Author: Jules Stewart Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0857720031 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan is a contentious subject, yet it is often forgotten that the current conflict is in fact the fourth in a string of such wars dating back as far as the early nineteenth century. Aiming to protect the British territories in India from the expanding Russian empire, the British fought a series of conflicts on Afghan territory between 1838 and 1919. The Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries were ill-conceived and led to some of the worst military disasters ever sustained by British forces in this part of the world, with poor strategy in the First Afghan War resulting in the annihilation of 16,000 soldiers and civilians in a single week. In his new book, Jules Stewart explores the potential danger of replaying Britain's military catastrophes and considers what can be learnt from revisiting the story of these earlier Afghan wars.
Author: Jules Stewart Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0857730274 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan is a contentious subject, yet it is often forgotten that the current conflict is in fact the fourth in a string of such wars dating back as far as the early nineteenth century. Aiming to protect the British territories in India from the expanding Russian empire, the British fought a series of conflicts on Afghan territory between 1838 and 1919. The Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries were ill-conceived and led to some of the worst military disasters ever sustained by British forces in this part of the world, with poor strategy in the First Afghan War resulting in the annihilation of 16,000 soldiers and civilians in a single week. In his new book, Jules Stewart explores the potential danger of replaying Britain's military catastrophes and considers what can be learnt from revisiting the story of these earlier Afghan wars.
Author: Barry Neil Alexander Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN: 9781532875281 Category : Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
This is the memoir of the hero we would hope to meet in the trenches where hope too often fails. A British Army veteran, Barry Alexander is a former Nursing Officer who led a unit of medics in Afghanistan. The chaos of combat, the necessity for skill, for tenderness in the face of horror and loss, for ingenuity in a place where heroes fear to tread power his story. He notes, "If this were a Hollywood movie, I would be able to get some forceps up into the wound and clamp off the artery"-but this is no fairy tale despite its cinematic detail. Barry Alexander's candour, straightforward telling and eloquence never revolve into sentimentality. His is a moving memoir that reminds us what it means to be human and humane in the face of war. He never writes as if he is a hero but it is the sense of his heroism through the vivid, and, yes, often wry telling of what he's seen and done, how he's healed others while trying to maintain his own well-being, both physical and mental, that define why you should read Alexander. The memoir closes with poems written by Alexander that will break your heart and make it soar; published in the 2011 anthology Heroes: 100 Poems from the New Generation of War Poets (Ebury Press). -Mary Tabor
Author: Ali Ahmad Jalali Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700624074 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 634
Book Description
The history of Afghanistan is largely military history. From the Persians and Greeks of antiquity to the British, Soviet, and American powers in modern times, outsiders have led military conquests into the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, leaving their indelible marks on this ancient land at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In this book Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister of Afghanistan, taps a deep understanding of his country's distant and recent past to explore Afghanistan's military history during the last two hundred years. With an introductory chapter highlighting the major military developments from early times to the foundation of the modern Afghan state, Jalali's account focuses primarily on the era of British conquest and Anglo-Afghan wars; the Soviet invasion; the civil war and the rise of the Taliban; and the subsequent U.S. invasion. Looking beyond persistent stereotypes and generalizations—e.g., the "graveyard of empires" designation emerging from the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century and the Soviet experience of the 1980s—Jalali offers a nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of the way of war pursued by both state and non-state actors in Afghanistan against different domestic and foreign enemies, under changing social, political, and technological conditions. He reveals how the structure of states, tribes, and social communities in Afghanistan, along with the scope of their controlled space, has shaped their modes of fighting throughout history. In particular, his account shows how dynastic wars and foreign conquests differ in principle, strategy, and method from wars initiated by non-state actors including tribal and community militias against foreign invasions or repressive government. Written by a professional soldier, politician, and noted scholar with a keen analytical grasp of his country's military and political history, this magisterial work offers unique insight into the military history of Afghanistan—and thus, into Afghanistan itself.
Author: William Dalrymple Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307958299 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 494
Book Description
From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 4
Book Description
Presents a biographical sketch of English writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), compiled as part of the Victorian Station resource. Discusses both his writing and his political activities.
Author: Rudyard Kipling Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Tiger! Tiger! - Shere Khan hunt Mowgli. Mowgli returns to the human village and is adopted by Messua and her husband, who believe him to be their long-lost son. Mowgli leads the village boys who herd the village's buffaloes. Shere Khan comes to hunt Mowgli, but he is warned by Gray Brother wolf, and with Akela they find Shere Khan asleep, and stampede the buffaloes to trample Shere Khan to death. Mowgli leaves the village, and goes back to hunt with the wolves until he becomes a man. The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English author Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-a-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont. Famous stories of The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling: Mowgli's Brothers, Kaa's Hunting, Tiger! Tiger!, The White Seal, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Toomai of the Elephants, Her Majesty’s Servants.
Author: Michael E. O'Hanlon Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0815704348 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 183
Book Description
"Michael O'Hanlon and Hassina Sherjan have written a superb analysis of the current strategy in Afghanistan. It is an insightful work by two authors with exceptional knowledge and experience. It is a must-read for those who want a clear understanding of the situation, the strategy, and the path ahead in this crucial conflict." —General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Retired) In this unique collaboration between an American scholar and an Afghan American entrepreneur, Toughing It Out in Afghanistan provides a succinct look at the current situation in Afghanistan with policy prescriptions for the future. Drawing partly on personal experiences, O'Hanlon and Sherjan outline the tactics being used to protect the Afghan population and defeat the insurgents. They discuss ongoing efforts to reform the Afghan police, to run a better prison system for detainees, to enlist the help of more of Afghanistan's tribes, and to attack corruption. They also discuss the Afghan resistance, including an explanation of how the Taliban mounted a comeback and what it will take to defeat them. The authors also seek to demolish common myths about Afghanistan, such as the notion that somehow its people hate foreigners. And they explain how to use metrics, such as those in the Brookings Afghanistan Index, to determine if the new strategy is succeeding in the course of 2010 and 2011. Included are policy suggestions to further increase the size and capabilities of the Afghan army and police, to facilitate Afghan businesses' involvement in economic recovery, to expand the role of other Muslim nations in the effort, and to create a strong international aid coordinator as a civilian counterpart to NATO's military leader.
Author: Wayne E. Lee Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190920645 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lackedtriumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson focus on, respectively, the Battle of Monongahela (1755), the Battle of Manila (1898), and the Battle of Makuan, Afghanistan (2020) - conflicts in which American soldiers were forced to engage in"irregular" warfare, confronting an enemy entirely alien to them. This enemy rejected the Western conventions of warfare and defined success and failure - victory and defeat - in entirely different ways. Symmetry of any kind is lost. Here was not ennobling engagement but atrocity, unanticipatedinsurgencies, and strategic stalemate.War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat and what its effects have been. They are therefore worth comparing for what they hold incommon as well as what they reveal about our attitude toward war itself. The Other Face of Battle reminds us that "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare is now not the exception but the rule. Understanding its roots seems more crucial than ever.
Author: Rachele Carmona Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1632505738 Category : Crafts & Hobbies Languages : en Pages : 145
Book Description
Discover a new source of inspiration for your crochet hook...the beautiful work of today's modern makers! Follow popular crochet blanket designer Rachele Carmona through her unique collection of crochet blankets inspired by the work of popular independent artists. The Art of Crochet Blankets will help you create your own colorful crochet blankets as unique works of art for your home! Inside this one-of-a-kind crochet blanket guide you'll find: • Details on how to translate art to hook with 18 bold and unique crochet afghan patterns influenced by the works of their feature artist. • Modern quilts, fabric designs, tapestry weaving, digital art, and more become the source of one-of-a-kind projects for a more artful home. • Biographies and beautiful photos profiling 6 inspiring modern makers--Tula Pink, April Rhodes, Maryanne Moodie, Fransisco Valle, Maud Vantours, and Caitline Dowe-Sandes. Discover the inspiration that lies beyond the world of crochet with The Art of Crochet Blankets.
Author: Jules Stewart
Author: Jules Stewart
Author: Barry Neil Alexander
Author: Ali Ahmad Jalali
Author: William Dalrymple
Author: 
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Author: Michael E. O'Hanlon
Author: Wayne E. Lee
Author: Rachele Carmona