Afghanistan

07 Dec 2011 23:05

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Everything mentioned under Central Asia, only even more so; Nuristan or Kaffiristan, and its similiarities to Andean cultures; religious history; the city of Ghazni, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, the Ghaznavid dynstay; Balkh; the "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex".

Afghanistan is one of the Old Countries for me; more specifically my paternal grandfather is a Momand Pashtun from Shalez, in the neighborhood of Ghazni, and my father was raised in Kabul. It has never been a very easy or prosperous country, but these last two decades it has become no very rough approximation to Hell, with a third of the population dead, maimed or driven out of the country; this was known as "the great game." I now have some slight hope for it, but not much.

See also: the Soviet Union, 1917--1991

Recommended, on modern Afghanistan:
• In the early '60s my grandfather worked for the ministry of planning and put together a photo-book called Afghanistan: Ancient Land with Modern Ways. It was a propaganda piece through and through, but quite sincere, and the pictures are good. Try your local university library.
• Afghanistan Online
• Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit [Modern studies on the political economy of Afghanistan, conducted from Afghanistan]
• Center for Afghanistan Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha [Has one of the largest collections of Afghan documents in the world, and is apparently the only source of English-language instructional materials for Dari, the Afghan version of Persian]
• Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History [Perhaps the best available history of the modern period in English. Blurb]
• Louis Dupree was an American anthropologist who studied Afghanistan quite thoroughly. I'm in two minds about my grandfather's claim that he was studying it for the CIA. On the one hand, such things are far from unknown, and my grandfather was minister of the interior, so he was in a position to know. On the other hand, he thinks almost everyone works for the CIA. In any case, Dupree's book, Afghanistan, is very good, an encyclopedia of a now-vanished society.
• Feminist Majority Foundation, Afghan Women's Crafts [All proceeds to benefit refugees in Pakistan]
• M. Hassan Kakar, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1978--1982 [Review: Incipit Tragoedia. Online edition]
• Gilles Keppel, Jihad: The Trail of Militant Islam [Good on international manuevering in the war against the Soviets, the origin and rise of the Taliban, and the role of foreign adventurers who fought against the Soviets in exporting "salafists-jihadist" violence elsewhere. Not so good on what Afghans actually did or felt, but that's not his main subject.]
• Doris Lessing, The Wind Blows Away Our Words [Travels with the mujaheddin and among the refugees, and her utter inability to interest anyone outside in the suffering of the country; 1987.]
• Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia [Authors' website, with reviews]
• William T. Vollman, An Afghanistan Picture-Show

Recommended, on ancient history:
• Dupree's book has several good chapters on the history and archaeology, going back to the beginning of the Neolithic
• Frank L. Holt
  • Alexander the Great and Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia
  • Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria
• W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India [Eurocentric, and in places (e.g., the Macedonian princesses) more imaginative than a historian really ought to be. But extremely thorough and apparently unsurpassed.]

To read, general:
• Fletcher, Afghanistan, Highway of Conquest
• Angelo Rasanayagam, Afghanistan: A Modern History
• Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban
• Shaista Wahab and Barry Youngerman, A Brief History of Afghanistan

To read, ancient history:
• Gandharan Art in Context
• Pia Brancaccio and Kurt Behrendt (eds.), Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, Texts
• Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter, Gandhara: The Memory of Afghanistan
• F. T. Hiebert, Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization of Central Asia
• Frank L. Holt, Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan [Blurb]
• Vladimir I. Ionesov, The Struggle Between Life and Death in Proto-Bactrian Culture: Ritual and Conflict
• G. Ligabue and S. Salvatori (eds.), Bactria: An Ancient Oasis Civilization from the Sands of Afghanistan
• John Marshall, The Buddhist Art of the Gandhara School
• Llewelyn Morgan, The Buddhas of Bamiyan [blurb]
• H. G. Rawlinson, Bactria: The History of a Forgotten Empire
• Richard Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara
• Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.), Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan
• Lolita Nehru, Origins of the Gandharan Style
• Marian Wenzel, Echoes of Alexander the Great: Silk Route Portraits from Gandhara
• Wladimir Zwalf, Gandharan Sculpture in the British Museum

To read, modern era but pre-1978 history:
• David B. Edwards, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier [Online edition]
• Elphinstone, Kingdom of Caubul
• Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan
• Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier [Blurb]
• Victoria Schofield, Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia

To read, the Soviet and civil wars:
• Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys
• Anderson, The Lion's Grave
• Anthony Arnold, Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan's Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire
• Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi (eds.), The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan [Blurb]
• David B. Edwards, Before Taliban: Genealogy of the Afghan Jihad [Online edition]
• Deborah Ellis, Women of the Afghan War
• Jan Goodwin, Caught in the Crossfire [How the editor of Ladies' Home Journal came to travel with the mujaheddin]
• Gilles Gorronsoro, Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present
• Thomas T. Hammond, Red Flag over Afghanistan: The Communist Coup, the Soviet Invasion, and the Consequences [1984]
• Peregrine Hodson, Under a Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan
• Jeri Laber and Barnett R. Rubin, "A Nation Is Dying"
• Kamal Matinuddin, The Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994--1997 [Blurb]
• Ahmed Rashid, Taliban
• Barnett A. Rubin
  • The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System
  • The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State
• Major General Oleg Sarin and Colonel Lev Dvoretsky (+ ghosts), The Afghan Syndrome: The Soviet Union's Vietnam
• Abdulkader H. Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond [Blurb; author's book description]

To read, post-2001:
• Shahzad Bashir and Robert D. Crews (eds.), Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands [blurb]
• Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy [PDF]
• Benjamin Buchholz, "Thoughts on Afghanistan's Loya Jirga: A Myth?" Asien 104 (2007): 23--33 [PDF. See here for summary and discussion.]
• Kathy Gannon, I Is for Infidel, J Is For Jihad, K Is for Kalashnikov: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan
• Ann Jones, Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
• Nina Langslet, Subordination, Migration and Mobilization: Strategies for Coping in an Altered Security Situation [2008 anthropology thesis, applying Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty to the situation of Pashtuns in northern Afghanistan. PDF]

To read, travel and ethnography:
• Beardsley, The Naked Hills: Tales of Afghanistan
• Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana [Review by Danny Yee]
• Veronica Doubleday, Three Women of Herat
• Jason Elliot, An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
• Birthe Frederiksen, Caravans and Trade in Afghanistan: The Changing Life of the Nomadic Hazarbuz [Members of the Momand tribe, which is to say, very distant relatives]
• Charlotte Lamb, The Sewing Circles of Herat
• Peter Levi, The Light Garden of the Angel King
• Sylvia Matheson, Time Off to Dig
• Asta Olesen, Afghan Craftsmen: The Cultures of Three Itinerant Communities
• Sheila Paine, Afghan Amulet
• Gorm Pedersen, Afghan Nomads in Transition: A Century of Change Among the Zala Khan Khel
• James W. Spain [Review by Danny Yee]
  • The Pathan Borderland
  • Pathans of the Latter Day
  • The Way of the Pathans
• P. K. Shalizi, Here and There in Afghanistan
• Nancy Tapper, Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society [Blurb]
• Willem Vogelsang, The Afghans