Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Challenge of Rebuilding Afghanistan, held at Islamabad during 2-3 March 2005.

Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis provides academics and researchers interested in planning, urbanism and conflict studies with a multidisciplinary, international assessment of the reconstruction and foreign aid efforts in Afghanistan. The book draws together expert contributions from countries across three continents – Asia, Europe and North America – which have provided external aid to Afghanistan. Using international, regional and local approaches, it highlights the importance of rebuilding sustainable communities in the midst of ongoing uncertainties. It explores the efficacy of external aid; challenges faced; the response of multilateral international agencies; the role of women in the reconstruction process; and community-based natural disaster risk management strategies. Finally, it looks at the lessons learned in the conflict reconstruction process to better prepare the country for future potential human, economic, infrastructural and institutional vulnerabilities.

This book examines the experiences of a range of countries in the conflict in Afghanistan, with particular focus on the demands of operating within a diverse coalition of states. After laying out the challenges of the Afghan conflict in terms of objectives, strategy, and mission, case studies of 15 coalition members—each written by a country expert—discuss each country's motivation for joining the coalition and explore the impact of more than 10 years of combat on each country's military, domestic government, and populace. The book dissects the changes in the coalition over the decade, driven by both external factors—such as the Bonn Conferences of 2001 and 2011, the contiguous Iraq War, and politics and economics at home—and internal factors such as command structures, interoperability, emerging technologies, the surge, the introduction of counterinsurgency doctrine, Green on Blue attacks, escalating civilian casualties, and the impact of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams and NGOs. In their conclusion, the editors review the commonality and uniqueness evident in the country cases, lay out the lessons learned by NATO, and assess the potential for their application in future alliance warfare in the new global order.

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 73, Coventry University (ARTS AND HUMANITY), course: GLOBAL SECURITY, language: English, abstract: Our discussion here is not about the circumstances that led to Afghan war, nor are we concerned about its tumultuous and chequered history ever since the days of Afghanistan’s last king Zahir Shah – the son of Nadir Shah. The modern historians and political experts believe it to be one of the golden eras of Afghanistan under King Zahir Shah. Most importantly, one should ask a question: is it that easy for war-waging military to build a nation which is believed to be hanging in to the middle-ages as for as human development, social, economic and political development was concerned (Hoffman, & Fodor, 2010). Therefore, it was always going to be a monumental task from the word goes. One that would require lots of resources at hand, such as human, material, of requirement of regional, international support and of strong political will from all the stakeholders. Let’s not downplay the fact that it is by no measure a small country, which finds itself in its tough neighborhood and vice versa. The country has been suffering from war for more than thirty years, ever since the invasion of USSR. However, it is vital to know as to what is post conflict reformation that military is supposed to undertake? It is nothing but the reformation of state and society as a whole (Foust, 2010). This is manifested through ensuring rule of law ameliorating, building up economic institutions and construction of physical infrastructure, and lastly making sure that human rights are respected. In the sense that state and society is completely sensitive of those values of freedom of expression, human dignity and human rights.

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.