The Bandit of Kabul

The Bandit of Kabul PDF Author: Jerry Beisler
Publisher: Trine Day
ISBN: 1936296810
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
Filled with cutting-edge, global commentary on the last days of the legal Afghanistan-to-Amsterdam hash-smuggling route, this memoir tells of Jerry Beisler’s adventures around Asia and the United States. Complete with hedonism, high jinks, and humor, the fast-paced narrative also tells of serial killer Charles Sobaraj, the early days of reggae across the Caribbean, the genesis of the Emerald Triangle pot plantations, the Dalai Lama, and Jerry Garcia and other counterculture musicians from the late 1960s and 1970s. Now in its second edition, this firsthand account contains additional artwork, photographs, and stories.

The Bandit of Kabul

The Bandit of Kabul PDF Author: Jerry Beisler
Publisher: Trine Day
ISBN: 1936296810
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
Filled with cutting-edge, global commentary on the last days of the legal Afghanistan-to-Amsterdam hash-smuggling route, this memoir tells of Jerry Beisler’s adventures around Asia and the United States. Complete with hedonism, high jinks, and humor, the fast-paced narrative also tells of serial killer Charles Sobaraj, the early days of reggae across the Caribbean, the genesis of the Emerald Triangle pot plantations, the Dalai Lama, and Jerry Garcia and other counterculture musicians from the late 1960s and 1970s. Now in its second edition, this firsthand account contains additional artwork, photographs, and stories.

West of Kabul, East of New York

West of Kabul, East of New York PDF Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429935960
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tamim Ansary's passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict, West of Kabul, East of New York. Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn back to the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism. Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.

Hopeless but Optimistic

Hopeless but Optimistic PDF Author: Douglas A. Wissing
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253023335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A fascinating ground level account of the effect of absurd and inappropriate Washington strategies on Afghans and on American soldiers.”—Abdulkader Sinno, author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan & Beyond Award-winning journalist Douglas A. Wissing’s poignant and eye-opening journey across insurgency-wracked Afghanistan casts an unyielding spotlight on greed, dysfunction, and predictable disaster while celebrating the everyday courage and wisdom of frontline soldiers, idealistic humanitarians, and resilient Afghans. As Wissing hauls a hundred pounds of body armor and pack across the Afghan warzone in search of the ground truth, US officials frantically spin a spurious victory narrative, American soldiers try to keep their body parts together, and Afghans try to stay positive and strain to figure out their next move after the US eventually leaves. As one technocrat confided to Wissing, “I am hopeless—but optimistic.” Along with a deep inquiry into the 21st-century American way of war and an unforgettable glimpse of the enduring culture and legacy of Afghanistan, Hopeless but Optimistic includes the real stuff of life: the austere grandeur of Afghanistan and its remarkable people; warzone dining, defecation, and sex; as well as the remarkable shopping opportunities for men whose job is to kill. Silver Medal, War & Military, Foreword Indies Awards Silver Medal, Current Events, Independent Publisher Book Awards “A scathing dispatch from an embedded journalist in Afghanistan . . . Pungent, embittered, eye-opening observations of a conflict involving lessons still unlearned.”—Kirkus Reviews “Here we confront in granular detail the waste and folly that is America’s war in Afghanistan.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Age of Illusions

First Casualty

First Casualty PDF Author: Toby Harnden
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 031654096X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
An award-winning journalist reveals the dramatic true story of the CIA's Team Alpha, the first Americans to be dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11. America is reeling; Al-Qaeda has struck and thousands are dead. The country scrambles to respond, but the Pentagon has no plan for Afghanistan—where Osama bin Laden masterminded the attack and is protected by the Taliban. Instead, the CIA steps forward to spearhead the war. Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again. First Casualty places you with Team Alpha as the CIA rides into battle on horseback alongside the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. In Washington, DC, few trust that the CIA men, the Green Berets, and the Americans’ outnumbered Afghan allies can prevail before winter sets in. On the ground, Team Alpha is undeterred. The Taliban is routed but hatches a plot with Al-Qaeda to hit back. Hundreds of suicidal fighters, many hiding weapons, fake a surrender and are transported to Qala-i Jangi—the “Fort of War.” Team Alpha’s Mike Spann, an ex-Marine, and David Tyson, a polyglot former Central Asian studies academic, seize America’s initial opportunity to extract intelligence from men trained by bin Laden—among them a young Muslim convert from California. The prisoners revolt and one CIA officer falls—the first casualty in America’s longest war, which will last two decades. The other CIA man shoots dead the Al-Qaeda jihadists attacking his comrade. To survive, he must fight his way out against overwhelming odds. Award-winning author Toby Harnden gained unprecedented access to all living Team Alpha members and every level of the CIA. Superbly researched, First Casualty draws on extensive interviews, secret documents, and deep reporting inside Afghanistan. As gripping as any adventure novel, yet intimate and profoundly moving, it tells how America found a winning strategy only to abandon it. Harnden reveals that the lessons of early victory and the haunting foretelling it contained—unreliable allies, ethnic rivalries, suicide attacks, and errant US bombs—were ignored, tragically fueling a twenty-year conflict. "Masterful, complex, and heartfelt, from the deeply personal to the critically strategic. Captures many lessons on many levels." —Ambassador Hank Crumpton, former senior CIA officer

In a Land Far from Home

In a Land Far from Home PDF Author: Syed Mujtaba Ali
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
ISBN: 9789385288487
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
An intrepid traveller and a true cosmopolitan, the legendary Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali from Sylhet (in erstwhile East Bengal, now Bangladesh) spent a year and a half teaching in Kabul from 1927 to 1929. Drawing on this experience, he later wrote Deshe Bideshe which was published in 1948. Ali's young mind was curious to explore the Afghan society of the time and, with his impressive language skills, he had access to a cross-section of Kabul's population, whose ideas and experiences he chronicles with a keen eye and a wicked sense of humour. His account provides a fascinating first-hand insight into events at a critical point in Afghanistan's history, when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls and giving them the choice of removing the burqa. Branded a 'kafir', Amanullah was overthrown by the bandit leader Bacha-e-Saqao. Deshe Bideshe is the only published eyewitness account of that tumultuous period by a non-Afghan, brought to life by the contact that Ali enjoyed with a colourful cast of characters at all levels of society-from the garrulous Pathan Dost Muhammed and the gentle Russian giant Bolshov, to his servant, Abdur Rahman and his partner in tennis, the Crown Prince Enayatullah.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan PDF Author: Angelo Rasanayagam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857710060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since September 11th, 2001, Afghanistan has dominated the news, as it did for a long time during the Soviet occupation two decades ago, and long before, when, in the 19th and early 20th century, its mountain ranges formed the backdrop to the Great Game. In the Western imagination it is one of the most romantic, as well as harsh, beautiful and dangerous places on earth. Squeezed as it is between four empires – Russia, China, India and Persia – its tortured history provides and extraordinary glimpse into the patterns of world movements. Today Afghanistan sits at the pivotal point of a region where a new Great Game is taking shape for the War on Terror and control of the oil-rich steppes of Central Asia. Angelo Rasanayagam's magisterial work – the fruit of personal experience as well as years of scholarship – is the first major history of modern Afghanistan. It traces the country's development from the accession of Abdul Rahman Khan, the 'Iron Amir' in the 1889, right up to the demise of the Taliban under US bombing over the winter of 2001, and the search for a new state structure in 2002. Of vital importance for understanding the country's current crisis, it will be essential reading for historians, policy makers, journalists, students, and all those interested in the state of the world today. “well-written, succinct, accessible, analytical, objective and balanced – this is one of the best introductions to the history of modern Afghanistan available to the general public.” Baqer Moin, Head of the Persian Service, BBC. “Excellent – a veritable textbook, and a reference source for anyone interested in Afghanistan” Dr. Thomas Withington, Jane's Intelligence Review and King's College, London. “Rasanayagam's work connects a difficult past with a difficult present in order to extract necessary lessons for the future. He presents a complex history, which will be understood by the general reader, drawing attention to a large range of issues in the contemporary world.” Zahir Tanin, Producer for the Eurasian Region, BBC

History of Afghanistan

History of Afghanistan PDF Author: Percy Sykes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317845862
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 714

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 2007. This title combines two volumes of work; fifty-eight chapters dissecting the history of Afghanistan with sketch maps and illustrations throughout. Sykes argues that few countries present problems of greater interest to the historian than landlocked Afghanistan, the counterpart in Asia of Switzerland in Europe. Their studies cover the prehistory in the Near East, going through the history of each dynasty up to the early 1900s. A key text for historians, students and those interested in the complex history of the country.

Valley of the Tall Gods and Other Tales from the Pulps

Valley of the Tall Gods and Other Tales from the Pulps PDF Author: E. Hoffmann Price
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1434468275
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adventures in Afghanistan and the search for Alexander the Great's treasure there -- A kidnapping in old New Orleans -- Tomb-robbing in Egypt -- The fifty-thousand-dollar rug -- Demonic evil in Bayonne, that gray-walled city that basks in the warmth of the Pyrenees and guards the road to Spain -- & more adventures in New Orleans.

A Military History of Afghanistan

A Military History of Afghanistan PDF Author: Ali Ahmad Jalali
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 634

Get Book Here

Book Description
The history of Afghanistan is largely military history. From the Persians and Greeks of antiquity to the British, Soviet, and American powers in modern times, outsiders have led military conquests into the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, leaving their indelible marks on this ancient land at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In this book Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister of Afghanistan, taps a deep understanding of his country's distant and recent past to explore Afghanistan's military history during the last two hundred years. With an introductory chapter highlighting the major military developments from early times to the foundation of the modern Afghan state, Jalali's account focuses primarily on the era of British conquest and Anglo-Afghan wars; the Soviet invasion; the civil war and the rise of the Taliban; and the subsequent U.S. invasion. Looking beyond persistent stereotypes and generalizations—e.g., the "graveyard of empires" designation emerging from the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century and the Soviet experience of the 1980s—Jalali offers a nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of the way of war pursued by both state and non-state actors in Afghanistan against different domestic and foreign enemies, under changing social, political, and technological conditions. He reveals how the structure of states, tribes, and social communities in Afghanistan, along with the scope of their controlled space, has shaped their modes of fighting throughout history. In particular, his account shows how dynastic wars and foreign conquests differ in principle, strategy, and method from wars initiated by non-state actors including tribal and community militias against foreign invasions or repressive government. Written by a professional soldier, politician, and noted scholar with a keen analytical grasp of his country's military and political history, this magisterial work offers unique insight into the military history of Afghanistan—and thus, into Afghanistan itself.

History of Afghanistan

History of Afghanistan PDF Author: Sykes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317845870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 905

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 2007. This title combines two volumes of work; fifty-eight chapters dissecting the history of Afghanistan with sketch maps and illustrations throughout. Sykes argues that few countries present problems of greater interest to the historian than landlocked Afghanistan, the counterpart in Asia of Switzerland in Europe. Their studies cover the prehistory in the Near East, going through the history of each dynasty up to the early 1900s. A key text for historians, students and those interested in the complex history of the country.