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List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 958.104
EAN: 9780300089028
ISBN: 0300089023
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 294
Publication Date: March 01, 2001
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
This is the single best book available on the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan responsible for harboring the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region--he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's shadowy leaders. Taliban was written and published before the massacres of September 11, 2001, yet it is essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the aftermath of that black day. It includes details on how and why the Taliban came to power, the government's oppression of ordinary citizens (especially women), the heroin trade, oil intrigue, and--in a vitally relevant chapter--bin Laden's sinister rise to power. These pages contain stories of mass slaughter, beheadings, and the Taliban's crushing war against freedom: under Mullah Omar, it has banned everything from kite flying to singing and dancing at weddings. Rashid is for the most part an objective reporter, though his rage sometimes (and understandably) comes to the surface: "The Taliban were right, their interpretation of Islam was right, and everything else was wrong and an expression of human weakness and a lack of piety," he notes with sarcasm. He has produced a compelling portrait of modern evil. --John Miller
Product Description:
Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban—the world's most extreme and radical Islamic organization—into sharp focus in this enormously insightful book. He offers the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers, explaining the Taliban's rise to power, its impact on Afghanistan and the region, its role in oil and gas company decisions, and the effects of changing American attitudes toward the Taliban. He also describes the new face of Islamic fundamentalism and explains why Afghanistan has become the world center for international terrorism.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The interest in a book about the Taliban is obvious, and Ahmed Rashid brings certain undeniable strengths to the subject: he is a Pakistani journalist who has travelled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and conducted many interviews which make this a truly unique and indispensable book. I am not aware of any other history with the same access to sources that Rashid enjoys.
But the execution of the book is poor. First (and this isn't Rashid's fault), it is badly out-dated. It was published before the Taliban assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud (which probably would have changed many of his predictions), before 9/11, and before the U.S.-led coalition invaded.
Second, the organization is odd, and the book gets tedious as a result. The first third is a military-political history of the Taliban from its first appearance in 1994 until its military actions in central Afghanistan between 1998 and 2000. The second section deals with religious and cultural aspects of ... Read More
Rating:  -
It's hard to think of a book that was published with as much good timing as Ahmed Rashid's Taliban. The book itself is heavily academic and therefore largely unexciting, but remains the best treatment of the Taliban up to 2001. Readers wanting analysis of events afterward will obviously have to look elsewhere.
Rating:  -
This fellow is an arm chair quack. He grew up in Pakistan, but that's all about it. Now he makes his living saying cocophony about Pakistan and that region of the world on US TV networks. And with so many networks looking to fill up their airtime, he is having no trouble making this living. He has no clue of what the conditions are on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Says that Musharraf could have 'nipped the evil in the bud' if he had acted sooner in Swat. If Musharraf had done that, then Mr Rashid would have accused Musharraf of being trigger happy. So if you can see, Mr. Rashid is just a monday morning quarter back. All he is doing is second guessing whatever Musharraf does. And in a couple of months he'll be doing the same with the new govt. in Pakistan, because that's what the US TV networks want him to say.
Why would you pay to read baloney from such a quack?
Rating:  -
This was a great novel, go buy Detained Differencesby J. Robert Rowe. It is about Detainee Operations inside Afghanistan.
Rating: -
If you want to understand Afghanistan latest history, this is a great choice. The narrative is center on the Talibans of course, how this group was invented after the end of the cold war and after fighting against the Soviets in a united front known as the Mujaheddin. It is clear to all of us that the Taliban are Islamic Fundamentalist and that its presence on Afghanistan has rendered the country on a violent and unstable path.
Again we found here the endemic problem of some countries of the middle east and central Asia: several ethnics groups with different Islamic religion flavours, Sunni and Shi'ite, with external players trying to consumate the country to a sole religion, and I am referring to external players like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan representing the Sunni side and Iran defending shiism. This is the pitiful case of Afghanistan and in this book all these importants facts are depicted by the author so you become aware of the difficult geography of this country, the ethnics ... Read More
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