So-called Islamic State began to appear in what it calls Khorasan (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran and India) in 2014. Reports of its presence were at first dismissed as propaganda, but during 2015 it became clear that IS had a serious presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan at least. This book, by one of the leading experts on Islamist insurgency in the region, explores the nature of IS in Khorasan, its aim and strategies, and its evolution in an environment already populated by many jihadist organisations. Based on first-hand research and numerous interviews with members of IS in Khorasan, as well as with other participants and observers, the book addresses highly contentious issues such as funding, IS's relationship with the region's authorities, and its interactions with other insurgent groups. Giustozzi argues that the central leadership of IS invested significant financial resources in establishing its own branch in Khorasan, and as such it is more than a local movement which adopted the IS brand for its own aims. Though the central leadership has been struggling in implementing its project, it is now turning towards a more realistic approach. This is the first book on a new frontier in Islamic State's international jihad.

Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone and the rule of law as a secular-liberal monopoly, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence, codify its own laws, and ratify a constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Afghanistan Rising illustrates how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Kabul--far from being a landlocked wilderness or remote frontier--became a magnet for itinerant scholars and statesmen shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing the country's longstanding but often ignored scholarly and educational ties to Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed explains how the court of Kabul attracted thinkers eager to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shariʿa, and international norms of legality. From Turkish lawyers and Arab officers to Pashtun clerics and Indian bureaucrats, this rich narrative focuses on encounters between divergent streams of modern Muslim thought and politics, beginning with the Sublime Porte's first mission to Afghanistan in 1877 and concluding with the collapse of Ottoman rule after World War I. By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's founding national charter, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on archival research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly as a center of constitutional politics, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and contested visions of reform in the greater Islamicate world.

Nach fast zwei Jahrzehnten Krieg unterzeichnete die Trump-Regierung im Februar 2020 ein Abkommen mit den Taliban, wonach die Truppen der USA und ihrer NATO-Verbündeten Afghanistan innerhalb der nächsten Monate verlassen müssen. Dieses Abkommen ebnet auch den Weg für innerafghanische Gespräche zwischen der von den USA unterstützten Islamischen Republik Afghanistan und der militanten Gruppe der Taliban. Dieses Buch bietet einen kritischen Überblick über die militärische, friedens- und staatsbildende Interventionen der USA und der NATO seit 2001 in Afghanistan. Darüber hinaus stellt es auf der Grundlage gesammelter Feldinterviews die afghanische Wahrnehmung und den afghanischen Diskurs zu Themen wie Demokratie, Islam, Frauenrechte, formelle und informelle Regierungsführung, ethnische Teilung und die staatliche demokratische Regierungsgestaltung auf nationaler und subnationaler Ebene dar.

Afghanistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, has improbably been at the center of international geopolitics for four decades. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1980, Afghanistan descended into an unending conflict that featured at various points most of the world's major powers. In the mid-1990s, the country entered a new phase, when the Taliban took power and imposed order based on a harsh, repressive version of Islamic law. Infamously, the sheltered Osama bin Laden, whose attack on 9/11 Towers ushered in the Global War on Terror, drew tens of thousands of American troops to the country, where they remain today. In Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know®, leading scholar Barnett R. Rubin provides an overview of this complicated nation. After providing a concise history of Afghanistan, he explores the various peoples and cultures of the country and its relations with neighbors like Pakistan and Iran. He also provides an authoritative overview of the conflicts that have plagued the country since the Soviet invasion. Both wide-ranging and pithy, this book explains why Afghanistan matters and what its possible future might look like.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and, after decades of ongoing conflicts and strife, it is still at an early stage of developing its legal and institutional framework. Measures have been taken to fight crime, including financial crime. Smuggling and fraud are other major sources of illegal funds. In addition, terrorism and its financing remain a major concern. A framework has been established to allow for international mutual legal assistance but it falls short of the standard and is rarely used.

This study explores Iranian influence in Afghanistan and the implications for the United States after most U.S. forces depart Afghanistan in 2016. Iran has substantial economic, political, cultural, and religious leverage in Afghanistan. Although Iran will attempt to shape a post-2014 Afghanistan, Iran and the United States share core interests: to prevent the country from again becoming dominated by the Taliban and a safe haven for al Qaeda.

Despite vast efforts to build the state, profound political order in rural Afghanistan is maintained by self-governing, customary organizations. Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan explores the rules governing these organizations to explain why they can provide public goods. Instead of withering during decades of conflict, customary authority adapted to become more responsive and deliberative. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and observations from dozens of villages across Afghanistan, and statistical analysis of nationally representative surveys, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili demonstrates that such authority enhances citizen support for democracy, enabling the rule of law by providing citizens with a bulwark of defence against predatory state officials. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it shows that 'traditional' order does not impede the development of the state because even the most independent-minded communities see a need for a central government - but question its effectiveness when it attempts to rule them directly and without substantive consultation.

This paper presents estimates of the fiscal revenue cost of conflict in Afghanistan, defined as the loss of government domestic revenue due to conflict. The loss of government revenue is an important component of the humanitarian costs of conflict. In Afghanistan, almost all security spending is funded by foreign grants, which will most likely be scaled back gradually in the event of peace. Hence, any fiscal peace dividend is likely to come principally from increased revenues, as reduced security spending will be mostly offset by reduced grants. Nevertheless, size and the statistical significance of the results suggest that the order of magnitude of the estimate, around $1 billion, is robust. By way of counterfactual, these results imply a sizeable potential fiscal dividend for Afghanistan should peace, or at least a significant reduction in violence, materialize. Several country-specific factors, including conflict and a landlocked geography, have held back an expansion in Afghanistan’s trade which could increase the country’s economic resilience. Improving its external connectivity is a key factor to unlocking its trade potential including leveraging its natural resources.

The Hazaras of Afghanistan have borne the brunt of many of the destructive forces unleashed by the establishment of the Afghan monarchy in 1747. The history of their relationship with the Afghan state has been punctuated by frequent episodes of ethnic cleansing, mass dispossession, forced displacement, enslavement and social and economic exclusion. Mostly Shia in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims, and identifiable because of their Asian features, the Hazaras became Afghanistan's internal 'Other'. They look different and practice a different school of Islam in a country that is prone to internal conflict and the machinations of external powers. The history of the Hazaras therefore offers a unique perspective into the deep contradictions of Afghanistan as a modern state, and how its ethnic and religious dynamics continue to undermine the post-2001 political process. This volume provides a fresh account of both the strategies and tactics of the Afghan state and how the Hazaras have responded to them, focusing on three key phenomena: Hazara rebellion and resistance to the intrusion of the Afghan state in the nineteenth century; the incorporation of the Hazara homeland into Afghanistan in the 1890s and their subsequent marginalization and exclusion; and the Hazaras' ethnic mobilization and struggle for recognition in recent decades.

The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics, with contributions from prominent scholars and specialists, provides a comprehensive analysis of what we know and where we are in the study of political Islam.