The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War, and the Future of the Region - Hardcover

Nojumi, N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312294026 ISBN 13: 9780312294021

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Synopsis

This book describes the turbulent political history of Afghanistan from the communist upheaval of the 1970s through to the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. It reviews the importance of the region to external powers and explains why warfare and instability have been endemic. The author analyses in detail the birth of the Taliban and the bloody rise to power of fanatic Islamists, including Osama bin Laden, in the power vacuum following the withdrawal of US aid. Looking forward, Nojumi explores the ongoing quest for a third political movement in Afghanistan - an alternative to radical communists or fanatical Islamists and suggests the support that will be neccessary from the international community in order for such a movement to survive.

About this title

About the Author

NEAMATOLLAH NOJUMI, who was raised in Afghanistan, was a participant in the Mujahideen fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A frequent speaker on the politics of Afghanistan, he has appeared on or consulted with major television news shows. He is currently at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, MA.

From Publishers Weekly

Nojumi, a former member of the Mujahadeen who fought the Soviet invasion and a contributor to humanitarian efforts to help displaced Afghans, offers a committed but often barely intelligible attempt to explain the historical, political and cultural circumstances behind the Taliban's ascent to power. The author, who was raised in Afghanistan, describes how decades of war and foreign interference eroded the traditional relationship between an Afghani central government and the local tribal councils, or jirgas, destroyed an economy based on agricultural production and "watered the seeds of Islamic radicalism." Afghan citizens initially greeted the Taliban with hope, he writes, but "many quickly lost their hope in the dusty field of [its] militaristic, ethnic, and religious ultra-supremacy approach"; the Taliban has paid no more attention to the country's "national ideology" than did the Marxist/Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, whose 1978 coup led to the 1979 Soviet invasion. Nojumi's discussions of the phenomenon of mass mobilization which he defines as a political organization's efforts to induce broad social change weigh down his account with unnecessary and garbled attempts at theory. Such a complicated history cries out for a structure based on chronology and on narrative. Instead this text is so disorganized, so riddled with confusing or even meaningless sentences ( "Each event evolved and occurred because of previous events," for example) that most readers will find themselves too frustrated to keep going. Illus. not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312294026
• ISBN 13: 9780312294021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272