Name: Taliban
ISBN: 9780300266825

Taliban

Shrouding themselves and their aims in deepest secrecy, the leaders of the Taliban movement control Afghanistan with an inflexible, crushing fundamentalism. The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp focus in this enormously interesting and revealing book. It is the only authoritative account of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan available to English language readers. Based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, Rashid offers unparalleled firsthand information. He explains how the growth of Taliban power has already created severe instability in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and five Central Asian republics. He describes the Taliban’s role as a major player in a new “Great Game”—a competition among Western countries and companies to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The author also discusses the controversial changes in American attitudes toward the Taliban—from early support to recent bombings of Osama Bin Laden’s hideaway and other Taliban-protected terrorist bases—and how they have influenced the stability of the region.

What Hacker News says

corodraAug 2019

This is the same reason I like libraries and book stores. Especially used book stores. You can find some interesting books at "random". Generally random of course. But these are books that would, 9 out of 10 times, never be recommended to you by an algorithm. Taliban by Ahmed Rashid was one such book. I found it late last year by accident at the library. Totally changed my perspective on the war on terror. A way better understanding on how 9/11 came to be (the book was published in 2000). That led to the past year of reading history books on various subjects. And I'm happy. While my amazon account only ever recommends tech and business books to me. Which all generally sadden me.

Oh plus, this was a few years ago, I road tripped through the Oregon coast. I went into used book stores and bought a metric fuckton of old school pulp fiction crime noir books for like a buck each. All published in the 20s and 30s. Holy crap, so awesome. Again, never would have been suggested any of those if I was walking around and picked random books to look at.

Random and physical is nice. Digital and "recommended" has its place. But the real world can't really be replaced.

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arjnFeb 2015

>> I am just saying that it seems like Saudi Arabian national's punched the US in the face while Pakistan distracted, and the US then turned around and beat up Afghanistan in "revenge."

Umm, no ... that is not how it happened with Afghanistan.

Rather than argue here or be an armchair analyst, all I will do is point to a couple of books by Ahmed Rashid - "Taliban" and "Descent into Chaos" that include a pretty good historical commentary on the US action in Afghanistan.

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ytersNov 2008

To save you a read, the gist is that the leaders of ego driven companies do not have an interest in making sure the company succeeds when they leave. In fact, it is the opposite, since a spectacular failure shows they were indeed geniuses in being able to hold it all together. Likewise for giving others the important decisions they need to learn to be leaders.

But this problem is much larger than just the business world. In my other readings and observations, I've noticed a similar trend. According to Rashid's "Taliban," the Taliban succeeded despite themselves. Their culture is so caught up in ego that they are pretty much incapacitated without a strong leader to hold it all together, consequently they are constantly splitting and fighting with each other. We also saw this in the leadership vacuum left by deposing Saddam, and is partially why it has taken so much work to get an Iraqi army going.

In general, I see this in most non western cultures, at least that I know of, so I suspect it is a common aspect of human nature: principle based leadership outperforms ego based leadership. This is reinforced by another book I read, "Why the Rest Hate the West." The enlightenment marked a very important shift in social structure: from societies based on relationships to principle based societies, such as law, strict national boundaries, a common language and currencies - the American constitution being the epitome of this approach.

However, I qualified this as being more general to western culture, since the Greeks, and then the Romans, took a similar view of law and culture. For example, see Sophocles' "Orestes" or Virgil's "Aenaed." I guess the Enlightenment more marks a truly rigorous and global application of this idea. If you want a more contemporary example, just look at what kind of culture perpetuates the ghettos vs the culture that perpetuates the more successful segments of America. At any rate, I'm pretty convinced that cultures based on principle vs personality are much more successful.

So, all that is to give credence to the idea that ego driven companies are an evolutionary dead end, and give myself a link that I can refer to for future discussions.

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