To oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US formed an extraordinary anti-communist alliance with militant Islamic forces in Central Asia. In this controversial book, John Cooley provides a behind-the-scenes account of this alliance and of how the CIA planned and ran the "holy war" in Afghanistan. Cooley describes the development of US foreign policy and CIA covert activity in the 1980s, which facilitated the training and arming of almost a quarter of a million Islamic mercenarie...
Soviet Troops and Supply Installations in the White Russian Military District
Heliacal Phenomena
"The Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate" is one of the most original and interesting chronicles to have survived from the mediaeval Islamic world. Written by the noted Persian historian and philosopher, Miskawayh, it is a lively, vigorous and remarkably secular account of events during a time that many consider to be the golden age of Islamic scholarship. Miskawayh's position at court and his role as keeper of state papers meant he was well placed to provide what is an extremely well informed acco...
Veteran defense analyst and Afghanistan expert David Isby provides an insightful and meticulously researched look at the current situation in Afghanistan, her history, and what he believes must be done so that the US and NATO coalition can succeed in what has historically been known as "the graveyard of empires." Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world with one of the lowest literacy rates. It is rife with divisions between ethnic groups that dwarf current schisms in Iraq, an...
Language, Literacy, and Social Change in Mongolia (Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures)
by Phillip P. Marzluf
Language, Literacy, and Social Change in Mongolia is the first full-length treatment of literacy in Mongolian. Challenging readers' assumptions about Central Asia and Mongolia, this book focuses on Mongolians' experiences with reading and writing throughout the past 100 years. Literacy, as a powerful historical and social variable, shows readers how reading and writing have shaped the lives of Mongolians and, at the same time, how reading and writing have been transformed by historical, politica...
Religious Revival and Secularism in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan (Religion and Society, #71)
by Dobroslawa Wiktor-Mach
What happens when religious movements begin to compete with each other? What strategies are employed by actors to gain popularity? The book investigates the rise of religious pluralism inside Islam in Azerbaijan and its impact on people and religious movements. Although the traditional dominance of Shiism is challenged by Sunni movements, Shia actors are not giving up easily.
The tragic events of September 11th brought the Taliban into sharp focus as the most radical and extreme Islamic movement in the world, but little is still known about them because of the deep secrecy that always surrounded their organization and leadership. Ahmed Rashid, who has been reporting on Afghanistan since 1979, is one of the few international journalists to have interviewed the Taliban leadership. His book "Taliban" has been translated into over 20 languages. In this revised edition, R...
Now Zad, Afghanistan: a small unit of British soldiers are beseiged on a hilltop, surrounded by Taliban. There is no way out but through ambush country, on roads full of IEDs. In any case, the British have no intention of running: they have promised the local population that they are here to stay. But every day the attacks on their position become more daring, the shells more accurate. It is only a matter of time before someone gets hurt...This is the gritty but life-affirming story of how Bri...
Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road (Daily Life through Artifacts)
by William E Mierse
Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road explores the interconnectivity of the Eurasian continent from 4000 BCE to 1000 CE. It focuses on the role played by Central Asia through which passed the major trade routes, the Silk Roads. Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road covers life along the Silk Road over 5000 years as it can be understood by considering objects. In this first object-based study to consider all of the peoples involved on the Silk Roads, objects provide the vehicles for explorations o...
The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia
This volume examines the major cultural, religious, political, and urban changes that took place in the Iranian world of Inner and Central Asia in the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic periods. One of the major civilizations of the first millennium was that of the Iranian linguistic and cultural world, which stretched from today's Iraq to what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No other region of the world underwent such radical transformation, which fundamentally alter...
The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709-1876 (Central Eurasia in Context)
by Scott Levi
This book analyzes how Central Asians actively engaged with the rapidly globalizing world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In presenting the first English-language history of the Khanate of Khoqand (1709-1876), Scott C. Levi examines the rise of that extraordinarily dynamic state in the Ferghana Valley. Levi reveals the many ways in which the Khanate's integration with globalizing forces shaped political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments in the region, and he illu...
Entangled Itineraries
Trade flowed across Eurasia, around the Indian Ocean, and over the Mediterranean for millennia, but in the early modern period, larger parts of the globe became connected through these established trade routes. Knowledge, embodied in various people, materials, texts, objects, and practices, also moved and came together along these routes in hubs of exchange where different social and cultural groups intersected and interacted. Entangled Itineraries traces this movement of knowledge a...
When the British invaded Afghanistan in 1878, forty years after the first attempt, it was to scotch Russian influence and to install a friendly government. This book accounts various questions such as why it was fought, why it was necessary, who was responsible and what it achieved.
Globalizing Afghanistan (American Encounters/Global Interactions)
Globalizing Afghanistan offers a kaleidoscopic view of Afghanistan and the global networks of power, influence, and representation in which it is immersed. The military and nation-building interventions initiated by the United States in reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, are the background and motivation for this collection, but they are not the immediate subject of the essays. Seeking to understand the events of the past decade in a broad frame, the contributors draw on cultural and...
With fresh and provocative insights into the everyday reality of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia, this volume moves beyond commonplaces about strong and weak states to ask critical questions about how democracy, authority, and justice are understood in this important region. In conversation with current theories of state power, the contributions draw on extensive ethnographic research in settings that range from the local to the transnational, the mundane to the spectacular, to provide a un...
Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature (Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture)
by Lama Jabb
This is the first book-length study to appear in English on the literary, cultural and political roots of modern Tibetan literature. While existing scholarship on modern Tibetan writing takes the 1980s as its point of "birth" and presents this period as marking a "rupture" with traditional forms of literature, this book goes beyond such an interpretation by foregrounding instead the persistence of Tibet's artistic past and oral traditions in the literary creativity of the present. While acknowle...
Chiefly summarized and some translation from Persian into English of Tārīkh-i ḥabīb al-siyar.