This book analyses the various ways counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is gendered. The book examines the US led war in Afghanistan from 2001 onwards, including the invasion, the population-centric counterinsurgency operations and the efforts to train a new Afghan military charged with securing the country when the US and NATO withdrew their combat forces in 2014. Through an analysis of key counterinsurgency texts and military memoirs, the book explores how gender and counterinsurgency are co-constitutive in numerous ways. It discusses the multiple military masculinities that counterinsurgency relies on, the discourse of 'cultural sensitivity', and the deployment of Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Gendering Counterinsurgency demonstrates how population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine and practice can be captured within a gendered dynamic of 'killing and caring' - reliant on physical violence, albeit mediated through 'armed social work'. This simultaneously contradictory and complementary dynamic cannot be understood without recognising how the legitimation and the practice of this war relied on multiple gendered embodied performances of masculinities and femininities. Developing the concept of 'embodied performativity' this book shows how the clues to understanding counterinsurgency, as well as gendering war more broadly are found in war's everyday gendered manifestations. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency warfare, gender politics, governmentality, biopolitics, critical war studies, and critical security studies in general.

Here is the epic story of Vietnam and the sixties told through the events of a few gripping, passionate days of war and peace in October 1967. "They Marched Into Sunlight" brings that tumultuous time back to life while exploring questions about the meaning of dissent and the official manipulation of truth, issues as relevant today as they were decades ago.
In a seamless narrative, Maraniss weaves together the stories of three very different worlds: the death and heroism of soldiers in Vietnam, the anger and anxiety of antiwar students back home, and the confusion and obfuscating behavior of officials in Washington. To understand what happens to the people in these interconnected stories is to understand America's anguish. Based on thousands of primary documents and 180 on-the-record interviews, the book describes the battles that evoked cultural and political conflicts that still reverberate.

This highly illustrated title traces the development of mercenary soldiering from individuals and small units in the African wars of the 1960s-90s to today's state-employed corporate military contractors. The phenomenon of mercenary soldiering has constantly recurred in the news since the 1960s and has always attracted lively interest. The concept of 'mercenaries' began in the former Belgian Congo during the 1960s when men such as Mike Hoare and Bob Denard assembled hundreds of military veterans to 'do the fighting' for a particular leader or faction. This idea soon evolved into small teams of individuals training and leading local forces with varying success; wars in Rhodesia and on South Africa's borders attracted foreign volunteers into national armed forces, and veterans of these conflicts later sought employment elsewhere as mercenaries. The wars in the former Yugoslavia also attracted foreign fighters inspired as much by political and religious motives as by pay. This picture then evolved again, as former officers with recent experience set up sophisticated commercial companies to identify and fill the needs of governments whose own militaries were inadequate. Most recently, the aftermath of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen such contractors taking on some of the burden of long-term security off major national armies, while the subsequent rise of ISIS/Daesh has added a parallel strain of ideological volunteers. The author is well placed to describe how the face of mercenary soldiering has evolved and changed over 60 years. Using first-hand accounts, photos and detailed illustrations, this book presents a compelling snapshot of the life, campaigns and kit used by mercenary operatives engaged in fighting within both larger and more specific conflicts around the world.

Now in its second edition, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier's experience in Vietnam by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of front-line troops. The book delves into the Vietnam combat soldier's experience, from the decision to join the army, life in training and combat, and readjusting to civilian life with memories of war. By utilizing letters, oral histories, and memoirs of actual veterans, Kyle Longley and Jacqueline Whitt offer a powerful insight into the minds and lives of the 870,000 "grunts" who endured the controversial war. Important topics such as class, race, and gender are examined, enabling students to better analyze the social dynamics during this divisive period of American history. In addition to an updated introduction and epilogue, the new edition includes expanded sections on military chaplains, medics, and the moral injury of war. A new timeline provides details of major events leading up to, during, and after the war. A truly comprehensive picture of the Vietnam experience for soldiers, this volume is a valuable and unique addition to military history courses and classes on the Vietnam War and 1960s America.

This book presents a theory and empirical evidence for how security forces can identify militant suspects during counterinsurgency operations. A major oversight on the part of academics and practitioners has been to ignore the critical antecedent issue common to persuasion and coercion counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches: distinguishing friend from foe. This book proposes that the behaviour of security forces influences the likelihood of militant identification during a COIN campaign, and argues that security forces must respect civilian safety in order to create a credible commitment to facilitate collaboration with a population. This distinction is important as conventional wisdom has wrongly assumed that the presence of security forces confers control over terrain or influence over a population. Collaboration between civilian and government actors is the key observable indicator of support in COIN. Paradoxically, this theory accounts for why and how increased risk to government forces in the short term actually improves civilian security in the long run. Counterinsurgency, Security Forces, and the Identification Problem draws on three case studies: the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines post-World War II; Marines Corps' experiences in Vietnam through the Combined Action Program; and Special Operations activities in Iraq after 2003. For military practitioners, the work illustrates the critical precursor to establishing "security" during counterinsurgency operations. The book also examines the role and limits of modern technology in solving the identification problem. This book will be of interest to students of counterinsurgency, military history, strategic studies, US foreign policy, and security studies in general.

This book analyses the problematique of governance and administration of cultural diversity within the modern state of Afghanistan and traces patterns of national integration. It explores state construction in twentieth-century Afghanistan and Afghan nationalism, and explains the shifts in the state's policies and societal responses to different forms of governance of cultural diversity. The book problematizes liberalism, communitarianism, and multiculturalism as approaches to governance of diversity within the nation-state. It suggests that while the western models of multiculturalism have recognized the need to accommodate different cultures, they failed to engage with them through intercultural dialogue. It also elaborates the challenge of intra-group diversity and the problem of accommodating individual choice and freedom while recognising group rights and adoption of multiculturalism. The book develops an alternative approach through synthesising critical multiculturalism and interculturalism as a framework on a democratic and inclusive approach to governance of diversity. A major intervention in understanding a war-torn country through an insider account, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, especially those concerned with multiculturalism, state-building, nationalism, and liberalism, as well as those in cultural studies, history, Afghanistan studies, South Asian studies, Middle East studies, minority studies, and to policymakers.

That America was drawn into the Vietnam War by the French has been recognized, but rarely explored. This book analyzes the years from 1945 with the French military reconquest of Vietnam until 1963 with the execution of the French-endorsed dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, demonstrating how the US should not have followed the French into Vietnam. It shows how the Korean War triggered the flow of American military hardware and finances to underpin France's war against the Marxist-oriented Vietnam Republic led by Ho Chi Minh.

This book investigates the origins of the North Korean garrison state by examining the development of the Korean People's Army and the legacies of the Korean War. Despite its significance, there are very few books on the Korean People's Army with North Korean primary sources being difficult to access. This book, however, draws on North Korean documents and North Korean veterans' testimonies, and demonstrates how the Korean People's Army and the Korean War shaped North Korea into a closed, militarized and xenophobic garrison state and made North Korea seek Juche (Self Reliance) ideology and weapons of mass destruction. This book maintains that the youth and lower classes in North Korea considered the Korean People's Army as a positive opportunity for upward social mobility. As a result, the North Korean regime secured its legitimacy by establishing a new class of social elites wherein they offered career advancements for persons who had little standing and few opportunities under the preceding Japanese dominated regime. These new elites from poor working and peasant families became the core supporters of the North Korean regime today. In addition, this book argues that, in the aftermath of the Korean War, a culture of victimization was established among North Koreans which allowed Kim Il Sung to use this culture of fear to build and maintain the garrison state. Thus, this work illustrates how the North Korean regime has garnered popular support for the continuation of a militarized state, despite the great hardships the people are suffering. This book will be of much interest to students of North Korea, the Korean War, Asian politics, Cold War Studies, military and strategic studies, and international history.

In this galvanizing account of the most dramatic of the Arab-Israeli hostilities, Abraham Rabinovich, who reported the conflict for the Jerusalem Post, transports us into the midst of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Rabinovich's masterly narrative begins as Israel convinces itself there will be no war, while Egypt and Syria plot the two-front conflict. Then, on Yom Kippur, Saturday, October 6, 1973, we see Arab armies pouring across the shattered Bar-Lev Line in the Sinai and through the Golan defenses. Even the famed Israeli air force could not stop them. On the Golan alone, Syria sent 1,460 tanks against Israel's 177, and 115 artillery batteries against Israel's 11. And for the first time, footsoldiers wielding anti-tank weapons were able to stop tank charges, while surface-to-air missiles protected those troops from air attack
Rabinovich takes us into this inferno and into the inner sanctums of military and political decision making. He allows us to witness the dramatic turnaround that had the Syrians on the run by the following Wednesday and the great counterattack across the Suez Canal that, once begun, took international intervention to halt.
Using extensive interviews with both participants and observers, and with access to recently declassified materials, Rabinovich shows that the drama of the war lay not only in the battles but also in the apocalyptic visions it triggered in Israel, the hopes and fears it inspired in the Arab world, the heated conflicts on both sides about the conduct of the war, and the concurrent American face-off with the Soviets in Washington, D.C., Moscow, and the Mediterranean. A comprehensive account of one of the pivotal conflicts of the twentiethcentury.

"From the Hardcover edition.

A hard-hitting history of the U.S. airborne unit who made a name for themselves in the unforgiving jungles of South Vietnam. "It was easier killing than living." Third Battalion 506th Airborne veteran Drawing on interviews with veterans, many of whom have never gone on the record before, Ian Gardner follows up his epic trilogy about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II with the story of the unit's reactivation at the height of the Vietnam War. This is the dramatic history of a band of brothers who served together in Vietnam and who against the odds lived up to the reputation of their World War II forefathers. Brigadier General Salve Matheson's idea was to create an 800-strong battalion of airborne volunteers in the same legendary "Currahee" spirit that had defined the volunteers of 1942. The man he chose to lead them was John Geraci, who would mold this young brotherhood into a highly cohesive and motivated force. In December 1967, the battalion was sent into the Central Highlands of Lam Dong Province. Geraci and his men began their Search and Destroy patrols, which coincided with the North Vietnamese build-up to the Tet Offensive and was a brutal introduction to the reality of a dirty, bloody war. Gardner reveals how it was here that the tenacious volunteers made their mark, just like their predecessors had done in Normandy, and the battalion was ultimately awarded a Valorous Unit Citation. This book shows how and why this unit was deserving of that award, recounting their daily sanguinary struggle in the face of a hostile environment and a determined enemy. Through countless interviews and rare personal photographs, Sign Here for Sacrifice shows the action, leadership, humor and bravery displayed by these airborne warriors.

With first-hand insight into the into the key role of the US Air Force's fighter-bomber from the Vietnam War through to Operation Desert Storm during the First Gulf War, this book is an unmissable account of some of the most dangerous and demanding missions in the two wars. The advent of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) in the early 1950s threatened the whole concept of aerial bombing from medium and high altitude. Countermeasures were developed during the Korean War, but with little initial success. It was only in the closing stages of the Vietnam War, with the F-4Cww Phantom II (Wild Weasel 4), that this equipment started to become successful enough to allow a substantial investment in converting 116 F-4E Phantom IIs into dedicated SEAD aircraft. This move introduced a new generation of anti-radar missiles which became invaluable in later operations including operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Northern Watch over Iraq. This volume features dynamic archival photography from crews who flew the jet, alongside mission accounts and technical details of the development and fielding of the F-4 Wild Weasel in its various iterations. Including specially commissioned artwork of 'sharkmouthed' Phantom IIs in Vietnam jungle camouflage and more modern USAF 'Ghost Gray', this book is the ultimate visual and technical guide to the F-4 Phantom II Wild Weasel Units in combat.

After a million deaths and twice that number injured, after the destruction of much of the infrastructure of Iran and Iraq, disruption of trade throughout the Gulf and the involvement of the USA and USSR, was the Gulf War a pointless exercise, a futile conflict which achieved nothing and left the combatants at the end of it all back in exactly the same position from which they started in 1980? In this book, first published in 1989, the authors argue that the lack of territorial gain was irrelevant: the real advantages won by each side were far more important, intangible though they were. For Iran, the channelling of the energies of her people away from domestic concerns meant the continuation of the Islamic revolution and ensured the stability of the mullahs. In Iraq, the war propped up the increasingly shaky regime of Saddam Hussein. The outside world, especially the superpowers, was terrified of the spread of Muslim fundamentalism, so made no effort to prevent Iraq from trying to halt this spread. But Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the oil states also had vested interests in promoting the continuation of the war.

Days of the Fall takes the reader into the heart of the terrible wars in Syria and Iraq. The book combines frontline reporting with analysis of the deeper causes and effects of the conflict. Over five years, Jonathan Spyer reported from the depths of the wars, spending time in Aleppo, Baghdad, Damascus, Mosul, Idlib, Hasaka and other frontline areas. He witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the conflict - the rescue of the trapped Yezidis from the attempted ISIS genocide in 2014, the Assad regime's assault on Aleppo, the rise of independent Kurdish power in north east Syria, the emergence of the Shia militias in Iraq as a key force. The book depicts these events, and seeks to place them within a broader framework. The author notes the ethnic and sectarian faultlines in both Syria and Iraq, and contends that both countries have now effectively separated along these lines, leading to the emergence of de facto fragmentation and the birth of a number of new entities. The book also notes that this confused space has now become an arena for proxy conflict between regional and global powers. Containing interviews with key figures from all sides of the conflict, such as the Shia militias in Iraq, and even ISIS members, Days of the Fall serves as an invaluable and comprehensive guide to the complex dynamics and the tragic human impact of the wars.

This book offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military- political effort in Indochina.

When Taliban forces took Kabul on 15 August 2021, it marked the end of the Western intervention that had begun nearly twenty years earlier with the US-led invasion. The fall of Afghanistan triggered a seismic shock in the West, where US President Joe Biden announced an end to America's involvement in conflicts overseas. In Afghanistan itself it produced terror for the future for those who had worked with and grown up under the coalition-supported administration. Now, with the country spiralling into economic collapse and famine, Losing Afghanistan is a plea for us to keep our gaze on the plight of the people of Afghanistan and to understand how action and inaction in the West shaped the fate of the nation. Why was Afghanistan lost? Can it be regained? And what happens next? Edited by international development expert Brian Brivati, this collection of twenty-one essays by analysts, politicians, soldiers, commentators and practitioners - interspersed with powerful eyewitness testimony from Afghan voices - explains what happened in Afghanistan and why, and what the future holds both for its people and for liberal intervention.

This book investigates the origins of the North Korean garrison state by examining the development of the Korean People's Army and the legacies of the Korean War. Despite its significance, there are very few books on the Korean People's Army with North Korean primary sources being difficult to access. This book, however, draws on North Korean documents and North Korean veterans' testimonies, and demonstrates how the Korean People's Army and the Korean War shaped North Korea into a closed, militarized and xenophobic garrison state and made North Korea seek Juche (Self Reliance) ideology and weapons of mass destruction. This book maintains that the youth and lower classes in North Korea considered the Korean People's Army as a positive opportunity for upward social mobility. As a result, the North Korean regime secured its legitimacy by establishing a new class of social elites wherein they offered career advancements for persons who had little standing and few opportunities under the preceding Japanese dominated regime. These new elites from poor working and peasant families became the core supporters of the North Korean regime today. In addition, this book argues that, in the aftermath of the Korean War, a culture of victimization was established among North Koreans which allowed Kim Il Sung to use this culture of fear to build and maintain the garrison state. Thus, this work illustrates how the North Korean regime has garnered popular support for the continuation of a militarized state, despite the great hardships the people are suffering. This book will be of much interest to students of North Korea, the Korean War, Asian politics, Cold War Studies, military and strategic studies, and international history.

First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book explores the use of deadly force by private security companies during the Iraq War. The work focuses on and compares the activities of the US companies Blackwater and Dyncorp. Despite sharing several important characteristics, such as working for the same client (the US State Department) during the same time period, the employees of Blackwater fired their weapons far more often, and killed and seriously injured far more people in Iraq than their counterparts in DynCorp. In order to explain this disparity, the book undertakes the most comprehensive analysis ever attempted on the use of violence by the employees of these firms. Based on extensive empirical research, it offers a credible explanation for this difference: Blackwater maintained a relatively bellicose military culture that placed strong emphasis on norms encouraging its personnel to exercise personal initiative, proactive use of force, and an exclusive approach to security, which, together, motivated its personnel to use violence quite freely against anyone they suspected of posing a threat. Specifically, Blackwater's military culture motivated its personnel to fire upon suspected threats more quickly, at greater distances, and with a greater quantity of bullets, and to more readily abandon the people they shot at when compared to DynCorp's personnel, who maintained a military culture that encouraged far less violent behaviour. Utilizing the Private Security Company Violent Incident Dataset (PSCVID), created by the author in 2012, the book draws upon data on hundreds of violent incidents involving private security personnel in Iraq to identify trends in the behaviour exhibited by the employees of different firms. Based on this rich and original empirical data, the book provides the definitive study of contemporary private security personnel in the Iraq War. This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, Private Security Companies, Military Studies, War and Conflict Studies and IR in general.

That America was drawn into the Vietnam War by the French has been recognized, but rarely explored. This book analyzes the years from 1945 with the French military reconquest of Vietnam until 1963 with the execution of the French-endorsed dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, demonstrating how the US should not have followed the French into Vietnam. It shows how the Korean War triggered the flow of American military hardware and finances to underpin France's war against the Marxist-oriented Vietnam Republic led by Ho Chi Minh.

'A gorgeous achievement' Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko

'Graceful, poignant and moving' Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

In 1948 Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges ahead, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her.

But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia, under the shadow of the daughter left behind, as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn't remember. Najin and Calvin desperately seek a reunion with Inja, but are the bonds of love strong enough to reconnect their family over distance, time and war? And as deep family secrets are revealed, will everything they long for be upended?

Told through the alternating perspectives of the distanced sisters, and inspired by a true story, The Kinship of Secrets explores the cruelty of war, the power of hope, and what it means to be a sister.

This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems. This book will be of much interest to students of international intervention, foreign policy, political communication, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.

Under the blazing Iraqi sun in the summer of 2007, Shannon Meehan, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, ordered a strike that would take the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting his men. He thought that he would only kill the enemy, but in the ruins of the strike, he discovers his mistake and uncovers a tragedy. For most of his deployment in Iraq, Lt. Meehan felt that he had been made for a life in the military. A tank commander, he worked in the violent Diyala Province, successfully fighting the insurgency by various Sunni and Shia factions. He was celebrated by his senior officers and decorated with medals. But when the U.S. surge to retake Iraq in 2006 and 2007 finally pushed into Baqubah, a town virtually entirely controlled by al Qaida, Meehan would make the decision that would change his life. This is the true story of one soldier's attempt to reconcile what he has done with what he felt he had to do. Stark and devastating, it recounts first-hand the reality of a new type of warfare that remains largely unspoken and forgotten on the frontlines of Iraq.

This book identifies some of the main lessons for civil-military interactions that can be derived from the experiences of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan. The book has three main themes. Firstly, the volume analyses why the ways in which civil and military actors interact in theatres of operations such as Afghanistan matter - for both those categories of actors, and for the ordinary people who their interactions serve. Second, the book highlights that these interactions are invariably complex. The third theme, which arises specifically from 'the PRT experience' in Afghanistan, is that such teams vary significantly in their roles, resourcing, and operational environments. Consequently, to appraise the value of 'the PRT experience', it is necessary to unpack the experiences of different PRTs, which the use of case studies allows one to do. The volume comprises an introduction, identifying some key questions to which the PRT experience gives rise, and case studies of the experiences of the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, Germany and France; chapters dealing with the roles played by NGOs and the UN system and a discussion from an Afghan perspective of the implications of civilian casualties. It is the combination of the diverse cases discussed in this book with a focus on the broad challenges of optimising civil-military interactions that makes this book distinctive. This book will be of much interest to students of the Afghan War, civil-military relations, statebuilding, Central Asian politics and IR in general.