© Columbia University Press
Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan
Paper, 320 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70081-8
$28.00
November, 2009
Cloth, 320 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70080-1
$35.00
"The first book to provide a political sociology of warlordism in Afghanistan. In the words of Antonio Giustozzi, the purpose of this book is to understand in detail the expansion, disintegration, and operation of warlord polities. More specifically, what is warlordism? How and why did it take root in Afghanistan? What were its effects on the Afghan polity and society? How did warlordism change as a result of challenges first from the Taliban and then from international intervention in 2001? And finally, how does a fine-grained analysis of warlordism throw new light on current political and theoretical debates? This book will become required reading for those studying this phenomenon, especially the special case of Afghanistan." — Jonathan Goodhand, School of Oriental and African Studies
"Antonio Giustozzi's books and articles on Afghanistan are uniformly penetrating, and this work is no exception. The issue of warlordism in conflict is one of the most challenging that can be confronted in both conceptual and practical terms, and Giustozzi has contributed significantly on both fronts. Empires of Mud is an enlightening study, which in its detailed appraisal of two major Afghan cases adds valuably to the literature on developments in that country since the communist coup of April 1978-an event that sent Afghanistan into a tailspin from which it has yet to recover." — William Maley, author of Rescuing Afghanistan