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DIRECTORATE S:
₨ 1,995Before 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as “Directorate S”, was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, to enlarge Pakistan’s sphere of influence. After 9/11, when 59 countries, led by the US, deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the US was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.
Today, we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But, more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.’s “Directorate S”. This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence.
Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history,
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PARTISANS OF ALLAH
₨ 2,200The idea of jihad is central to Islamic faith and ethics, yet its meanings have been highly contested over time. They have ranged from the philosophical struggle to live an ethical life to the political injunction to wage war against enemies of Islam. Today more than ever, jihad signifies the political opposition between the Islamic world and the West. As the line between Muslims and non-Muslims becomes more sharply drawn, Ayesha Jalal seeks to retrieve the ethical meanings of this core Islamic principle in South Asian history.
Drawing on historical, legal, and literary sources, Jalal traces the intellectual itinerary of jihad through several centuries and across the territory connecting the Middle East with South Asia. She reveals how key innovations in modern Islamic thought resulted from historical imperatives. The social and political scene in India before, during, and after British colonial rule forms the main backdrop. We experience jihad as armed warfare waged by Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly between 1826 and 1831, the calls to jihad in the great rebellion of 1857, the fusion of jihad with a strand of anticolonial nationalism in the early twentieth century, and the contemporary politics of self-styled jihadis in Pakistan, waging war to liberate co-religionists in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Partisans of Allah survey this rich and tumultuous history of South Asian Muslims and its critical contribution to the intellectual development of the key concept of jihad. Analyzing the complex interplay of ethics and politics in Muslim history, the author effectively demonstrates the preeminent role of jihad in the Muslim faith today.
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SUFISM, IMPERIALISM AND TRIBALISM AMONG THE PAKHTUNS
₨ 2,621This book provides not only a detailed account of the mysterious personality of Bayazid Ansari, the Roshniya Movement but also explores the sixteenth-century political, religious, and cultural landscapes of the Pakhtuns’ borderland. It paints a picture mostly based on primary and authentic secondary sources and its scientific analysis of the tribal and spiritual resistance offered by the tribes to Mughal imperialism. It tries to present the contextual situation of the age obtaining around the event that has been buried in the sands of history. This work challenges the established concepts about Bayazid and his movement terming it as incidental collaborators of the Mughals. Given its non-conformist approach, the book will generate a debate among scholars on this very important episode of the Pakhtuns’ history.
Prof. Dr. Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah
Historian, former Dean FSS, QAU, Islamabad.The book under review paints a beautiful picture of the tribal and spiritual resistance offered by Pakhtun society against the tyranny of Mughal imperialism. It not only covers the mysterious aspects of Bayazid Ansari’s maverick personality but also seeks to explain and interpret the intellectual basis of the Roshniya movement. Dr. Himayatullah certainly deserves appreciation, as he has successfully attempted to present the contextual situation of the age obtaining around events, the details of which remain buried in the sands of history. He has also explored the roles of famous characters, with their thoughts and actions, and has explained their strengths and weaknesses. His effort seems to be in accord with the requirements and standards of scientific inquiry. His scholarly effort also seems to be in line with the new parlance of modern historiography.
Prof. Dr. Ghulam Qasim Marwat
Qurtuba University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar.This is an incredibly valuable work of history and scholarship. Dr. Yaqubi’s work is thoroughly rooted in a deep consideration of the sources. Unlike other approaches that may interpret Bayazid through present-day political aspirations, this work finds a way to interpret the context of Bayazid’s moment through a careful analysis of the Roshani and other contemporary works. That’s fantastic.
Dr. William Sherman
University of North Carolina, USA.₨ 3,495 -
TALIBAN
₨ 4,945Following the U.S-Taliban peace deal of February 2020 – and the U.S. promised withdrawal from Afghanistan – the Taliban began terrorizing Afghan security forces, civilians, and the government in Kabul. By August 2021, the group had seized control of the entire country.
Taliban is a New York Times bestseller by the award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid. Now considered a modern classic, the book provides rare insight into the history of the Taliban, their political movement, their leaders, and their aims. This authoritative account is renowned for being able to explain one of the world’s most extreme organizations from its inception in northern Pakistan in the early 1990s to its rise to power. In doing so, Rashid closely details their impact on Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Central Asia, and how and why the Taliban spread, including their relationship with both Al-Qaeda and the U.S.
The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 40 languages. This third edition marks twenty years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and the author adds a new introduction to reflect on how the group regained its strength, the humanitarian crisis, and what Taliban rule is likely to mean for the region and the world.
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CONTEMPORARY MILITARY STRATEGY AND THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
₨ 33,116Contemporary Military Strategy and the Global War on Terror offers an in-depth analysis of US/UK military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to the present day. It explores the development of contemporary military strategy in the West in the modern age before interrogating its application in the Global War on Terror. The book provides detailed insights into the formulation of military plans by political and military elites in the United States and the United Kingdom for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Alastair Finlan highlights the challenges posed by each of these unique theatres of operation, the nature of the diverse enemies faced by coalition forces, and the shortcomings in strategic thinking about these campaigns. This fresh perspective on strategy in the West and how it has been applied in recent military campaigns facilitates a deep understanding of how wars have been and will be fought.
Including key terms, concepts, and discussion questions for each chapter, Contemporary Military Strategy and the Global War on Terror is a crucial text in strategic studies and required reading for anyone interested in the new realities of transnational terrorism and twenty-first-century warfare.
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THE RETURN OF THE TALIBAN
₨ 1,695The first account of the new Taliban—showing who they are, what they want, and how they differ from their predecessors
Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have had effective control of Afghanistan—a scenario few Western commentators anticipated. But after a twenty-year-long bitter war against the Republic of Afghanistan, reestablishing control is a complex procedure. What is the Taliban’s strategy now that they’ve returned to power?
In this groundbreaking new account, Hassan Abbas examines the resurgent Taliban as ruptures between moderates and the hardliners in power continue to widen. The group is now facing debilitating threats—from humanitarian crises to the Islamic State in Khorasan—but also engaging on the world stage, particularly with China and central Asian states. Making considered use of sources and contacts in the region, and offering profiles of major Taliban leaders, Return of the Taliban is the essential account of the movement as it develops and consolidates its grasp on Afghanistan.
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THE TALIBAN REVIVAL
THE PASHTUNS
₨ 1,695The Pashtuns are perhaps the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. They inhabit a continuous stretch of land from the Hindu Kush to the Indus, across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan used the Pashtun-dominated areas in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as a launching pad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later during the US-led War on Terror. In the process, FATA was kept in a constitutional and informational black hole. The discontent finally burst in 2018 when the extra-judicial killing of a Pashtun youth led to widespread protests. This book by veteran analyst Tilak Devasher fulfills a gap in the geopolitical understanding of South Asia, given the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the shifting power equations in the region.
DESCENT INTO CHAOS
₨ 1,895In Descent Into Chaos: Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Threat to Global Security Ahmed Rashid explores the most volatile and dangerous region in the world.
The war on terror is being lost – but not just in Iraq. As this devastating book shows, the real crisis zone now lies in central Asia. Veteran reporter Ahmed Rashid has unparalleled access to the region and knows its leading players, from presidents to warlords. Here he documents how closely Pakistan’s US-backed regime is linked with extremists; how broken promises in Afghanistan have led to a resurgent Taliban fed by drugs money; and how the largest landmass in the world is now a breeding ground for terrorism.
In this story of squandered opportunities, misguided alliances and double-dealing, Rashid pinpoints with chilling accuracy where the true threat to our global security comes from.
‘Compulsively readable’
Justin Marozzi, Evening StandardProfound and lively … it reads like a thriller … graphic, detailed and worrying’
Michael Fathers, New Statesman‘Gripping … a major contribution to understanding the region and the events of recent years … thought-provoking and important’
Jason Burke, Observe‘His knowledge of events and people there is second to none and the information he has gathered, often at great personal risk, makes alarming reading’
Kim Sengupta, Independent‘A superbly researched account of post-9/11 Asia … outstanding’
Sameer Rahim, Daily TelegraphAuthor: Ahmed Rashid
ISBN: 9780141020860
PAKISTAN ON THE BRINK
₨ 1,395An urgent, on-the-ground report from Pakistan–from the bestselling author of “Descent” “Into Chaos” and “Taliban” Ahmed Rashid, one of the world’s leading experts on the social and political situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, offers a highly anticipated update on the possibilities and hazards–facing the United States after the death of Osama bin Laden and as Operation Enduring Freedom winds down. With the characteristic professionalism that has made him the preeminent independent journalist in Pakistan for three decades, Rashid asks the important questions and delivers informed insights about the future of U.S. relations with the troubled region. His most urgent book to date, “Pakistan on the Brink” is the third volume in a comprehensive series that is a call to action to our nation’s leaders and an exposition of this conflict’s impact on the security of the world.
ISBN: 9780143122838
AUTHOR: AHMED RASHID
JIHAD
₨ 2,895An essential examination of the roots of fundamentalist rage in Central Asia, from the acclaimed author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos. Ahmed Rashid, whose masterful account of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime became required reading after September 11, turns his legendary skills as an investigative journalist to five adjacent Central Asian Republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan where religious repression, political corruption, and extreme poverty have created a fertile climate for militant Islam. Based on groundbreaking research and numerous interviews, Rashid explains the roots of fundamentalist rage in Central Asia, describes the goals and activities of its militant organizations, including Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, and suggests ways of neutralizing the threat and bringing stability to the troubled region. A timely and pertinent work, Jihad is essential reading for anyone who seeks to gain a better understanding of a region we overlook at our peril.
Author: Ahmed Rashid
ISBN: 9780142002605
THE RETURN OF THE TALIBAN
₨ 6,695The first account of the new Taliban-showing who they are, what they want, and how they differ from their predecessors Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have effective control of Afghanistan-a scenario few Western commentators anticipated. But after a twenty-year-long bitter war against the Republic of Afghanistan, reestablishing control is a complex procedure. What is the Taliban’s strategy now that they’ve returned to power?In this groundbreaking new account, Hassan Abbas examines the resurgent Taliban as ruptures between moderates and the hardliners in power continue to widen. The group is now facing debilitating threats-from humanitarian crises to the Islamic State in Khorasan-but also engaging on the world stage, particularly with China and central Asian states. Making considered use of sources and contacts in the region, and offering profiles of major Taliban leaders, Return of the Taliban is the essential account of the movement as it develops and consolidates its grasp on Afghanistan.
SUBCONTINENT ADRIFT
₨ 9,995While several books have examined the security challenges faced by India and Pakistan in isolation as well as the strategies they have each adopted in response, Subcontinent Adrift places the two sets of clashing outlooks, policies, and strategies together and analyzes the causes and consequences of the drift in South Asia. Subcontinent Adrift maps out and explains India and Pakistan’s respective interests, motivations, and long-term objectives from a contemporary perspective. Much has happened in the intervening period since the nuclear tests in 1998 that has shaped the rivalry between these two countries, including advances in their strategic capabilities, domestic political shifts, and changes in the global balance of power. Hence the book considers to what extent the “drifting” Subcontinent is affecting the political, military, and economic dynamics on the international stage and causing a “global drift”-described by Chester Crocker as a “disorderly mixture of turbulence and drift in relationships among the leading powers and key regional states.”
This study identifies the latent and emergent drivers behind the mounting acrimony in South Asia-notably, India’s ambitions as a “rising power” coupled with the resurgence of China and Pakistan’s strategic anxiety as the United States unmoors itself from Afghanistan and embraces India. India is similarly concerned as China advances its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across the region, developing a network of economic and strategic hubs and bringing India’s neighbors into China’s embrace through its strategy of peripheral diplomacy. Countries in the region are attracted by the new opportunities offered through the BRI, which in turn undercuts India’s national objectives and provides new incentives for Pakistan to balance against India. Khan elucidates the intricacies of such external drivers vis-à-vis the internal factors of both countries and their ramifications in various scenarios.
Subcontinent Adrift will be a valuable addition to the fields of international relations, security studies, and Asian studies. This book is in the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security Series (General Editor: Dr. Geoffrey R.H. Burn).
TROIKA ENDGAME: PAKISTAN UNDER BENAZIR BHUTTO 1993-1996
₨ 2,996Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif didn’t acquit themselves well in the “trial of democracy” from 1988 to 1993. They did worse confronting the “dilemma of democracy” from 1993-1999 – how an elected government can complete its five year term and also provide a level playing field to the “government-in-waiting” to turn the tables at the end of the period. In consequence, Pakistan was driven straight into the jaws of martial law in 1999.
This volume traces the rise and fall of the second Bhutto regime from 1993-96. It records how, through the good offices of the Establishment, she began on a conciliatory note with Nawaz Sharif by offering to nominate a consensus candidate (Wasim Sajjad) as President in exchange for jointly undoing the notorious Clause 58-2(B) of the 8th Constitutional Amendment which hung like the sword of Damocles over every prime minister. It tracks the negotiations to breaking point, compelling her to nominate her “own man”, Farooq Leghari, to the Presidency. It records Nawaz Shun cunning ways to drive a wedge between Leghari and Bhutto, which eventually led the former to use the 8th Amendment to sack the latter.
The major policy issues that preoccupied Benazir Bhutto in her second term were nuclear proliferation, MQM terrorism in Karachi and conflict in Kashmir. The book explains how the US applied economic and military sanctions to pressure Pakistan to cap, freeze and roll back its nuclear programme but failed to achieve its objective. It details how she successfully tackled and put down MQM terrorism through effective use of civil-military power. And it records how she teamed up with the military to promote jihad in India-Occupied Kashmir.
The book is about foul play by both Bhutto and Sharif; foreign policy blues; warlordism in Afghanistan; mythology of Mohajirism; nuclear policy; Mehrangate; General Mirza Aslam Beg’s “grand plan”; threat of an India-Pak nuclear war; journalists for sale; pains of privatization; Indo-Pak relations; doctrine of necessity; corruption and Surreygate. The analysis covers the mind of Benazir Bhutto, her Achilles heel and fatal flaws.
It is indispensable reading for the student of history who wishes to understand how and why democracy failed to take root in the 1990s.
₨ 3,995
ON THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR
₨ 7,848In 1991, a British university student spent his summer break with Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. Now a prize-winning reporter and author of a critically acclaimed book on al Qaeda, Jason Burke travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, and Thailand to meet with refugees, mujahideen, and government ministers in a probing search to understand Islam, and Islamic radicalism, in the context of the War on Terrorism: His symbolic destination is the ancient city of Kandahar, a crossroads of history that was once the capital of Afghanistan, overtaken by such invaders as Alexander the Great, Tamer lane, and Genghis Khan before it became the Taliban’s administrative headquarters.
Burke, a daring foreign correspondent for Britain’s Observer, crosses borders, dodges incoming shells, and speaks with villagers, soldiers, and government officials in a quest to understand why they fight (or don’t fight), and what they fear and hope for. He interviews Taliban officials, a former torturer for Saddam Hussein’s dreaded Mukhabarat (intelligence service), a soccer- loving suicide bomber, and an American sniper in Iraq, among many others.
With crisp, evocative writing reminiscent of Hemingway (who also started as a foreign correspondent), On the Road to Kandahar brings the reader close to the people in whose villages and cities the “War on Terrorism” and Islamists’ violent acts of anti-Western, anti- modern jihad are being fought.
Praised by London’s Daily Mail as intensely personal and accessible: this is the gripping story of a search for answers to some of the most urgent questions of our time: What drives Islamic fundamentalism, and how should the West respond? Are we so fundamentally different that we can’t coexist? Although much of Burke’s account concerns war and suffering, he reaches the optimistic conclusion that extremist violence alienates its populations, and so is doomed to fail and wither away.
RESCUING AFGHANISTAN
₨ 994Compared to post-invasion Iraq, Afghanistan seems a success story; but first impressions can be misleading. The country remains on a knife-edge, and the loss of momentum in its transition from the Taliban regime puts Afghanistan at grave risk of relapsing into dangerous insecurity.
Although many Afghans have contributed courageously to rescuing their country, and some key benchmarks have been achieved, Afghanistan continues to face severe difficulties. Elite political competition is fierce, and able ministehave been removed when deemed to be occupying too much of the limelight. President Hamid Karzai, while articulate and incorruptible, remains wedded to a politics of bargaining and networking that has seen unappetizing figures promoted to positions they have then abused. This has created space for the resurgence of the Taliban in the south, with Pakistani backing. The new Afghan National Army is proving too expensive to be locally sustainable, and the police force offeonly a pale shadow of what is needed. The predominance of opium in the economy poses the risk that Afghanistan could become a nacre-state, and on a range of human development indicatoit remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with popular frustration rising. While foreign governments have contributed large sums to reconstruction, too much money ahs gone to Western contractors, at the expense of local capacity.
It is not too late to turn things around, but time is running short. Only if the Afghan government re-focuses on the delivery of competent, clean and inclusive governance and the wider world ensures that its commitments match its rhetoric, is it at all likely that disaster can be avoided.
₨ 6,210
THE AFGHAN AMULET
₨ 896Intrigued by an exquisite and mysterious amulet on an antique dress from Kohistan, ‘land of mountains’ in Pakistan, Sheila Paine began an epic quest that took her from the peaks of the Himalaya to the shores of Greece. In this, the first part of her journey, she set off alone and undaunted for the rugged Hindu Kush, her only possessions a tiny rucksack and a litre of vodka. Over the course of several months she followed endless clues – the patterns on a woman’s dress, pendants hanging outside village houses to ward off djinns, scraps of embroidery in a bazaar – that took her to some of the most remote and inhospitable places in the world. She travelled to Makran and in Pakistan, an area closed completely to foreigners, and to Iran, where she was constantly watched by government minders. She was smuggled into Afghanistan by a band of mujahedin, and then forged on into Iraq and Turkish Kurdistan from Iran, before one final piece of evidence led her to the small town of Razgrad in eastern Bulgaria and news of the amulet she so tirelessly sought.
₨ 4,136
MODERN AFGHANISTAN
₨ 896Afghanistan’s history is a sad one: Soviet invasion in 1979; Pakistan-backed internal conflict in the 1980s: the Taliban regime and then the US invasion after the catastrophe of September 11th. Why does Afghanistan remain so vulnerable to domestic instability, foreign intervention and ideological extremism? Amin Saikal provides us with a sweeping new understanding of this troubled country that grounds Afghanistan’s problems in rivalries stemming from a series of dynastic alliances within the successive royal families from the end of the eighteenth century to the pro-Communist coup of 1978. This is the definitive study of Afghanistan.
₨ 6,205
