in time, one thousand years, to an era unmatched in aggression, when seventeen full-fledged invasions were conducted into India, in a compressed time of twenty-five years, by a GHAZNI based Marauder. Kris and a group of dive buddies undertake a risky nighttime wreck recovery dive operation, befitting their Nordic ancestry, which results in the recovery of tons of gold briquettes valued at a billion-plus dollars, while covertly evading the intense scrutiny of Ghazni’s successors still marauding in the region. In this adventure, they are guided by one Raghu, Kris’s mentor, and his predecessor in a previous incarnation. Raghu had masterfully executed the tasks assigned to him, which culminated in Kris’s successful treasure haul after a lapse of an unanticipated thousand years.

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.

Far from being an anachronism, much less a kit-bag of techniques, people’s war raises what has always been present in military history, irregular warfare, and fuses it symbiotically with what has likewise always been present politically, rebellion and the effort to seize power. The result is a strategic approach for waging revolutionary warfare, the effort “to make a revolution.” Voluntarism is wedded to the exploitation of structural contradiction through the building of a new world to challenge the existing world, through formation of a counterstate within the state in order ultimately to destroy and supplant the latter. This is a process of far greater moment than implied by the label “guerrilla warfare” so often applied to what Mao and others were about. This volume deals with the continuing importance of Maoist and post-Maoist concepts of people’s war. Drawing on a range of examples that include Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan, the collection shows that the study of people’s war is not just an historical curiosity but vital to the understanding of contemporary insurgent and terrorist movements. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Continuing the narrative from Volume One of: From Bharata to India, this second volume spans the years from the Muslim conquests down to the present era. The Volume begins by contrasting the stifling theocracy of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity), and of Islam, to the pristine ideation of compassion, love and universal wellbeing inherent in the Vedic world. The forced conversion of "pagan" peoples and their places of worship was consequently institutionalized by intolerance, savagery, barbarism, cruelty, and unparalleled brutality. This cultural and religious Invasion shook the very foundations of the Vedic patrimony as the native Hindus adapted Alien lifestyles where Vedic values were repackaged as European and/ or Islamic. Consequently, the modern Indians began to despise what had once been their own legacy, the Cradle of civilization, and embraced imported modes of behavior. The transformed, native polity, supported by foreign vested interests, exploited their own country even more than the alien invaders. As the Western world frees itself from the shackles of Middle Age conformism and depravity, this second volume concludes that the eternal values of Vedic Bharata are to inspire the nascent Civilization of tomorrow. Eastern introspection will replace, then, the Western tradition of a 'wholly other' divinity.

First published in 1978, this was the first book in English to provide a complete survey of the immensely rich archaeological remains of Afghanistan. It has now been thoroughly revised and brought up to date to incorporate the latest discoveries and research.

In An Informal, Engaging Style, The Puffin History Of India For Children 3000 Bc To Ad 1947 Tells The Fascinating Story Of Our Land From The Indus Valley Civilization To Independence. Tracing The Social, Political, Cultural And Economic Development Of India, The Book Focuses On The High Points Of Indian History: The Vedic Age, The Mauryan Empire, The Gupta Period, The Battle Of Panipat, The Conquests Of Alauddin Khilji, Who Had The Largest Empire Since Ashoka, The Bahmani And Vijayanagara Kingdoms And Their Conflicts, The Rule Of Akbar, Shahjahan And Aurangzeb And The Building Of The Taj Mahal, The British Conquest, The 1857 Revolt, The Nationalist Movement And, Finally, The Triumph Of Independence. The Contribution Of The Important Personalities Who Shaped This History, From Mahavira, Buddha, Alexander, Ashoka, Harsha And Babur To Tipu Sultan, Ranjit Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose And Jawaharlal Nehru, Is Vividly Described In Fascinating Detail. Every Now And Then The Narrative Pauses To Dwell On The Social And Cultural Life Of The People, And The Political, Economic And Religious Changes That Have Been Wrought Over Centuries, Providing A Comprehensive Picture Of What Life Was Like In India At Various Points Of Time. The Colourful Description Of People, Events And Cultures, Complemented By A Host Of Illustrations And Maps, Brings History Dramatically To Life For The Reader.

Himalayan Bronzes focuses on a complete study of 340 medieval-period copper alloy sculptures from the Himalayan regions of Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Nepal, and Tibet. For more than 1,500 years, artists in isolated valleys in and adjacent to the mountains of the Himalayas have created magnificent copper-based statues representing deities and spiritual leaders of the Hindu, Buddhist and Bon-Po religions. Author Chandra L. Reedy's multidisciplinary approach to the study of these statues integrates methods and techniques from art history, art conservation, geology, chemistry, statistics, archaeology, and ethnography to answer art historical and anthropological questions. Her guiding premise is that gathering and combining several types of information will result in more and better answers than any one type alone.