Afgantsy PDF Download

Author: Rodric Braithwaite
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019983265X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Profile Books"--T.p. verso.

Author: Rodric Braithwaite
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199322481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The story of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is well known: the expansionist Communists overwhelmed a poor country as a means of reaching a warm-water port on the Persian Gulf. Afghan mujahideen upset their plans, holding on with little more than natural fighting skills, until CIA agents came to the rescue with American arms. Humiliated in battle, the Soviets hastily retreated. It's a great story, writes Rodric Braithwaite. But it never happened. The Russian conscripts suffered badly from mismanagement and strategic errors, but they were never defeated on the battlefield, and withdrew in good order. In this brilliant, myth-busting account, Braithwaite - the former British ambassador to Moscow - challenges much of what we know about the Soviets in Afghanistan. He provides an inside look at this little-understood episode, using first-hand accounts and piercing analysis to show the war as it was fought and experienced by the Russians. The invasion, he writes, was a defensive response to a chaotic situation in the Soviets' immediate neighbor. They intended to establish a stable, friendly government, secure the major towns, and train the police and armed forces before making a rapid exit. But the mission escalated, as did casualties. In fact, the Soviet leadership decided to pull out a year before the first Stinger missile was used in combat. Braithwaite does not, of course, paint the occupation as a Russian triumph. To the contrary, he illustrates the searing effect of the brutal conflict on soldiers, their families, and the broader public, as returning veterans - the Afgansty of the title - struggled to regain their footing back home. A fine writer as well as an expert, Braithwaite carries readers through these complex and momentous events, capturing those violent and tragic days as no one has done before.

Author: Yaacov Ro'i
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503631060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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By the mid-1980s, public opinion in the USSR had begun to turn against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan: the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) had become a long, painful, and unwinnable conflict, one that Mikhail Gorbachev referred to as a "bleeding wound" in a 1986 speech. The eventual decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan created a devastating ripple effect within Soviet society that, this book argues, became a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this comprehensive survey of the effects of the war on Soviet society and politics, Yaacov Ro'i analyzes the opinions of Soviet citizens on a host of issues connected with the war and documents the systemic change that would occur when Soviet leadership took public opinion into account. The war and the difficulties that the returning veterans faced undermined the self-esteem and prestige of the Soviet armed forces and provided ample ammunition for media correspondents who sought to challenge the norms of the Soviet system. Through extensive analysis of Soviet newspapers and interviews conducted with Soviet war veterans and regular citizens in the early 1990s, Ro'i argues that the effects of the war precipitated processes that would reveal the inbuilt limitations of the Soviet body politic and contribute to the dissolution of the USSR by 1991.

Author: Astri Suhrke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231702720
Category : Afghanistan
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Western-led efforts to establish a post-Taliban order in Afghanistan are in serious jeopardy. Beginning with the dynamics of Western intervention and its parallel peacebuilding mission, Astri Suhrke examines the forces that have shaped this grand international project and the apparent systemic bias toward deeper and broader international involvement. Many reasons have been cited for the weak achievements and ever-growing complications of rebuilding Afghanistan, commonly pinpointing hostile regional, national, and international actors. Suhrke finds the policies themselves to be primarily at fault, and she condemns the extraordinary and unnecessary complexity of the multinational operation. Her main argument is that the international project to reconstruct Afghanistan contains serious tensions and contradictions that have significantly impeded progress. As a result, deepening Western involvement in the region has been dysfunctional rather than helpful, and massive international support has created an extensively weak, corrupt, and unaccountable state. U.S.-led military operations have only undermined the peacebuilding agenda, and increased international aid and monitoring have only led to Afghan resentment and evasion. Suhrke instead proposes a less intrusive international presence and recommends a longer time-frame for carrying out reconstruction. She also encourages negotiations with militants to introduce a more Afghan-directed order.

Author: Dr. Robert F. Baumann
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782899650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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[Includes 12 maps and 4 tables] In recent years, the U.S. Army has paid increasing attention to the conduct of unconventional warfare. However, the base of historical experience available for study has been largely American and overwhelmingly Western. In Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, Dr. Robert F. Baumann makes a significant contribution to the expansion of that base with a well-researched analysis of four important episodes from the Russian-Soviet experience with unconventional wars. Primarily employing Russian sources, including important archival documents only recently declassified and made available to Western scholars, Dr. Baumann provides an insightful look at the Russian conquest of the Caucasian mountaineers (1801-59), the subjugation of Central Asia (1839-81), the reconquest of Central Asia by the Red Army (1918-33), and the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89). The history of these wars—especially as it relates to the battle tactics, force structure, and strategy employed in them—offers important new perspectives on elements of continuity and change in combat over two centuries. This is the first study to provide an in-depth examination of the evolution of the Russian and Soviet unconventional experience on the predominantly Muslim southern periphery of the former empire. There, the Russians encountered fierce resistance by peoples whose cultures and views of war differed sharply from their own. Consequently, this Leavenworth Paper addresses not only issues germane to combat but to a wide spectrum of civic and propaganda operations as well.

Author: Rodric Braithwaite
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019087029X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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A comprehensive, chronological, and gripping account of how nuclear policy has shaped world history.

Author: Frank Ledwidge
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300194889
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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"In this follow-up to his much-praised book Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Frank Ledwidge argues that Britain has paid a heavy cost - both financially and in human terms - for its involvement in the Afghanistan war. Ledwidge calculates the high price paid by British soldiers and their families, taxpayers in the United Kingdom, and, most importantly, Afghan citizens, highlighting the thousands of deaths and injuries, the enormous amount of money spent bolstering a corrupt Afghan government, and the long-term damage done to the British military's international reputation. In this hard-hitting exposé, based on interviews, rigorous on-the-ground research, and official information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Ledwidge demonstrates the folly of Britain's extended participation in an unwinnable war. Arguing that the only true beneficiaries of the conflict are development consultants, international arms dealers, and Afghan drug kingpins, he provides a powerful, eye-opening, and often heartbreaking account of military adventurism gone horribly wrong."--

Author: Gregory Feifer
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780061143199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. A riveting account as seen through the eyes of the men who fought in the war, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.

Author: Mark Galeotti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136299432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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The Soviet Union's last war was played out against the backdrop of dramatic change within the USSR. This is the first book to study the impact of the war on Russian politics and society. Based on extensive use of Soviet official and unofficial sources, as well as work with Afghan veterans, it illustrates the way the war fed into a wide range of other processes, from the rise of grassroots political activism to the retreat from globalism in foreign policy.

Author: Rodric Braithwaite
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300094961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Rodric Braithwaite was British ambassador to Moscow during the critical years of Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the failed coup of August 1991, and the rise of Boris Yeltsin. From the vantage point of the British Embassy (once the mansion of the great nineteenth-century merchant Pavel Kharitonenko) with its commanding views cross the Moscow River to Red Square and the Kremlin, Braithwaite had a ringside seat. With his long experience of Russia and the Russians, who saw him as 'Mrs. Thatcher's Ambassador', on good personal terms with Mikhail Gorbachev, he was in a privileged position close to the centre of Russia's changing relationship with the West. But this is not primarily a memoir. It is an intimate analysis of momentous change and the people who drove it, against the background of Russia's long history and its unique but essentially European culture. Braithwaite watched as Gorbachev and his allies struggled to modernise and democratise a system which had already reached the point of terminal decay. Against the opposition of the generals, they forced the abandonment of the nuclear confrontation as the Soviet Union fell apart. The climax of the drama came in August 1991 when a miscellaneous collection of conservative patriots - generals, politicians and secret policemen - attempted to reverse the course of history and succeeded only in accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union.