Afghanistan [electronic resource] : a cultural and political history / Thomas Barfield.
2010
DS357.5 .B37 2010eb
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Title
Afghanistan [electronic resource] : a cultural and political history / Thomas Barfield.
ISBN
9781400834532 (electronic book)
9780691145686
9780691145686
Publication Details
Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2010.
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (xi, 389 p.) : ill., maps.
Call Number
DS357.5 .B37 2010eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
958.1
Summary
This work traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. The author introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. He describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. This book helps the reader understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the "graveyard of empires" for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.
Note
Description based on print version record.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Series
Princeton studies in Muslim politics.
Available in Other Form
Afghanistan.
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Table of Contents
People and places
Conquering and ruling pre-modern Afghanistan
Anglo-Afghan Wars and state building in Afghanistan
Afghanistan in the twentieth century : state and society in conflict
Afghanistan enters the twenty-first century
Some conclusions.
Conquering and ruling pre-modern Afghanistan
Anglo-Afghan Wars and state building in Afghanistan
Afghanistan in the twentieth century : state and society in conflict
Afghanistan enters the twenty-first century
Some conclusions.