ISBN: 0231700806
COLUMBIA UNIV PRESS
2009 - Hardcover - 320 Seiten

Wars and Warlords of Afghanistan.
Warlords are charismatic military leaders who exploit weak central authorities in order to gain control of subnational areas. Yet despite their bad reputation, warlords do in fact participate in state formation.

Empires of Mud analyzes the dynamics of warlordism within the context of such debates. Antonio Giustozzi begins with aspects of the Afghan environment that are conducive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords. He then accounts for the phenomenon from the 1980s to today, considering Afghanistan's two foremost warlords, Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, and their political, economic, and military systems of rule.

Despite the intervention of Allied forces in 2001, both of these leaders continue to wield considerable power. Giustozzi compares their systems of administration as well as that of a third warlord, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who incorporates similar elements of rule. He discovers common themes in the emergence of warlordism, particularly the role of local military leaders and their gradual acquisition of "class consciousness," and the way in which this strategy evolves into a more sophisticated, statelike, or political-party-like, structure.

Antonio Giustozzi has spent more than a decade visiting, researching, and writing on Afghanistan. He is a research fellow at the Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics, and the author of Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban in Afghanistan.