Afghanistan

29 Apr 2008 12:47

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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]
• 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:
• Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys
• Anderson, The Lion's Grave
• Anthony Arnold, Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan's Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire
• Beardsley, The Naked Hills: Tales of Afghanistan
• 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.]
• Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana [Review by Danny Yee]
• Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi (eds.), The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan [Blurb]
• Gilles Gorronsoro, Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present
• Veronica Doubleday, Three Women of Herat
• David B. Edwards
  • Before Taliban: Genealogy of the Afghan Jihad [Online edition]
  • Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier [Online edition]
• Jason Elliot, An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
• Deborah Ellis, Women of the Afghan War
• Fletcher, Afghanistan, Highway of Conquest
• William K. Fraser, Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia
• Birthe Frederiksen, Caravans and Trade in Afghanistan: The Changing Life of the Nomadic Hazarbuz [Members of the Momand tribe, which is to say, relatives]
• Gandharan Art in Context
• Kathy Gannon, I Is for Infidel, J Is For Jihad, K Is for Kalashnikov: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan
• Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter, Gandhara: The Memory of Afghanistan
• Jan Goodwin, Caught in the Crossfire [How the editor of Ladies' Home Journal came to campaign with the mujaheddin]
• Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan
• Thomas T. Hammond, Red Flag over Afghanistan: The Communist Coup, the Soviet Invasion, and the Consequences [1984]
• F. T. Hiebert, Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization of Central Asia
• Peregrine Hodson, Under a Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan
• 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
• Ann Jones, Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
• Jeri Laber and Barnett R. Rubin, "A Nation Is Dying"
• Charlotte Lamb, The Sewing Circles of Herat
• Peter Levi, The Light Garden of the Angel King
• G. Ligabue and S. Salvatori (eds.), Bactria: An Ancient Oasis Civilization from the Sands of Afghanistan
• Kurt Lohbeck, Holy War, Unholy Victory: Eyewitness to the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan
• Eric S. Margolis, War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet
• John Marshall, The Buddhist Art of the Gandhara School
• Sylvia Matheson, Time Off to Dig
• Kamal Matinuddin, The Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994-1997 [Blurb]
• Lolita Nehru, Origins of the Gandharan Style
• 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
• Angelo Rasanayagam, Afghanistan: A Modern History
• Ahmed Rashid, Taliban
• H. G. Rawlinson, Bactria: The History of a Forgotten Empire
• 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
• Richard Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara
• Major General Oleg Sarin and Colonel Lev Dvoretsky (+ ghosts), The Afghan Syndrome: The Soviet Union's Vietnam
• Victoria Schofield, Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia
• James W. Spain [Review by Danny Yee]
  • The Pathan Borderland
  • Pathans of the Latter Day
  • The Way of the Pathans
• Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban
• Nancy Tapper, Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society [Blurb]
• P. K. Shalizi, Here and There in Afghanistan
• Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.), Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan
• Abdulkader H. Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond [Blurb; author's book description]
• Willem Vogelsang, The Afghans
• Andrew Wegener, A Complex and Changing dynamic: Afghan Responses to Foreign Intervention, 1878--2006 (Canberra: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2007) [PDF. Thanks to Matthew Berryman for the pointer.]
• Marian Wenzel, Echoes of Alexander the Great: Silk Route Portraits from Gandhara
• Wladimir Zwalf, Gandharan Sculpture in the British Museum