In this timely and thorough volume, Michael Semple analyzes the rationale and effectiveness post-2001 attempts at reconciliation in Afghanistan. He explains the poor performance of these attempts and argues that rethinking is necessary if reconciliation is to help revive prospects for peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Dana Burde shows how aid to education in Afghanistan bolstered conflict both deliberately in the 1980s through violence-infused, anti-Soviet curricula and inadvertently in the 2000s through misguided stabilization programs

The objective of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan has been firmly embraced by most of the potential parties to a treaty. However, arriving at an agreement about the sequencing, timing, and prioritization of peace terms is likely to be difficult, given the divergence in the parties' interests and objectives. The U.S. objective in these negotiations should be a stable and peaceful Afghanistan that neither hosts nor collaborates with terrorists.

A sharp and arresting people's-eye view of real life in Afghanistan after the Taliban Soon after the bombing of Kabul ceased, award-winning journalist and women's rights activist Ann Jones set out for the shattered city, determined to bring help where her country had brought destruction. Here is her trenchant report from inside a city struggling to rise from the ruins. Working among the multitude of impoverished war widows, retraining Kabul's long-silenced English teachers, and investigating the city's prison for women, Jones enters a large community of female outcasts: runaway child brides, pariah prostitutes, cast-off wives, victims of rape. In the streets and markets, she hears the Afghan view of the supposed benefits brought by the fall of the Taliban, and learns that regarding women as less than human is the norm, not the aberration of one conspicuously repressive regime. Jones confronts the ways in which Afghan education, culture, and politics have repeatedly been hijacked—by Communists, Islamic fundamentalists, and the Western free marketeers—always with disastrous results. And she reveals, through small events, the big disjunctions: between U.S promises and performance, between the new "democracy" and the still-entrenched warlords, between what's boasted of and what is. At once angry, profound, and starkly beautiful, Kabul in Winter brings alive the people and day-to-day life of a place whose future depends so much upon our own.

cancer n. any malignant tumor . . . Metastasis may occur via the bloodstream or the lymphatic channels or across body cavities . . . setting up secondary tumors . . . Each individual primary tumor has its own pattern . . . There are probably many causative factors . . . Treatment. . . depends on the type of tumor, the site of the primary tumor and the extent of the spread. (Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary 1996, 97) Let us begin by stating the obvious. Acts of organized violence are not necessarily of human nature, but they are endogenous events arising within the an intrinsic part evolution of complex systems of social interaction. To be sure, all wars have features in common - people are killed and property is destroyed - but in their origin wars are likely to be at least as different as the social structures from which they arise. Consequently, it is unlikely that there can be a simple theory of the causes of war or the maintenance of peace. The fact that wars are historical events need not discourage us. On the contrary, we should focus our understanding of the dimensions of each conflict, or classes of conflict, on the conjuncture of causes at hand. It follows that the study of conflict must be an interdisciplinary one. It is or a penchant for eclecticism that leads to that conclusion, but the not humility multi-dimensionality of war itself.

The US-led air strikes on Afghanistan that began on 7 October 2001 are only the latest episode in a conflict that has lasted 20 years. This conflict has left Afghanistan's infrastructure devastated and its people at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Indices. This new Report situates Afghanistan in its regional and international context. It explains the political, social, religious and ethnic factors underlying the country’s recent history, debunking some of the simplistic and stereotyped views of the country and its population. The Report also gives a detailed picture of the interaction between domestic conditions and foreign interests that led to the rise and dominance of the Taliban. It describes the impact of prolonged conflict on the people of Afghanistan, and the way in which the conflict has become ethnicized. It ends with a set of Recommendations to prevent the escalation or perpetuation of the conflict.