An Enemy We Created

Download or read book An Enemy We Created written by Alex Strick van Linschoten and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To this day, the belief is widespread that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are synonymous, that their ideology and objectives are closely intertwined, and that they have made common cause against the West for decades. In An Enemy We Created, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn debunk this myth and reveal the much more complex reality that lies beneath it. Drawing upon their unprecedented fieldwork in Afghanistan, as well as their Arabic, Dari, and Pashtu skills, the authors show that the West's present entanglement in Afghanistan is predicated on the false assumption that defeating the Taliban will forestall further terrorist attacks worldwide. While immersing themselves in Kandahar society, the authors interviewed Taliban decision-makers, field commanders, and ordinary fighters, thoroughly exploring the complexity of the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the individuals who established both groups. They show that from the mid-1990s onward, the Taliban and al-Qaeda diverged far more often than they converged. They also argue that this split creates an opportunity to engage the Taliban on two fundamental issues: renouncing al-Qaeda and guaranteeing that Afghanistan will not be a sanctuary for international terrorists. Yet the insurgency is changing, and it could soon be too late to find a political solution. The authors contend that certain aspects of the campaign in Afghanistan, especially night raids, the killings of innocent civilians, and attempts to fragment and decapitate the Taliban are having the unintended consequence of energizing the resistance, creating more opportunities for al-Qaeda, and helping it to attain its objectives. The first book to fully untangle the myths from the realities in the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, An Enemy We Created is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's really happening in Afghanistan.

Download or read book An Enemy We Created written by Alex Strick van Linschoten and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: [London]: C. Hurst & Co., 2011.

Download or read book Afghanistan written by Musa Khan Jalalzai and published by Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writers and analysts have uncovered the illegal role of private militias’ commanders in Afghanistan. These commanders and self-styled leaders were driven overwhelmingly by their personal power, and they were not only considered illegitimate on the domestic political scene, and viewed as irrelevant. The present Afghan government is a mix of all types of its efforts, including war criminals, and militia commanders who smuggle narcotics, drugs, arm, and kill women and children. War criminals and militias commanders have developed complex survival and legitimation strategies beyond their territorial realms. After years of its establishment, the Afghan local police (ALP) was undermined due to its failure to stabilize remote regions of the country. The US proxy militias are the source of consternation. The US Army established an incompetent intelligence agency (NDS) to serve its interest. The NDS established regional militias to support the CIA and Pentagon war mission against the people of the country. The NDS established Unit-01 for Central Region, Unit-02 for Eastern Region, Unit-03 for Southern Region, and Unit-04, as a Khost Protection Force (KPF), and committed war crimes in these regions with the support of the US Army and CIA. This book has documented the role of all internal and external actors, warlords and stakeholders.

Download or read book My Share of the Task written by General Stanley McChrystal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "General McChrystal is a legendary warrior with a fine eye for enduring lessons about leadership, courage, and consequence." —Tom Brokaw General Stanley McChrystal is widely admired for his hunger to know the truth, his courage to find it, and his humility to listen to those around him. Even as the commanding officer of all U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, he stationed himself forward and frequently went on patrols with his troops to experience their challenges firsthand. In this illuminating New York Times bestseller, McChrystal frankly explores the major episodes and controversies of his career. He describes the many outstanding leaders he served with and the handful of bad leaders he learned not to emulate. And he paints a vivid portrait of how the military establishment turned itself, in one generation, into the adaptive, resilient force that would soon be tested in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the wider War on Terror.

Download or read book Hubris, Self-Interest, and America's Failed War in Afghanistan written by Thomas P. Cavanna and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the conduct of the US-led post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. Adopting a long-term perspective, it argues that even though Washington initially had an opportunity to achieve its security goals and give Afghanistan a chance to enter a new era, it compromised any possibility of success from the very moment it let bin Laden escape to Pakistan in December 2001, and found itself locked in a strategic overreach. Given the bureaucratic and rhetorical momentum triggered by the war on terror in America, the Bush Administration was bound to deploy more resources in Afghanistan sooner or later (despite its focus on Iraq). The need to satisfy unfulfilled counter-terrorism objectives made the US dependent on Afghanistan’s warlords, which compromised the country’s stability and tarnished its new political system. The extension of the US military presence made Washington lose its leverage on the Pakistan army leaders, who, aware of America’s logistical dependency on Islamabad, supported the Afghan insurgents – their historical proxies - more and more openly. The extension of the war also contributed to radicalize segments of the Afghan and Pakistani populations, destabilizing the area further. In the meantime, the need to justify the extension of its military presence influenced the US-led coalition into proclaiming its determination to democratize and reconstruct Afghanistan. While highly opportunistic, the emergence of these policies proved both self-defeating and unsustainable due to an inescapable collision between the US-led coalition’s inherent self-interest, hubris, limited knowledge, limited attention span and limited resources, and, on the other hand, Afghanistan’s inherent complexity. As the critical contradictions at the very heart of the campaign increased with the extension of the latter’s duration, scale, and cost, America’s leaders, entrapped in path-dependence, lost their strategic flexibility. Despite debates on troops/resource allocation and more sophisticated doctrines, they repeated the same structural mistakes over and over again. The strategic overreach became self-sustaining, until its costs became intolerable, leading to a drawdown which has more to do with a pervasive sense of failure than with the accomplishment of any noble purpose or strategic breakthrough.

Download or read book Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine written by Brenden Sewell and published by Packt Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine is a step-by-step approach to building a fully functional game, one system at a time. Starting with a basic First Person Shooter template, each chapter will extend the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You will progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to gradually more complex systems that will generate user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. Focusing on universally applicable skills, the expertise you will develop in utilizing Blueprints can translate to other types of genres. By the time you finish the book, you will have a fully functional First Person Shooter game and the skills necessary to expand on the game to develop an entertaining, memorable experience for your players. From making customizations to player movement to creating new AI and game mechanics from scratch, you will discover everything you need to know to get started with game development using Blueprints and Unreal Engine 4.

Download or read book Captain Code written by Ben Forta and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becoming a coder is all fun and games! Everyone should learn to code. Much like drawing and sketching, playing an instrument, cooking, or taking pictures and shooting videos, coding is a creative endeavor, which means it's a way to actually create stuff, and creating stuff is incredibly rewarding and satisfying. Sure, it's fun to spend hours on your phone looking at what other people have created; but that's nothing compared to the joy and satisfaction of creating things that other people consume and use. Yep, coding is fun! And if that weren't enough, when you learn to code you develop all sorts of invaluable skills and traits beyond just coding. These include planning, problem solving, communication, logic, empathy, attention to detail, patience, resilience, persistence, and creativity. And it turns out that these skills (especially creativity and creative problem solving) are some of the most in-demand out there. So, coding will help your future career, too, regardless of what that career may be. But, where to start? Captain Code is a welcoming, engaging, and fun introduction to becoming a coder, designed for the young (ages 10-17) and young-at-heart. Experienced educators and coders Ben & Shmuel Forta will guide you using Python, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. You'll learn by creating games, yes, games, from simple projects to retro text-based adventures to complete graphical arcade style games. Captain Code is 400 glossy color pages of goodness packed with welcoming images, useful tips and tidbits, and engaging, readable text that focuses on doing while having fun. All code listings are in full-color and QR codes link to bonus content, downloads, challenge solutions, and more. Captain Code makes coding exciting and rewarding, as it prepares a new generation to take their next steps forward—in education, careers, or both. So, are you ready to unleash your coding superpower and become Captain Code?