Taliban Narratives

Taliban Narratives PDF Author: Thomas H. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190840609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shines a light on the Taliban's propaganda arm and its impact on the course of the war in Afghanistan.

Taliban Narratives

Taliban Narratives PDF Author: Thomas H. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190840609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shines a light on the Taliban's propaganda arm and its impact on the course of the war in Afghanistan.

Taliban Narratives

Taliban Narratives PDF Author: Thomas H. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190911670
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why has the Taliban been so much more effective in presenting messages that resonate with the Afghan population than the United States, the Afghan government and their allies? This book, based on years of field research and the assessment of hundreds of original source materials, examines the information operations and related narratives of Afghan insurgents, especially the Afghan Taliban, and investigates how the Taliban has won the information war. Taliban messaging, wrapped in the narrative of jihad, is both to the point and in tune with its target audiences. On the other hand, the United States and its Kabul allies committed a basic messaging blunder, failing to present narratives that spoke to or, often, were even understood by their target audiences. Thomas Johnson systematically explains why the United States lost this "battle of the story" in Afghanistan, and argues that this defeat may have cost the US the entire war, despite its conventional and technological superiority.

Taliban Narratives

Taliban Narratives PDF Author: Thomas H. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190911352
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why has the Taliban been so much more effective in presenting messages that resonate with the Afghan population than the United States, the Afghan government and their allies? This book, based on years of field research and the assessment of hundreds of original source materials, examines the information operations and related narratives of Afghan insurgents, especially the Afghan Taliban, and investigates how the Taliban has won the information war. Taliban messaging, wrapped in the narrative of jihad, is both to the point and in tune with its target audiences. On the other hand, the United States and its Kabul allies committed a basic messaging blunder, failing to present narratives that spoke to or, often, were even understood by their target audiences. Thomas Johnson systematically explains why the United States lost this "battle of the story" in Afghanistan, and argues that this defeat may have cost the US the entire war, despite its conventional and technological superiority.

My Life with the Taliban

My Life with the Taliban PDF Author: Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef
Publisher: Hurst & Company
ISBN: 1849041520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the autobiography of the former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan who negotiated with the US after 9/11 and spent time in Guantanomo. It is the first inside account of what motivates ordinary Afghans to join the Taliban.

Love & War in Afghanistan

Love & War in Afghanistan PDF Author: Alex Klaits
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1583229752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Love and War in Afghanistan presents true stories of fourteen ordinary men and women living in Northern Afghanistan. In a quarter-century of uninterrupted war, the people of Afghanistan have endured foreign invasions, ethnic strife, a fundamentalist Islamic totalitarian regime, and the unending crossfire of rival warlord factions. The country remains an object of fascination for journalists, academics, and filmmakers from around the world. In the midst of it all it is a startlingly powerful experience to discover, here, the voices of the Afghan people themselves. Young lovers who elope against the wishes of their kin; a mullah whose wit is his only defense against his armed captors; a defector from the Soviet army; a woman who is forced to stand up to gangsters in Tajikistan—their dramatic stories emerge in their own unforgettable words. Whether in the sudden awakening of mercy in a Taliban militiaman, the lingering contempt of a woman for her husband’s first wife, the pain and confusion of flight into exile, or the resourcefulness of a child who must provide for an entire family, the real focus of these narratives is the strength of solitary individuals faced daily with their own vulnerability. Men, women, orphans, widows, widowers, Tajiks, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Turkmens, schoolteachers, mullahs, former Taliban, mujahideen, big brothers, little sisters, captive wives, lovers in flight: Love and War in Afghanistan tells their stories, putting human faces onto a country torn by war.

The Taliban Reader

The Taliban Reader PDF Author: Alex Strick van Linschoten
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190935057
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 768

Get Book Here

Book Description
Who are the Taliban? Are they a militant movement? Are they religious scholars? The fact that these and other questions are still raised with frequency is testimony to the way the movement has been studied, often at arm's length and with scant use of primary sources. The Taliban Reader forges a new path, bringing together an extensive range of largely unseen sources in a guide to the Afghan Islamist movement from a unique insider perspective. Ideal for students, journalists and scholars alike, this book is the result of an unprecedented, decade-long effort to encourage the emergence of participant-centered accounts of Afghan history. This ground-breaking collection, ranging from news articles and opinion pieces to online publications and poems transcribed by hand in the field, sets the stage for a recalibration of how we understand and study the Afghan Taliban. It challenges researchers to forge new norms in the documentation of conflict and provides insight into the future trajectory of political Islamism in South Asia and the Middle East.

No Good Men Among the Living

No Good Men Among the Living PDF Author: Anand Gopal
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805091793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book Here

Book Description
Told through the lives of three Afghans, the stunning tale of how the United States had triumph in sight in Afghanistan--and then brought the Taliban back from the dead In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America's war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent; a US-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power; and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could in fact have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the US invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively, the Taliban ceased to exist--yet the Americans were unwilling to accept such a turnaround. Instead, driven by false intelligence from their allies and an unyielding mandate to fight terrorism, American forces continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day. With its intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan, Gopal's thoroughly original reporting lays bare the workings of America's longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A heartbreaking story of mistakes and misdeeds, No Good Men Among the Living challenges our usual perceptions of the Afghan conflict, its victims, and its supposed winners.

Captive

Captive PDF Author: Jere Van Dyk
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 142994997X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
An American reporter's chilling account of being kidnapped and imprisoned by the Taliban, in the no-man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill. Captive is Van Dyk's searing account of his forty-five days in a Taliban prison, and it is gripping and terrifying in the tradition of the best prison literature. The main action takes place in a single room, cut off from the outside world, where Van Dyk feels he can trust nobody—not his jailers, not his guides (who he fears may have betrayed him), and certainly not the charismatic Taliban leader whose fleeting appearances carry the hope of redemption as well as the prospect of immediate, violent death. Van Dyk went to the tribal areas to investigate the challenges facing America there. His story is of a deeper, more personal challenge, an unforgettable tale of human endurance.

The Taliban at War

The Taliban at War PDF Author: Antonio Giustozzi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190092394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book Here

Book Description
How fighting a sixteen-year-long war has affected the Taliban, by the world's leading expert on the movement.

My Guantanamo Diary

My Guantanamo Diary PDF Author: Mahvish Khan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1586486616
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away. For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage -- as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan's story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is -- and who we are.