War and State-Building in Afghanistan

Scott Gates is Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway.Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Professor in History at Jadavpur University, India and Global Fellow of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway.

• Introduction Scott Gates (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and Kaushik Roy (Jadavpur University, India)1. The Unchanging Nature of Asymmetric Warfare Marianne Dahl (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway), Håvard Mokleiv Nygård (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway), Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy2. Great Mughals, Warfare and COIN in Afghanistan: 1520-1707 Kaushik Roy3. Counter-Insurgency and Empire: The British Experience with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier, 1838-1947 John Ferris (University of Calgary, Canada)4. How Afghanistan Was Broken: The Disaster of the Soviet Intervention Pavel K. Baev (Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway)5. Mujahidin vs. Communists: Analysing the Mujahidin’s war strategies after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan Anne Stenersen (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment)6. Explaining NATO’s limitations and the Taliban’s Resilience Abdulkader H. Sinno (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)7. Regional Dimensions Kristian Harpviken (Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway)8. The Afghan National Army and Counter-Insurgency Robert Johnson (University of Oxford, UK)9. The Country as a Hole: Imagined States and the Failure of Counterinsurgency in AfghanistanIvan Arreguín-Toft (Boston University, USA)Index

Studies of contemporary conflict in Afghanistan can lack historical perspective or be popularised to an unhelpful degree. The broad historical sweep of this volume from the Mughals to the current NATO deployment places the Afghanistan situation in its proper historical context as well as pointing to its potential future in the context of Afghan (as opposed to Western) military history.