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Title: Afghanistan : A Short History of Its People and Politics by Martin Ewans ISBN: 0-06-050508-7 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: A country ravaged by centuries of war
Comment: This is a great history of Afghanistan, easily written for those who do not lknow much about the area. It gives a wonderful overview of the history of Afghanistan, the origins of its tribes and languages. For anybody interested in Afghanistan this is a good place to start.

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent primer on a fascinating country
Comment: Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics, by Martin Ewans, is a fantastic book. This fascinating account of this plucky country was chock full of facts that have immediate relevance. Covering from ancient times to 2002, this book provides a traditional history--no stories of the working classes or women. But it covers the byzantine regime changes of Afghanistan very well. It als does a fine job of explaining how the Afghanistan state was in constant tension between the local tribal powers and the more modern central authority of the king. The foreign situation was also an exercise in balance, with the Afghans depending on money, guns and expertise from British India to fend off the Russian Empire. However, the relationship with the Brits wasn't entirely godlen, as the three Anglo-Afghan wars suggest.

While the history was intensely interesting, the last chapters of the book, which cover the politics and battles of the last two decades which have left Afghanistan such a mess, were the most relevant for me. If you want to know how mcuh the CIA spent supporting the Taliban, it's in there. If you want to know which external nations supported which of the warring factions, it's in there. If you want to know why Afghanistan grows the majority of the world's opium, it's in there.

I won't say this book was easy to get through. The writing is quite dense. The frequent re-appearance of characters was at times confusing, but I fear that is more a feature of Afghan history. For a concise political history of a nation that we're becoming more and more involved with, check out this book.

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Survey
Comment: This is a great book for readers interested in a brief survey of Afghanistan's political history and foreign relations from ancient times to 9/11. Author Ewans, a retired British diplomat who served in Kabul, writes superbly, stays focused on issues that are important and interesting, and has a droll sense of the role played by stupidity in foreign affairs. The highlights are the chapters on Anglo-Afghan relations in the 19th century and the Soviet occupation and civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. Ewans does stumble in early chapters that reshash boring dynastic histories from the middle ages (hence my rating of four stars), but this is the only flaw in an otherwise excellent book.

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