Bleeding Afghanistan
Title | Bleeding Afghanistan PDF eBook |
Author | Sonali Kolhatkar |
Publisher | Seven Stories Press |
Pages | 372 |
Release | 2011-01-04 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1609800931 |
Through in-depth research and detailed historical context, Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls report on the injustice of U.S. policies in Afghanistan historically and in the post-9/11 era. Drawing from declassified government documents and on-the-ground interviews with Afghan activists, journalists, lawyers, refugees, and students, Bleeding Afghanistan examines the connections between the U.S. training and arming of Mujahideen commanders and the subversion of Afghan democracy today. Bleeding Afghanistan boldly critiques the exploitation of Afghan women to justify war by both conservatives and liberals, analyzes uncritical media coverage of U.S. policies, and examines the ways in which the U.S. benefits from being in Afghanistan.
Bleeding Afghanistan
Title | Bleeding Afghanistan PDF eBook |
Author | David Barsamian |
Publisher | |
Pages | 618 |
Release | 2010-09-08 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781458786487 |
In the years following 9/11, U.S. policy in Afghanistan has received little scrutiny, either from the media or the public. Despite official claims of democracy and women's freedom, Afghanistan has yet to emerge from the ashes of decades-long war. Through in-depth research and detailed historical context, Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls report on the injustice of U.S. policies in Afghanistan historically and in the post-9/11 era. Drawing from declassified government documents and on-the-ground interviews with Afghan activists, journalists, lawyers, refugees, and students, Bleeding Afghanistan examines the connections between the U.S. training and arming of Mujahideen commanders and the subversion of Afghan democracy today. Bleeding Afghanistan boldly critiques the exploitation of Afghan women to justify war by both conservatives and liberals, analyzes uncritical media coverage of U.S. policies, and examines the ways in which the U.S. benefits from being in Afghanistan.
Bleeding Afghanistan
Title | Bleeding Afghanistan PDF eBook |
Author | Sonali Kolhatkar |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2010 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781282731523 |
Blood Washing Blood
Title | Blood Washing Blood PDF eBook |
Author | Phil Halton |
Publisher | Dundurn |
Pages | 399 |
Release | 2021-04-27 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 145974666X |
A clear-eyed view of the conflict in Afghanistan and its century-deep roots. The war in Afghanistan has consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, causing the Western powers to seek an exit without achieving victory. Seemingly never-ending, the conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues — global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the narcotics trade — but even though they are cited as the causes of the conflict, they are in fact symptoms. Rather than beginning after 9/11 or with the Soviet “invasion” in 1979, the current conflict in Afghanistan began with the social reforms imposed by Amanullah Amir in 1919. Western powers have failed to recognize that legitimate grievances are driving the local population to turn to insurgency in Afghanistan. The issues they are willing to fight for have deep roots, forming a hundred-year-long social conflict over questions of secularism, modernity, and centralized power. The first step toward achieving a “solution” to the Afghanistan “problem” is to have a clear-eyed view of what is really driving it.
The Bleeding Wound
Title | The Bleeding Wound PDF eBook |
Author | Yaacov Ro'i |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Pages | 418 |
Release | 2022-03-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1503631060 |
By the mid-1980s, public opinion in the USSR had begun to turn against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan: the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) had become a long, painful, and unwinnable conflict, one that Mikhail Gorbachev referred to as a "bleeding wound" in a 1986 speech. The eventual decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan created a devastating ripple effect within Soviet society that, this book argues, became a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this comprehensive survey of the effects of the war on Soviet society and politics, Yaacov Ro'i analyzes the opinions of Soviet citizens on a host of issues connected with the war and documents the systemic change that would occur when Soviet leadership took public opinion into account. The war and the difficulties that the returning veterans faced undermined the self-esteem and prestige of the Soviet armed forces and provided ample ammunition for media correspondents who sought to challenge the norms of the Soviet system. Through extensive analysis of Soviet newspapers and interviews conducted with Soviet war veterans and regular citizens in the early 1990s, Ro'i argues that the effects of the war precipitated processes that would reveal the inbuilt limitations of the Soviet body politic and contribute to the dissolution of the USSR by 1991.
Investment in Blood
Title | Investment in Blood PDF eBook |
Author | Frank Ledwidge |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 283 |
Release | 2013-05-31 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0300194889 |
"In this follow-up to his much-praised book Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Frank Ledwidge argues that Britain has paid a heavy cost - both financially and in human terms - for its involvement in the Afghanistan war. Ledwidge calculates the high price paid by British soldiers and their families, taxpayers in the United Kingdom, and, most importantly, Afghan citizens, highlighting the thousands of deaths and injuries, the enormous amount of money spent bolstering a corrupt Afghan government, and the long-term damage done to the British military's international reputation. In this hard-hitting exposé, based on interviews, rigorous on-the-ground research, and official information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Ledwidge demonstrates the folly of Britain's extended participation in an unwinnable war. Arguing that the only true beneficiaries of the conflict are development consultants, international arms dealers, and Afghan drug kingpins, he provides a powerful, eye-opening, and often heartbreaking account of military adventurism gone horribly wrong."--
Holy Blood
Title | Holy Blood PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Overby |
Publisher | Praeger Publishers |
Pages | 260 |
Release | 1993 |
Genre | History |
ISBN |
Overby has a firsthand account of the Afghan war set against an extensive and thoroughly researched background of political history. In order to fix the personal experience in the broader historical context Overby has drawn on leading Afghan scholars like Louis Dupree, Olivier Roy, Bahanudin Majrooh, Eqbal Ahmad, Jan-Heeren Grevemeyer and Barnett Rubin. He sees the war growing from the angry tension over modernization in Afghanistan and sets it in its context as an expression of Islamism--the most modern and dynamic version of Islamic fundamentalism.