Afghan Napoleon

2021-09-07 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Sandy Gall
Release : 2021-09-07
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 238/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Afghan Napoleon by : Sandy Gall

Download or read book Afghan Napoleon written by Sandy Gall. This book was released on 2021-09-07. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography in a decade of Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the forces of resistance were disparate. Many groups were caught up in fighting each other and competing for Western arms. The exception were those commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military strategist and political operator who solidified the resistance and undermined the Russian occupation, leading resistance members to a series of defensive victories. Sandy Gall followed Massoud during Soviet incursions and reported on the war in Afghanistan, and he draws on this first-hand experience in his biography of this charismatic guerrilla commander. Afghan Napoleon includes excerpts from the surviving volumes of Massoud’s prolific diaries—many translated into English for the first time—which detail crucial moments in his personal life and during his time in the resistance. Born into a liberalizing Afghanistan in the 1960s, Massoud ardently opposed communism, and he rose to prominence by coordinating the defense of the Panjsher Valley against Soviet offensives. Despite being under-equipped and outnumbered, he orchestrated a series of victories over the Russians. Massoud’s assassination in 2001, just two days before the attack on the Twin Towers, is believed to have been ordered by Osama bin Laden. Despite the ultimate frustration of Massoud’s attempts to build political consensus, he is recognized today as a national hero.

War Comes to Garmser

2013 History

Author : Carter Malkasian
Release : 2013
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 75X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis War Comes to Garmser by : Carter Malkasian

Download or read book War Comes to Garmser written by Carter Malkasian. This book was released on 2013. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want to understand Afghanistan, writes Carter Malkasian, you need to understand what has happened on the ground, in the villages and countryside that were on the frontline. These small places are the heart of the war. Modeled on the classic Vietnam War book, War Comes to Long An, Malkasian's War Comes to Garmser promises to be a landmark account of the war in Afghanistan. The author, who spent nearly two years in Garmser, a community in war-torn Helmand province, tells the story of this one small place through the jihad, the rise and fall of Taliban regimes, and American and British surge. Based on his conversations with hundreds of Afghans, including government officials, tribal leaders, religious leaders, and over forty Taliban, and drawing on extensive primary source material, Malkasian takes readers into the world of the Afghans. Through their feuds, grievances, beliefs, and way of life, Malkasian shows how the people of Garmser have struggled for three decades through brutal wars and short-lived regimes. Beginning with the victorious but destabilizing jihad against the Soviets and the ensuing civil war, he explains how the Taliban movement formed; how, after being routed in 2001, they returned stronger than ever in 2006; and how Afghans, British, and Americans fought with them thereafter. Above all, he describes the lives of Afghans who endured and tried to build some kind of order out of war. While Americans and British came and went, Afghans carried on, year after year. Afghanistan started out as the good war, the war we fought for the right reasons. Now for many it seems a futile military endeavor, costly and unwinnable. War Comes to Garmser offers a fresh, original perspective on this war, one that will redefine how we look at Afghanistan and at modern war in general.

Return of a King

2013-04-16 History

Author : William Dalrymple
Release : 2013-04-16
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 299/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Return of a King by : William Dalrymple

Download or read book Return of a King written by William Dalrymple. This book was released on 2013-04-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.

The Panjshir Valley 1980–86

2021-10-28 History

Author : Mark Galeotti
Release : 2021-10-28
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 726/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Panjshir Valley 1980–86 by : Mark Galeotti

Download or read book The Panjshir Valley 1980–86 written by Mark Galeotti. This book was released on 2021-10-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at the struggle between the charismatic rebel commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, 'The Lion of Panjshir', and the Soviet forces who fought to control the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan. When the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, they believed if they took the cities, the country would follow. They were wrong. The Red Army found itself in a bloody stalemate in the Afghan mountains, in the strategically vital Panjshir Valley, where they faced the most able and charismatic of the rebel commanders: Ahmad Shah Massoud, the 'Lion of Panjshir'. Time and again the Soviets and their Afghan counterparts sought to take control of the Panjshir, and time and again the rebels either rebuffed their clumsy attempts or ambushed and evaded them, only to retake the valley as soon as Moscow's attention was elsewhere. Over time, the rebels acquired new weapons and developed their own tactics – as did the Soviets. The Panjshir was not just a pivotal battlefield, it also shaped the subsequent Afghan civil wars that followed Soviet withdrawal, and the military thinking that is still informing the new Russian military. Featuring striking colour artwork battlescenes and detailed maps of the fighting, this is a compelling study of one of the hardest fought struggles of the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

Mahmood Tarzi

2012-02-13 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Dr. M. Halim Tanwir
Release : 2012-02-13
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 703/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Mahmood Tarzi by : Dr. M. Halim Tanwir

Download or read book Mahmood Tarzi written by Dr. M. Halim Tanwir. This book was released on 2012-02-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compelling, provocative and informative, Mahmood Tarzi Diplomacy and Journalism is an eclectic set of events, media happenings, and political developments in Afghanistan from the rise of the power of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan to the downfall of the reign of Amanullah Khan. Written by Dr. M. Halim Tanwir, this political and historical page-turner takes readers to the period where the press and the particularly famous character Mahmood Tarzi, the founder of journalism and diplomacy in Afghanistan, played a fundamental role. Highlighting how the press essentially contributed to the growth, transition and development of the Afghan nation in terms of investment value, intellectual input, constitutional law and freedom of expression, this compelling read shares the pioneering stages of how the Afghan society was honed by the medias interventions. Relieving Afghanistan from stagnation and serving as a catalyst for positive change, the press has greatly caused an exhilarating form of freedom and vitality to the Afghan people despite losses to British, Russians and Persians. Still the nation was able to obtain its independence. In this book, Dr. Tanwir wrote briefl y the contemporary Afghan history in fi ve volumes. He also described the role of public communication media in national and international policies in Afghanistan. With a myriad of informative and educational insights that will stir a sense of continuing hope to the Afghan nation and serve as a social study tool for many politicians, leaders, historians, professors, academics and students, Mahmood Tarzi Diplomacy and Journalism is defi nitely a note-worthy book that reveals an eye-opening set of knowledge about the nation of Afghanistan.

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