Customer Reviews

Building a New Afghanistan

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Building a New Afghanistan offers a host of essays from a diversity of learned contributors discussing the complex problem of rebuilding Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban's severe occupation. Afghanistan today is riddled by security problems connected to poppy growing, opium and heroine production, and drug trafficking; Building a New Afghanistan offers creative and controversial alternatives to the current strategy of "immediate eradication", which has failed to produce satisfactory results. Individual essays include "Rebuilding a Robust Afghan Economy", "Regional Development in Greater Central Asia: The Afghan Pivot", "Responding to the Opium Dilemma", "The place of the Province in Afghanistan's Subnational Governance", and more. An absolute "must-read" for anyone seeking the latest insights, perspective, and possible solutions to Afghanistan's current quagmire. Highly recommended.

This was a bit of a dry read but the opinions in it are very well reasoned. It covers a wide variety of issues on what Afghanistan needs to do in order to recover for the last three decades of war. It examines confronting the Taliban, dealing with the narco-economy, economic development and sub-national government. This is a great read for someone trying to get an overall sense of the issues and possible solutions. It is a collaboration of several authors, many of whom served in the Afghan government, so the authority of the sources is good. It takes an interesting tack for Afghanistan's development as more of a trading than manufacturing nation. The book also does a good job of looking at complexity of confronting the opium dilema.

I am a U.S. citizen currently working in Kabul, Afghanistan. Reading this book I have found that the data and the articles are from the 2006 timeframe but they still apply. Here it is 2009 and the struggle to bring stability (peace), an end to corruption, an end to the poppy / narco-trade, and a helping develop a strong Afghan government are still the issues of the day. Whether to enable the government, even though much of corruption has found its way there, or to use International agencies is still the valid. How to enable the Afghanistan people to provide all this for themselves with International agencies / armies only providing training, assistance (money and military presence - but only as a backup) is still being worked and policy is being developed. This book provides insight what the issues are and how long they have been around.

This book provides the insight needed to better understand the immense tasks that lay ahead of the international community and Afghanistan as they fight to rebuild this war torn country. Each chapter is written by a subject matter expert who frames the problem and potential solutions for such items as "Rebuilding a Robust Afghan Economy", "Regional Development in Greater Central Asia", "Responding to the Opium Dilemma", "The place of the Province in Afghanistan's Subnational Governance" and more. If you are military and deploying to the region this book coupled with Ghost Wars will really prepare you for your time in country. It was instrumental in my work and understanding the interaction with Provincial Reconstruction Teams and local governance. Plus it helped me understand the bigger picture. Building commerce through NGO's and GO's like USAID. The true importance of road networks and the devastating affects the Opium trade is having on the world and agricultural economy of Afghanistan.

I enjoyed reading the book, but found that the information in it dated. While this is to be expected in a dynamic environment, especially one so rapidly evolving as Afghanistan, it does lower the utility of such texts. I would say that it is good for those who want a shapshot of what problems plagued Afghanistan several years ago, or for those who are searching for some historical context of current problems. Not so good for those who are studying todays problems.