Product Description
Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates theunderlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs,oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the largerworkings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. The result has been a staggering increase in global drug traffic. Thus, the author argues, the exercise of power by covert means, or parapolitics, often metastasizes into deep politics - the interplayof unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. Scott contends that we must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority but also in so-called soft power. We need a soft politics of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

naked truth
Delivered as promised.Completely satisfied with the distributor.The book delivers the naked truth about our foreign policy.There are pages of footnotes backing up the content.I would recommend the author finding an editor to create an easier read for the material.But the truth is where and how you find it. Compared to the standard fare of feel good news it is a refreshing wind on a hot day.

The dark side of foreign policy.
Peter Dale Scott starts out with some definitions in the book.
Parapolitics-"describes the intentional controlling behavior, mostly executive and bureaucratic."
"Deep politics can refer to any form of sinister, unacknowledged influence."

Every chapter is loaded with notes at the end.

Scott emphasizes the monumental influence that oil interests have had on American foreign policy actions. This is often hidden from public view.

He mentions Nugan Hand bank which was a suspected CIA proprietary that combined drug financing with arms deals. Jonathan Kwitney also wrote an excellent book on Nugan Hand.

The CIA connection to opium and other drugs predates Air America and there are fascinating ties to the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias and even some famous American mafioso.

The material on BCCI bank was an eye-opener!

The author updated his material about the Indochina operations and war from the 1960's and 1970's. He examines the oil companies and their lobbyist's interests in former war areas like Cambodia.

One of the quotes that accurately reflects the point of this book is found on page 199. "The apparent involvement of CIA proprietaries with foreign narcotics operations is paralleled by their apparent interlock with domestic institutions serving organized crime."

"Drugs Oil and War" is a thoroughly documented book about foreign policy and the history of war, the part that oil and drugs often play in the matter.

Shocking material in a chewy read
A hard-to-follow structure and a dry, academic writing style make this powerful and much-needed book less accessible than it should be.

Spurred in part by the near-unanimous 5-star acclaim among the Amazon reviewers, I bought this book. I was a bit disappointed. Not because of the content: Scott's authority comes through strongly as a concerned, longtime, and deep observer of the deliberately hidden dimension of U.S. foreign policy operating in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. Writing since the time of the Vietnam War, he has dug and dug into these things, and we are the beneficiaries of his spadework.

My issue is more with the structure and presentation of the book. As other reviewers have noted, the book is in fact mostly a reprinting of some of Scott's earlier writings, with some new, brief introductions. This means the book is not really unified, but more a collection of essays with some overlap and repetition which I found sometimes confusing. Counterintuitively, it moves backward in time, starting with a discussion of Afghanistan in 2002 and progressing to Colombia in 2001 and Indochina from 1950 to 1970. The book is not a single narrative or a single argument, and its unity suffers for this.

Scott delivers what should be the most sensational pieces of information--such as that presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all had strikingly intimate ties to organized-crime figures--in a dry, unemphatic way that makes for a strangely subdued, scholarly tone (with copious end-notes), and thus a less engaging read than it should be.

Also: if you are not thoroughly familiar with things like the progression of political and military events in Indochina leading up to the Vietnam War, you will find the book heavy going, since Scott assumes this knowledge on the part of the reader.

All of that being said, this book is very important, and Scott has done a huge service to us all in writing it. In the nature of things, he can't create a seamless narrative of American skulduggery in its wars since World War Two, since this has been kept secret. But he presents a host of suggestive and damning evidence of systematic, covert wrongdoing by American intelligence and military operatives working opportunistically with drug traffickers and organized-crime figures, often without the knowledge of the administration they are ostensibly serving. These people have taken the adage "the ends justify the means" to the extreme--although what the desired "ends" actually might be is often far from clear.

So: five stars for content and its importance; three stars for presentation. We need more Peter Dale Scotts--a lot more of them. His ideas need to be popularized, but it seems that Scott himself is not the guy to do that.

Superb study of US state's use of mercenary drug-runners
This is an outstanding and revelatory book, a brilliant account of a drug-trafficking empire. He shows how US protection for their drug-runner allies has led to the huge increase in drug trafficking in the last 50 years.

The US strategy of opposing national self-determination involves alliances with drug-traffickers like the Sicilian Mafia, the Triads in South-East Asia, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Kosovo Liberation Army in Europe, the death squads in Colombia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. As President Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, the USA "should employ whatever means ... arms here, opium there."

From the 1870s to the 1960s, the British rulers of Malaya farmed the opium franchise to the Triads. The US state first copied this strategy in 1949, when it armed the defeated Kuomintang's drug networks in Burma and Laos, after the victorious Chinese revolution began to eliminate Chinese opium, then the source of 85% of the world's heroin.

The US state encouraged its allies to enrich themselves through drugs, while it blamed the communist enemy for the evils that its allies were committing. From 1949 until at least 1964, the US told the UN Narcotics Commission that China was responsible for drug imports into the USA. In fact, the drugs were trafficked from Burma and Thailand, under the protection of the Kuomintang troops backed by the CIA. The Hong Kong authorities stated that they "were not aware of a traffic in narcotics from the mainland of China through Hong Kong" but "quantities of narcotics reached Hong Kong via Thailand."

The US state assaulted the whole region of South East Asia between 1950 and 1975, just as it is attacking the Middle East today. An earlier effort at regime change in Laos in 1959-60 was a disaster, putting drug traffickers in power. Opium production soared during the years of US intervention, the 1950s and 1960s, and plummeted in 1975 after the Vietnamese people kicked US forces out of the region.

US military interventions lead to bigger drug flows into the USA. After the US intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghani-produced proportion of heroin consumed in the USA went from zero in 1979 to 52% in 1984.

Later, the Taliban government cut opium production from 3,656 tons in 2000 (90% of Europe's heroin supply) to 74 tons in 2001 (US State Department figures), wiping out 70% of the world's illicit opium production. US forces, in alliance with a drug trafficking network, the Northern Alliance, defeated Al Qa'ida, another drug trafficking network. The US funded the Northern Alliance warlord and terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, making him the world's biggest heroin trafficker.

Under US occupation, Afghan opium production has risen from 3,700 tons in 2002, to 3,400 tons in 2003, to 4,200 tons last year. The Financial Times wrote, "The U.S. and UN have ignored repeated calls by the international antidrugs community to address the increasing menace of Afghanistan's opium cultivation." It is now the world's leading producer of illicit drugs, producing 90% of the heroin sold in Britain and Europe. President Karzai of Afghanistan has made Rashid Dostum, a warlord, drug runner and terrorist, his military chief of staff.

According to the Colombian government, the antigovernment guerrillas of FARC (the supposed target of the `war on drugs') had 2.5% of Colombia's cocaine trade; the government's allies, the paramilitary death squads, had 40%. Drug production in Colombia and its drug imports to the USA have now doubled to a new record.

Parapolitics metastasize into deep politics
Peter Dale Scott illustrates clearly that one of the main aims of the US foreign policy is control of oil, because the US is heavily dependent on foreign oil and oil markets.

The Vietnam war was based on the Southeast Asia domino theory, which raised concerns about the Indonesian oil assets. The war was all about preventing communist regimes from taking control of oil reserves.
Other examples are Iraq, Afghanistan and Unocal's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, Colombia and Occidental Petroleum's oil fields or Kossovo and the Balkan oil pipeline.

In order to control oil resources the US backes armies and governments that are heavily involved in drug trafficking. The end justifies all means.
This kind of powerplay is exercised by covert means (parapolitics). Unfortunately, those policies tend to metastasize into deep politics. As the author states: 'they become an interplay of unacknowledged forces on which the original parapolitical agent no longer has control'.
The result is that the US and the world are inundated with drugs. One cannot find one dollar note without drug traces.

This book is partly a rewriting of an older book of the author 'The War Conspiracy'.
Although it is more confusing and lesser deep digging than his Magnum Opus 'Deep Politics', it is a disturbing and impressive report.
Not to be missed. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Countries and Their Cultures, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1510 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Covers the broad range of popular religious culture of the United States at the close of the twentieth century. Beliefs, practices, symbols, traditions, movements, organizations, and leaders from the many traditions in the pluralistic American community are represented. Also includes cults and phenomena that drew followers, such as Heaven's Gale and UFOs. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on November 29, 2007. The length of the article is 823 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: War movies - not our style; Few references to Afghanistan in Canadian popular culture.(Focus)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 29, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: A13

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This is a ARMY WAR COLL STRATEGIC STUDIES INST CARLISLE BARRACKS PA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A038214. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: This study examines and compares the performance of the Soviet military in Afghanistan and the Russian military in Chechnya. It aims to discern continuity or change in methods and doctrine. Because of Russian military cultural preferences for a big-war paradigm that have been embedded over time, moreover, this work posits that continuity rather than change was much more probable, even though Russia's great power position had diminished in an enormous way by 1994. However, continuity- manifested in the continued embrace of a conventional and predictably symmetric approach-was more probable, since cultural change usually requires up to 10 years. ... Read more

Product Description

“Islam and the Muslim World” will help people understand the fastest growing religion in the United States and the dominant religion in a wide area of the rest of the world. This informative and interesting new encyclopedia explores an increasingly important force in the modern world, looking at Islam's role in the modern world, in the context of the religion's history and development over the last 13 centuries, and contains thematic articles, biographies of key figures, definitions, and more, filling a need in this key area of religious studies and serving as a resource for those eager to become better informed.

Product Description
Pashtun People. Demography of Afghanistan, Demographics of Pakistan, Pashtun culture, Pashto language, Islam in Afghanistan, Islam in Pakistan, Pashtunwali, Pashto media, Pashtun tribes ... Read more

Product Description
The book explores how legacies of internal strife and foreign invasions have altered the balance of social and political forces that provided some measure of stability to Afghanistan. The country faces structural constraints in the way of reviving itself owing to ethnic fragmentation, Taliban insurgency, and shallow social roots of political power. The central argument is that Afghanistan needs positive international engagement to find a new balance among its fractious social groups and build effective state and nationhood. ... Read more

Product Description
AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ are the latest in a string of blunders that includes Vietnam and an unintended war with China from 1950 to ’53, those four fiascoes being just the worst moments in nearly a lifetime of false urgencies, intelligence failures, grandiose designs, and stereotyping of enemies and allies alike. America brought down the Soviet empire at the cold war’s most dangerous juncture, but even that victory was surrounded by myths, such as the conviction that we can easily shape the destinies of other people. Magic and Mayhem is a strikingly original, closely informed investigation of two generations of America’s avoidable failures. In a perfectly timed narrative, Derek Leebaert reveals the common threads in these serial letdowns and in the consequences that await. He demonstrates why the most enterprising and innovative nation in history keeps mishandling its gravest politico-military dealings abroad and why well-credentialed men and women, deemed brilliant when they arrive in Washington, consistently end up leading the country into folly. Misjudgments of this scale arise from a pattern of self-deception best described as "magical thinking." When we think magically, we conjure up beliefs that everyone wants to be like us, that America can accomplish anything out of sheer righteousness, and that our own wizardly policymakers will enable gigantic desires like "transforming the Middle East" to happen fast. Mantras of "stability" or "democracy" get substituted for reasoned reflection. Faith is placed in high-tech silver bullets, whether drones over Pakistan or helicopters in Vietnam. Leebaert exposes these magical notions by using new archival material, exclusive interviews, his own insider experiences, and portraits of the men and women who have succumbed: George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and George W. Bush all appear differently in the light of magic, as do wise men from Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, and think tanks such as RAND and Brookings, as well as influential players from the media and, occasionally, the military, including General David Petraeus as he personifies the nation’s latest forays into counterinsurgency.

Magic and Mayhem offers vital insights as to how Americans imagine, confront, and even invite danger. Only by understanding the power of illusion can we break the spell, and then better apply America’s enduring strengths in a world that will long need them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Essential Book
Periodically I email a select list of friends, a number of them "influential," as it were. I just sent this:

"If you read one book this decade, this MUST be it: Magic and Mayhem: the Delusions of American Foreign Policy by Derek Leebaert (Simon & Schuster). It is a panegyric, to be sure, but it is also as clear-eyed and clear-minded an analysis of what has gone wrong in the sphere of American public thinking as I can imagine. READ IT! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

Let me expand. I may be delusional myself, but it seems to me that the be-all and the end-all of the examined life that was the point of my education was something called wisdom, a composite of knowledge, experience and common sense. Wisdom is something that has all but disappeared from American public and institutional life. The reasons why bear thinking about and the persons and institutions responsible need to be identified and put down.
Derek Leebaert's new book (he's a professor of foreign policy at Georgetown) minces no words. While his book deals mainly with foreign affairs, and with the illusionistic spells cast by liar-"statesmen" like Kissinger and their credulous acolytes in the chanceries and the press, what he has to say applies with equal force and insight to matters of political economy and public finance (incidentally, how many people know that Greenspan and Kissinger went to the same Bronx high school? There must be something in the water up there!) I think this is a book that you can hand to anyone with the admonition, "If you want to understand this country, read this!"I rate it right up there with James Fenimore Cooper's The American Democrat as a guide to the national persona. I know, I know, Tocqueville blah blah blah: the Frenchman has numerous perceptions, some acute, but most of the time he sounds like someone who's been talking to lawyers and stockbrokers. I hate to think what he might have written if hedge-funds and Ben Bernanke had been around in the 1830s to visit with.
We are at a very weird point in the history of this country. How it all will end, knows God. But sooner or later we need to start fixing the terrible mental habits of those who govern us and those who elect them. Leebaert's book is a good place to start building an agenda. (Disclosure point: I don't know Leebaert, didn't know who he was, but I have long felt that the way to start rebuilding this country intellectually would be to drop a bomb on the Council of Foreign Relations. Preferably at a time when Fareed Zakaria is known to be in the building.)
READ THIS BOOK!

Good Background -
Leebaert investigates two generations of avoidable foreign policy failures, largely rising from 'magical thinking' that everyone wants to be like us, that we can accomplish anything out of righteousness with nigh-tech silver bullets (B-52s, helicopters, cruise missiles, etc.).

New presidents fill 8,000 senior jobs throughout federal departments and agencies. These individuals typically bring a sense of urgency and belief that any action is superior to restraint, faith that American-style business management can fix any global problem - given enough resources, and expectations of wondrous returns on investment (eg. Iraq would become a bulwark against Iran and a beacon of democracy in the Mid-East).

Mistake-wise we've gone from hopefully training Nicaraguan dictator Somoza's officer corps, 'saving' Asia from 'falling dominoes' of Communism, replacing Iran's elected leadership with the Shah for the sin of nationalizing their oil resources, building democracy in Iraq (maybe) while eliminating WMD (Not - instead spurred Iran), prodding China into joining the Korean War, and creating blowback by aiding the Afghans via Russia, and ignoring the PLO. Even careerists have bumbled. George Kennan suggested we ignore Latin America, allow Japan to reconstitute a South-East Asian empire, opposed creating NATO, and planned parachute missions into Russia), while George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur supported liberating North Korea, Eisenhower favored CIA-fostered rebellion in Hungary that was doomed, and more CIA intervention in Tibet vs. China. George H.W. Bush ended Gulf War I by luring thousands of Iraqi Shiites to their deaths in a future rebellion against Hussein.

Ideology dominates understanding when high-numbers of temporary leaders parachute in.

Leebaert's conclusions include 1)Foreign policy staff has not been up to the task. 2)We should reduce our commitments around the world. 3)We should stop publicly reacting to everything - eg. China's developing new missiles. 4)The number of political appointees should be reduced. All good ideas.

I would add that we also should vastly reduce the number of personnel in the State department - if we're minding our own business and taking care of our own problems like we should, they wouldn't be needed. Having a 5,000+ person bureaucracy in Baghdad is ridiculous, and we don't need to be thinking about whether and how we should be getting involved in other people's elections. ... Read more

Product Description
Today, women in all U.S. military services are involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve as pilots and crewmen of assault helicopters, bombers, fighters, and transport planes, and are frequently engaged in firefights with enemy insurgents while guarding convoys, traveling in hostile territory. They perform pat down searches of Arab women at checkpoints, carry out military police duties, and serve aboard Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ships at sea. Like their male counterparts, they carry out their missions with determination and great courage. The advent of the insurgency war, which has no rear or front lines, has made the debate regarding women in combat irrelevant. In such a war zone anyone can be killed or injured at any moment.

The stories of these courageous women are told here by James E. Wise and Scott Baron, who use a format similar to the one employed with such success in the book Stars in Blue. The profiles of some thirty women and their photographs are included.

To record their stories, the authors conducted numerous personal interviews, and utilized numerous oral history interviews conducted by staff at The Women’s Memorial, located in Arlington, Virginia.In every case Wise and Baron were struck by the women’s extraordinary display of dedication to their mission and to the soldiers and sailors with whom they served. Because the service of women in the military has been under reported to date, most of the women profiled here will be unknown to readers and reveal another dimension to the service of women in the desert and the vital role they play in the armed forces. While the book’s focus is on today’s women in combat, it also reaches back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II to offer selected stories of inspiring women who served at the "cusp of the spear" as they fought and died for their country. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Other views
These courageous women amaze me. If you were interested in this book you should read Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the MediaThis book is eye opening.It made me see connections between the treatment of women soldiers in the U.S. military and women suicide bombers in the Middle East.And, the criticisms of the media coverage of the war is very interesting and persuasive.

The tale of true heroes
In "Women at War: Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Conflicts", James Wise and Scott Baron record the individual stories of 30 women who are representative of the more than 2.5 million American women who have chosen the Profession of Arms.

"Women at War" focuses on the contributions of women from World War II through the ongoing operations in Southwest Asia (up to 2006).For the modern operations, the vignettes are the transcripts of personal interviews.However, for the fallen warriors due to both age and combat, we learn their tales as told through personal letters, award citations, or previous publications.Whatever the source, you can't help but be moved by their stories.

You will read the letter of the proud mother who sends her child to boot camp, only to hear her child's life came to a violent end due to an improvised explosive device attack.Conversely, you also read the personal recollections of the platoon leader who must be stoic to the Marines left behind after one of their comrades is killed in a separate bombing incident. There are also the tales of a Coast Guard skipper who prevented the mining of rivers in Iraq, and of the soldier who ran into a burning building to save Vietnamese children.The gender of these heroes is irrelevant - they are incredible stories that will be treasured by America's Next Greatest Generation.

After 17 years of continuous low- and high-intensity combat operations in Southwest Asia, it's surprising that not a single Airman or Sailor who served in the desert is featured in the book. The epilogue apologizes for intending to interview Lt Col Martha McSally who was the first female fighter squadron commander in combat.Unfortunately, the book went to print before the interviews were complete.

Compared to "Hell hath no Fury" by Rosalind Miles, this book is filled with more richly-detailed, personal accounts of the heroines.Also, this book focuses strictly on American women since World War II, and does not highlight any of the women's organizations featured in "Hell hath no Fury".Miles' book also spans a few centuries, vice the last 50 years in "Women at War".While this books is relatively narrow in focus, it certainly gives you a more intimate look at the contributions these women made to history.

As a complement to this book, I would also recommend two books from Air University Press documenting the personal histories of Airmen who executed Operations DESERT STORM and NOBLE ANVIL:"From the line in the Sand" and "A-10's over Kosovo".

This book is a page-turner.It is well-researched and features many photographs.Hopefully, Wise and Baron will publish a second edition to keep the tales of the female Airmen and Sailors alive too.

Authors did a wonderful job!
Scott Baron and James E Wise, Jr. have put together a wonderful book profiling some of the women who have served our country. This 2006 Naval Institute Press book is well worth the read. They interviewed and covered women who served during World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq from all branches of the military.

Statistics were provided such as during the Gulf War more than forty thousand women were deployed, fifteen killed and two became POWs. Some of these women received medals, some were wounded, some were POWs, some were deceased and yet the authors collected information from family, friends and military records about them.

One woman told the authors how the military treated her after she emerged from a coma. The military wanted her to sign discharge papers even while knowing she had a long road ahead of her filled with surgeries and rehabilitation.

Another woman spoke out about the subject of women in combat. She made sure to point out that women are indeed in combat and on the same roads as the men are. And yet another woman told about what it was like as a female to be boarding ships and looking for people, equipment, etc in a field where it is usually only men on the open seas.

A portion of this book covered the women who served during WW II especially those who were POWs during that war. Since so few people know that so many women were prisoners of the Japanese and one was captured by the Germans I was glad to see these women covered as well.

As a person who appreciates reading and learning more about our brave women who have served our country I truly liked this book. The authors did a wonderful job getting these women to open up and talk about their experiences. Everyone should read this book!

Women At War
A very interesting book on womens role in our latest war with individual chapters devoted to individual women. I would put this book at recommended reading for most adults. It relates my experiences with the military to the women. It goes into how these women handle the experience of war and to cope with it. It also shows their relationships with fellow male soldiers and how they cope with a war time situation. The book covers how these women dealt the casualties in war. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is to date the first and only study on Pakistan's foreign policy and decision-making process. It discusses the hows and whys of its policy as it has developed from a domestic to an international view. Post 9/11 changes required a fundamental change in self image and world view that went beyond the act of becoming a US ally in Afghanistan, or abandoning the policy of supporting the Taliban. The main topic of the study is identification of those changes, their requirements and some basic proposals for additional changes. The book also traces the historical, international and domestic context of Pakistan's Post 9/11 Afghan Policy. It analyses the regional impact of that decision, the domestic debate that it generated, and concludes with identification and implications for changes in Pakistan that are required for the sustenance of its new policies. ... Read more

Product Description
An Afghan-American woman explores life in America as a Muslim, her Afghan heritage, and the future of Middle-East-US relations.

Maryam Qudrat Aseel is an Afghan-American woman born in the U.S. to first generation Afghan immigrants. In "Torn Between Two Cultures" she weaves her family’s and her own personal stories into recent American and Afghan politics and history. Her book describes her upbringing in America as a woman in a modern Afghan family with traditional values. She explores how those values and her own desire to be "American" came into conflict and led to an identity crisis that was only resolved as she rediscovered her religious and cultural roots, became increasingly active in the Afghan and Muslim communities, and resolved to bridge the gap between her two cultures. As an Afghan-American woman, Maryam offers a unique perspective on East and West conflicts, and in this book and in her life she is working to bring about understanding and resolution. "Torn Between Two Cultures" is a paradigm for the larger problem of the growing gap of understanding between the Islamic world and the west. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Recommended!
Author's did an excellent job describing her family's cultures and custom, and the huge differences between Afghan Muslim and Talibans (Terrorism). This book is strongly recommended~

an insightful book
This book is an insightful look at the tragedies of war as well as the Muslim/Afghan plight in America.

A different look
I enjoyed reading this book. I'm always interested in reading books by authors who are from other countries. I was really glad that the author didn't have a lot of negative things to say about the country. I have a Afghan friend, who just moved here to the states, that gives a little different story on the treatment of women there than the author does but I really enjoyed the book and think that it will give all readers a look of what's it like to leave your country to move to a new country that's totally different than what you are use too.

An important voice
If you only read the newspapers you'd assume that Islam is a religion to which only men subscribe. Maryam's book is therefore an invaluable contribution to the literature. Here is a smart, well-educated woman's personal account of her life and faith. It's not didactic or argumentative, it's simply a refreshingly candid, personal, and articulate account of how the world looks to an Afghan-American Muslim woman. This is a voice we don't hear much amidst the clamor of opinions currently raging about Islam and the West, and it's information we can't get from any "objective" source. Thank goodness for this insider who is willing to share.

I wish she had a talk show
Yes, I wish the author, Maryam Qudrat Aseel, could be on national TV on a regular basis, discussing the ongoing cultural rift between the U.S. and the Middle East. Her book is about the Afghan-American experience. Ironically, I picked up this book looking for experiences of Pakistani-Americans for a research project. I could not find one, but decided to start with this book.

The author relates her experiences growing up in the U.S., visiting Afghanistan, and trying to hold Afghan traditions in a western culture. Being part of both is not an easy thing to do. This even-handed, well-written book clearly explains historical, cultural and present-day aspects of Afghanistan life and of being Afghan-American. I normally read fiction, and skim some nonfiction, but did not with this book. I was pleasantly surprised at her engaging, colorful writing.

I half-expected some propaganda. However, I can honestly say the book seems highly objective. Maryam understands both the U.S. and Afghan side of the issues with an intelligent balance. While I had known some about the Islam faith, I learned a lot more. I also have a much better understanding of the role of women in Middle Eastern culture, the difference between Middle Eastern culture and Muslim beliefs, and the true relationship of the Taliban to the Afghan people. ... Read more

Product Description
A significant but little studied aspect of life in rural Afghanistan is the restriction of certain specialized occupations to particular ethnic groups. Many communities of artisans, tradesmen and entertainers form their own descent groups - settled, nomadic or semi-nomadic. This work describes the lives and work of migrating Musalli threshers, Shaykh Mohammadi pedlars and Ghorbat sievemakers, detailing their social and historical background, as well as their interaction with settled communities. While the Musallis and the Ghorbat are specialist workers who share common descent, of Indian and probable Iranian origin respectively, the Shaykh Mohammadis have emerged as a spiritual body in Afghanistan, which over time has absorbed a number of unrelated occupational groups. All three share a low social position, economic marginality and a roving lifestyle. Their flourishing traditions of myths and legends reflect general West Asian religious folklore, and the inspiration of the Sufi mystics in traditional craft guild organization. The volume concludes with a discussion of the social structure and characteristics of nomadism. ... Read more