“Afghanistan: History, Issues, Bibliography”

Bearing all the hall-marks of a book hurriedly published in the wake of 9/11, this brave little book introduces Afghan people in the following terms:

Crack British troops were slaughtered by bands of Afghans who reportedly exhibited few, if any, inhibitions towards the extinguishing of human life. They have demonstrated time and time again their utter disdain for civilized life and have been known to torture victims using nonhuman methods with using long knives. This barbarian approach, perhaps inherited from Genghis Khan’s hordes, has been successful in repelling foreign invaders to the present time. All of this, it should be noted, is practiced in extreme mountainous terrain, often using caves for shelter and staging areas (3-4).

Nonetheless, it has a somewhat sizable and useful bibliography of books concerning Afghanistan. The annotated bibliography of articles is fairly dated and narrowly focused on the Taliban, the Al-Qaeda, and the opium trade with articles drawn predominantly from the Economist and the New York Times.

The brief summaries of Afghan history are also useful for the beginner and if nothing else provide a glimpse of the unease and confusion with which Afghanistan was greeted upon her intrusion into the insular world of American public discourse.

Gladstone, Cary. Afghanistan: History, Issues, Bibliography. New York, Novinka Books, 2001.

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