@article{455515,
      author = {Ansary, Mir Tamim.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/455515},
      title = {Games without rules the often interrupted history of  Afghanistan / [electronic resource] :},
      publisher = {PublicAffairs,},
      abstract = {Five times in the last two centuries. some great power has  tried to invade, occupy, or otherwise take control of  Afghanistan. And as Tamim Ansary shows in this illuminating  history, every intervention has come to grief for much the  same reason: the intervening power has failed to understand  that Afghanistan has a story of its own, a story that  continues to unfold between--and despite--the  interventions. Drawing on his Afghan background, Muslim  roots, and Western and Afghan sources, Ansary weaves an  epic that moves from a universe of village republics--the  old Afghanistan--through a tumultuous drama of tribes.  factions, and forces, to the current struggle. Ansary  paints a richly textured portrait of a nation that began to  form around the same time as the United States but is still  struggling to coalesce; a nation driven by its high  ambitions but undermined by its own demons, while every  forty to sixty years a great power crashes in and disrupts  whatever progress has been made.--From publisher  description.},
      recid = {455515},
      pages = {1 online resource (xvi, 397 p.) :},
      address = {New York :},
      year = {2012},
}