Understand the complexities of the most lethal insurgent group of America's longest war-the Taliban. Battle hardened, tribally oriented, and deeply committed to its cause, the Taliban has proven itself resourceful, adaptable, and often successful. As such, the Taliban presents a counterinsurgency puzzle for which the United States has yet to identify effective military tactics, information operations, and Coalition developmental policies. Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses. Author Mark Silinsky also reviews the successes and failures of the latest U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine to extrapolate the best strategies for future counterinsurgency campaigns. Provides insights from an author with academic training in politics and economics as well as a 30-year defense intelligence community background, including serving as an Army analyst in Afghanistan Presents information recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act Analyzes the tribal, religious, political, and international elements of the greater Taliban problem

In this evocative study of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj, award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to investigate a pivotal moment in history.
The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar--a mystic, poet, and calligrapher of great accomplishment--created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history. All the while, the British were progressively taking over the Emperor's power. When, in May 1857, Zafar was declared the leader of an uprising against the British, he was powerless to resist though he strongly suspected that the action was doomed. Four months later, the British took Delhi, the capital, with catastrophic results. With an unsurpassed understanding of British and Indian history, Dalrymple crafts a provocative, revelatory account of one the bloodiest upheavals in history.

This book comprehensively investigates the position of China's working class between the 1980s and 2010s and considers the consequences of economic reforms in historical perspective. It argues the case that, far from the illusion during the Maoist period that a new society had been established where the working classes held greater political and economic autonomy, economic reforms in the post-Mao era have led to the return of traditional Marxist proletariats in China. The book demonstrates how the reforms of Deng Xiaoping have led to increased economic efficiency at the expense of economic equality through an extensive case study of an SOE (state-owned enterprise) in Sichuan Province as well as wider discussions of the emergence of state capitalism on both a micro and macroeconomic level. The book also discusses workers' protests during these periods of economic reform to reflect the reformation of class consciousness in post-Mao China, drawing on Marx's concept of a transition from a 'class-in-itself' to a 'class-for-itself'. It will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Chinese economic and social history, as well as political economy, sociology, and politics.

In this groundbreaking volume, based on extensive research in Chinese archives and libraries, Jan Kiely explores the pre-Communist origins of the process of systematic thought reform or reformation (ganhua) that evolved into a key component of Mao Zedong's revolutionary restructuring of Chinese society. Focusing on ganhua as it was employed in China's prison system, Kiely's thought-provoking work brings the history of this critical phenomenon to life through the stories of individuals who conceptualized, implemented, and experienced it, and he details how these techniques were subsequently adapted for broader social and political use.

Nazar, literally 'vision', is a unique Arabic-Islamic term/concept that offers an analytical framework for exploring the ways in which Islamic visual culture and aesthetic sensibility have been shaped by common conceptual tools and moral parameters. It intertwines the act of 'seeing' with the act of 'reflecting', thereby bringing the visual and cognitive functions into a complex relationship. Within the folds of this multifaceted relationship lies an entangled web of religious ideas, moral values, aesthetic preferences, scientific precepts, and socio-cultural understandings that underlie the intricacy of one's personal belief. Peering through the lens of nazar, the studies presented in this volume unravel aspects of these entanglements to provide new understandings of how vision, belief, and perception shape the rich Islamic visual culture. Contributors: Samer Akkach, James Bennett, Sushma Griffin, Stephen Hirtenstein, Virginia Hooker, Sakina Nomanbhoy, Shaha Parpia, Ellen Philpott-Teo, Wendy M.K. Shaw.

The mission was to kill the most wanted man in the world--an operation of such magnitude that it couldn't be handled by just any military or intelligence force. The best America had to offer was needed. As such, the task was handed to roughly forty members of America's supersecret counterterrorist unit formally known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta; more popularly, the elite and mysterious unit Delta Force.

This is the real story of the operation, the first eyewitness account of the Battle of Tora Bora, and the first book to detail just how close Delta Force came to capturing bin Laden, how close U.S. bombers and fighter aircraft came to killing him, and exactly why he slipped through our fingers. Lastly, this is an extremely rare inside look at the shadowy world of Delta Force and a detailed account of these warriors in battle.

Tsar and Sultan offers a unique insight into Russian Orientalism as the intellectual force behind Russian-Ottoman encounters. Through war diaries and memoirs, accounts of captivity and diplomatic correspondences, Victor Taki's analysis of military documents demonstrates a crucial aspect of Russia's discovery of the Orient based on its rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Narratives depicting the brutal realities of Russian-Turkish military conflicts influenced the Orientalisation of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, Russian identity was built as the counter-image to the demonised Turk. This book explains the significance of Russian Orientalism on Russian identity and national policies of westernisation. Students of both European and Middle East studies will appreciate Taki's unique approach to Russian-Turkish relations and their influence on Eurasian history.

The Political Economy of News in China: Manufacturing Harmony is the first full-scale application of Herman and Chomsky's classic propaganda model to the news media content of a country with a system that is not outwardly similar to the United States. Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman examines the news media of the People's Republic of China using the five filters of the original model. He asks provocative questions concerning the nature of media ownership, the effect of government or private ownership on media content, the elite-centered nature news sourcing patterns, the benefits and costs of having active special interest groups to influence news coverage, the continued usefulness of the concepts of censorship and propaganda, the ability of advertisers to indirectly influence news production, and the potential increase of pro-capitalist, pro-consumerist ideology and nationalism in Chinese news media. This book will appeal to scholars of international media and journalism.

The Chinese Communist government has twice invoked large-scale military might to crush popular uprisings in capital cities. The second incident-the notorious massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989-is well known. The first, thirty years earlier in Tibet, remains little understood today. Yet in wages of destruction, bloodshed, and trampling of human rights, the tragic toll of March 1959 surpassed Tiananmen. Tibet in Agony provides the first clear historical account of the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa. Sifting facts from the distortions of propaganda and partisan politics, Jianglin Li reconstructs a chronology of events that lays to rest lingering questions about what happened in those fate-filled days and why. Her story begins with throngs of Tibetan demonstrators who-fearful that Chinese authorities were planning to abduct the Dalai Lama, their beloved leader-formed a protective ring around his palace. On the night of March 17, he fled in disguise, only to reemerge in India weeks later to set up a government in exile. But no peaceful resolution awaited Tibet. The Chinese army soon began shelling Lhasa, inflicting thousands of casualties and ravaging heritage sites in the bombardment and the infantry onslaught that followed. Unable to resist this show of force, the Tibetans capitulated, putting Mao Zedong in a position to fulfill his long-cherished dream of bringing Tibet under the Communist yoke. Li's extensive investigation, including eyewitness interviews and examination of classified government records, tells a gripping story of a crisis whose aftershocks continue to rattle the region today.

India has one of the world's largest tribal populations. According to the 2011 census, the total tribal population was estimated at 8.6 percent in India. In Tamil Nadu, the tribal population is about 1.1 percent spread among six major primitive tribal communities. Consumption expenditure is one of the indicators of wellbeing and standard of living in households. This book focuses on the Malaiyali Tribe, which inhabits the Jawadhu hills. This tribal group lives below the poverty line, deriving main sources of income from seasonal agricultural and agricultural labor work. It also depends on secondary sources of income from gathering and selling forest-based products. The major objectives of the study are i) to identify factors influencing household income and expenditure patterns, and ii) to analyze income and expenditure patterns of scheduled tribe households. An appropriate study area will be chosen in the State of Tamil Nadu. The book aims to help understand tribal income and expenditure patterns, and it would be useful for designing further tribal livelihood programs in India and elsewhere.