Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
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Afghanistan Beyond the Fog of War 2018 - Persistent Failure of a Rentier State (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,242
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Afghanistan Beyond the Fog of War 2018 - Persistent Failure of a Rentier State (Hardcover)
Series: NIAS Monographs, 143
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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This is the first book to scrutinize the root causes of problems
today with Afghan reconstruction. It begins in 1880 with the coming
to power of Emir Abdur Rahman and departure of an occupying British
army. On the northern border, Russian forces were also poised.
Determined to preserve Afghan independence, Abdur Rahman devised a
nation-building project grounded on centralized, autocratic rule
and based on security, modernization and economic reform. Though
continued by his successors, this project ultimately failed. A key
reason for this was that, even as Abdur Rahman implemented policies
that might be understood as `Western' and `rational', the great
powers of the day took their cue from traditional institutional
relationships in Afghanistan; local patronage relations were
extended to the international level. In the process, Afghanistan
became a rentier state, Abdur Rahman's model abandoned in favor of
foreign subsidies increasingly diverted from security and economic
development. Successive foreign powers, especially the Soviet Union
and United States, have upheld this centralized, rentier model of
governance and development despite it consistently failing over the
years. This work explores dynamics seldom covered in other studies
of Afghanistan, including conflict between state-imposed
pashtunization and multiple local/ethnic identities, likewise
contradictions between the clericalism and secularism deployed in
the nation-building process. It explores the largely overlooked ebb
and flow of institutional development in Afghanistan, at all
levels, in the context of international interest in the country,
with special attention to Soviet and US/Coalition strategies and
their effects. It also focuses on the power of patronage relations
in establishing and retaining control in Afghanistan, and how the
extension of such relations to the international level transformed
Afghanistan into a rentier state that struggles to unite its
people. Described by one Afghanistan expert as an excellent piece
of work, very well documented with close attention to detail, this
study offers sober analysis and critical insights. It will interest
scholars and students of Afghan affairs plus policy-makers,
diplomats, soldiers, international organizations and NGOs,
businesses, journalists and many others engaged with Afghanistan
and issues of political, military and economic power,
democratization and civil-military relations in the region.
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