Empires of Mud PDF Download

Author: Antonio Giustozzi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9781849042253
Category : Afghanistan
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
'Empires of Mud' analyses the dynamics of warlordism in Afghanistan. It analyses aspects of the Afghan environment that might have been conductive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords and then accounts for the emergence of warlordism in the 1980s.

Author: Musa Khan Jalalzai
Publisher: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd
ISBN: 939043954X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Writers and analysts have uncovered the illegal role of private militias’ commanders in Afghanistan. These commanders and self-styled leaders were driven overwhelmingly by their personal power, and they were not only considered illegitimate on the domestic political scene, and viewed as irrelevant. The present Afghan government is a mix of all types of its efforts, including war criminals, and militia commanders who smuggle narcotics, drugs, arm, and kill women and children. War criminals and militias commanders have developed complex survival and legitimation strategies beyond their territorial realms. After years of its establishment, the Afghan local police (ALP) was undermined due to its failure to stabilize remote regions of the country. The US proxy militias are the source of consternation. The US Army established an incompetent intelligence agency (NDS) to serve its interest. The NDS established regional militias to support the CIA and Pentagon war mission against the people of the country. The NDS established Unit-01 for Central Region, Unit-02 for Eastern Region, Unit-03 for Southern Region, and Unit-04, as a Khost Protection Force (KPF), and committed war crimes in these regions with the support of the US Army and CIA. This book has documented the role of all internal and external actors, warlords and stakeholders.

Author: Romain Malejacq
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501746448
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen. Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim). He shows how they have successfully negotiated complicated political environments to survive ever since the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan war. The picture he paints in Warlord Survival is one of astute political entrepreneurs with a proven ability to organize violence. Warlords exert authority through a process in which they combine, instrumentalize, and convert different forms of power to prevent the emergence of a strong, centralized state. But, as Malejacq shows, the personal relationships and networks fundamental to the authority of Ismail Khan, Dostum, Massoud, and Fahim are not necessarily contrary to bureaucratic state authority. In fact, these four warlords, and others like them, offer durable and flexible forms of power in unstable, violent countries.

Author: Paul Staniland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Insurgent cohesion is central to explaining patterns of violence, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, and civil war outcomes. Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups. Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988–2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

Author: George Rawlinson
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 2229

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Book Description
The Ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, ancient Iran Asia Minor and Armenian Highlands, the Levant, Cyprus and the Arabian Peninsula. This book covers the history of the entire region through the period of over three millennia. It brings political and cultural history of eight most important kingdoms and empires of the region: Egypt, Parthia, Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylon, Persia and Sasanian Empire. Content: Egypt Phoenicia Chaldea Assyria Media Babylon Persia Parthia Sasanian Empire The Kings of Israel and Judah The History of Herodotus: The Original Source

Author: J. D. Dickey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493013939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Washington, DC, gleams with stately columns and neoclassical temples, a pulsing hub of political power and prowess. But for decades it was one of the worst excuses for a capital city the world had ever seen. Before America became a world power in the twentieth century, Washington City was an eyesore at best and a disgrace at worst. Unfilled swamps, filthy canals, and rutted horse trails littered its landscape. Political bosses hired hooligans and thugs to conduct the nation's affairs. Legendary madams entertained clients from all stations of society and politicians of every party. The police served and protected with the aid of bribes and protection money. Beneath pestilential air, the city’s muddy roads led to a stumpy, half-finished obelisk to Washington here, a domeless Capitol Building there. Lining the streets stood boarding houses, tanneries, and slums. Deadly horse races gouged dusty streets, and opposing factions of volunteer firefighters battled one another like violent gangs rather than life-saving heroes. The city’s turbulent history set a precedent for the dishonesty, corruption, and mismanagement that have led generations to look suspiciously on the various sin--both real and imagined--of Washington politicians. Empire of Mud unearths and untangles the roots of our capital’s story and explores how the city was tainted from the outset, nearly stifled from becoming the proud citadel of the republic that George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant envisioned more than two centuries ago.

Author: Greg Fisher
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191618942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In Between Empires Greg Fisher tackles the problem of pre-Islamic Arab identity by examining the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Empire of Sasanian Iran, and a selection of their Arab allies and neighbours, the Jafnids, Nasrids, and Hujrids. Fisher focuses on the last century before the emergence of Islam and stresses the importance of a Near East dominated by Rome and Iran for the formation of early concepts of Arab identity. In particular, he examines cultural and religious integration, political activities, and the role played by Arabic as factors in this process. He concludes that interface with the Roman Empire, in particular, played a key role in helping to lay the foundation for later concepts of Arab identity, and that the world of Late Antiquity is, as a result, of enduring interest in our understanding of what we now call the Middle East.

Author: Susan E. Alcock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521770200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
Empires, the largest political systems of the ancient and early modern world, powerfully transformed the lives of people within and even beyond their frontiers in ways quite different from other, non-imperial societies. Appearing in all parts of the globe, and in many different epochs, empires invite comparative analysis - yet few attempts have been made to place imperial systems within such a framework. This book brings together studies by distinguished scholars from diverse academic traditions, including anthropology, archaeology, history and classics. The empires discussed include case studies from Central and South America, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Near East, South East Asia and China, and range in time from the first millennium BC to the early modern era. The book organises these detailed studies into five thematic sections: sources, approaches and definitions; empires in a wider world; imperial integration and imperial subjects; imperial ideologies; and the afterlife of empires.

Author: Jesús Ballesteros
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400740204
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Globalisation turns out to be untenable because it does not guarantee minimum social equity, peace and respect for the environment, and therefore does not guarantee the effective accomplishment of human rights. This book analyzes this issue and raises proposals for a new perspective. The first part describes the soft threats to human rights, derived from the devaluation of the politics and the productive economy with regard to the finance. It entails the concealment of the reality in the shape of exploitation as the tax havens and in the shape of marginalization of the persons with different abilities. The second part include a study of hard threats to human rights and examines two cases of failed states: Afghanistan and Somalia, in which the violence has supplanted the politics and the economy. In view of these situations it is necessary to rethink the force of classic ius gentium and the humanitarian right. The third part presents the European Union as a legal and political space in which conditions of a worthy life are better defended by means of the Primacy of Practical Reason and Social State of Law, and by the requirement of peace as the main rule of international relations.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 2416

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Book Description
Beginning in 1956 each vol. includes as a regular number the Blue book of southern progress and the Southern industrial directory, formerly issued separately.