A timely and eye-opening account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979-89), from the high politics of the Kremlin to the lonely Russian conscripts in remote mountain outposts.
A Long Goodbye Kalinovsky, Artemy M
2011, 20110101
eBook
Why did the USSR linger so long in Afghanistan? What makes this account of the Soviet-Afghan conflict both timely and important is its focus on the factors that prevented the Soviet leadership from ...ending a demoralizing and costly war and on the long-term consequences for the Soviet Union and the region.
When originally published in 1984,
Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan
provided the first focused consideration of the 1978 Saur
Revolution and the subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of ...the
country. Nearly four decades later, its conclusions remain crucial
to understanding Afghanistan today.
In this much-anticipated re-release, Revolutions and
Rebellions in Afghanistan offers an opportunity for fresh
insight into the antecedents of the nation's enduring conflicts. A
new foreword by editors M. Nazif Shahrani and Robert L. Canfield
contextualizes this collection, which relies on extensive fieldwork
in the years leading up to the Soviet invasion. Specific tribal,
ethnic, and gender groups are considered within the context of
their region, and contributors discuss local responses to
government decrees, Islamic-inspired grassroots activism, and
interpretations of jihad outside of Kabul.
Long recognized as a vital ethnographic text in Afghan studies,
Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan provides an
extraordinary chance to experience the diversity of the Afghan
people on the cusp of irrevocable change and to understand what
they expected of the years ahead.
This paper studies the labor market experiences of white-male college graduates as a function of economic conditions at time of college graduation. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth ...whose respondents graduated from college between 1979 and 1989. I estimate the effects of both national and state economic conditions at time of college graduation on labor market outcomes for the first two decades of a career. Because timing and location of college graduation could potentially be affected by economic conditions, I also instrument for the college unemployment rate using year of birth (state of residence at an early age for the state analysis). I find large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent.
Out of Afghanistan Cordovez, Diego; Harrison, Selig S
1995, 19950629, 1995-08-10, 19950101
eBook
The Soviet withdrawal from Afganistan has been largely attributed to the bravery of the Afghan resistance reinforced by American weaponry and support. This book shows how it was in fact years of ...persistent United Nations initiatives that proved crucial to the conclusion of the Geneva accords, and that the ideological hard line of the Reagan administration prolonged the conflict. Diego Cordovez, the United Nations mediator for the Afghanistan conflict, and prominent foreign policy analyst Selig Harrison have written the definitive account of the negotiations that helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the last great clash of the cold war.
This collection provides a broad analysis of Afghanistan and its neighbors in recent decades and investigates the various historical and political contexts into which the region has been placed. It ...examines the legacy of Soviet intervention, patterns of cooperation and conflict among regional states, and recent US strategic initiatives.
This is an account of the Afghan War and its tragic aftermath as told by the women who were caught up in it and became its innocent victims. The voices in this oral history will provide personal ...snapshots to the news reports of the Taliban activities now coming out of Afghanistan. These accounts provide an historical background to the growth of the Taliban, and reveal circumstances of the daily life of the women who must survive in this very closed society.Through the medium of oral history, this book brings to light the stories of the women who have suffered the consequences of the Afghan War and whose lives and whose daughter's lives have been changed forever. Through the voices of the Soviet women who supported their soldiers on Afghan soil, and the voices of the Afghan women scattered by circumstance around the globe, the last Cold War battle between the superpowers takes on a very personal tone. Policy decisions issued from on high became the rockets that destroyed these women physically, mentally, and emotionally. Children were killed or maimed and homes and families destroyed. Ultimately, these women were forced to flee or become invisible within their homeland. The Taliban militia rose from the dust of this war and by government decree reduced even the most educated and influential of the women to non-person status.
The paper is a part of a wider research on the Ismaili identity, peculiarities of the Ismailis’ self-identification in various parts of the world under different historical circumstances. The ...ambiguous status of the Ismailis in Afghanistan turned to be particularly problematic by the end of the 19th century when the Pashtuns became dominant in the traditionally Ismaili-inhabited areas. In a hostile milieu, under severe persecutions, the local Ismaili identity acquired a tendency of unification with other ethno-religious identities, the principle of taqiyya having been widely spread. Since then, the Ismailis became especially dependent on the political situation in Afghanistan and the policy of its rulers towards ethnic and religious minorities. The War of 1979-1989 turned to be the most dramatic episode in the history of the Ismaili community in Afghanistan when its very survival appeared to be questioned: Ismaili intellectuals left the region, and lower social layers got involved in drug cultivation and trafficking. Supporting any of the conflict’s sides could have led to a community tragedy, possibly to its complete annihilation. The limited information we obtained, including the memoirs of the Afghan War veterans, demonstrate the identity split in the Ismaili community of Afghanistan whose members were fighting on the opposite sides of the armed conflict.
Das Ziel der UdSSR: eine afghanische Stabilität. Das Ergebnis: eine sowjetische Instabilität. Als die Sowjetunion 1979 Soldaten nach Afghanistan verlegte, geschah dies im Geheimen – offizielle Bilder ...gab es nicht. Die Militärzeitung Krasnaja Zvezda sowie das Zentralorgan Pravda agierten zu Beginn der 1980er Jahre als Partner im Geiste. Die UdSSR als Friedensmacht stand den Genossen in Kabul auch visuell helfend zur Seite. Als die letzten sowjetischen Soldaten 1989 das Land am Hindukusch verließen, war das Ereignis im Fokus der medialen Öffentlichkeit. Was war geschehen? Der extern geführte Konflikt auf afghanischem Boden war zu einer innersowjetischen Auseinandersetzung über die mediale Deutungshoheit, die soziale Verantwortung sowie den Umgang mit den Ereignissen erwachsen. Die Studie betrachtet den strategischen Gebrauch fotografischer Bilder zum sowjetisch-afghanischen Konflikt und wertet sie als Impulse für eine gesellschaftliche Transformation.
Roselle analyzes how political leaders of powerful states use media to explain military defeats. The cases of the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan highlight the role of ...great power identity, domestic politics, and media structure.
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