War and State-Building in Afghanistan Historical and Modern Perspectives

by Roy, Kaushik; Gates, Scott

• ISBN13: 9781472572172
• ISBN10: 1472572173
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-01-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The Mughals, British and Soviets all failed to subjugate Afghanistan, failures which offer valuable lessons for today. Taking a long historical perspective from 1520 to 2012, this volume examines the Mughal, British, Soviet and NATO efforts in Afghanistan, drawing on new archives and a synthesis of previous counter-insurgency experiences. Special emphasis is given to ecology, terrain and logistics to explain sub-conventional operations and state-building in Afghanistan.

War and State-Building in Modern Afghanistan provides an overall synthesis of British, Russian, American and NATO military activities in Afghanistan, which directly links past experiences to the current challenges. These timely essays are particularly relevant to contemporary debates about NATO's role in Afghanistan; do the war and state-building policies currently employed by NATO forces undercut or enhance a political solution?

The essays in this volume introduce new historical perspectives on this debate, and will prove illuminating reading for students and scholars interested in military history, the history of warfare, international relations and comparative politics.

Author Biography

Scott Gates is Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and past Director of the Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway.

Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Professor in History at Jadavpur University, India and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway.

Table of Contents

Introduction Scott Gates (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and Kaushik Roy (Jadavpur University, India)
1. The Unchanging Nature of Asymmetric Warfare Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy
2. Great Mughals, Warfare and COIN in Afghanistan: 1520-1707 Kaushik Roy
3. Counter-Insurgency and Empire: The British Experience with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier, 1838-1947 John Ferris (University of Calgary, Canada)
4. How Afghanistan Was Broken: The Disaster of the Soviet Intervention Pavel K. Baev (Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway)
5. Mujahidin vs. Communists: Analysing the Mujahidin’s war strategies after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan Anne Stenersen (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment)
6. Explaining NATO’s limitations and the Taliban’s Resilience Abdulkader H. Sinno (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)
7. Regional Dimensions Kristian Harpviken (Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway)
8. The Afghan National Army and Counter-Insurgency Robert Johnson (University of Oxford, UK)
9. The Country as a Hole: Imagined States and the Failure of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
Ivan Arreguín-Toft (Boston University, USA)
Index