Go to stage 3: Afghanistan

Saturday, 02 July 2011

The latest ICG report on Afghanistan is sobering and timely

The latest ICG report on Afghanistan released last Monday is sobering and timely. It is titled 'The Insurgency in Afghanistan's Heartland' and gives an assessment that seems to run counter to some more positive claims coming out of the official spokespeople in some western capitals. The first paragraph of the summary immediately sets the tone:

The insurgency in Afghanistan has expanded far beyond its stronghold in the south east. Transcending its traditional Pashtun base, the Taliban is bolstering its influence in the central-eastern provinces by installing shadow governments and tapping into the vulnerabilities of a central government crippled by corruption and deeply dependent on a corrosive war economy. Collusion between insurgents and corrupt government officials in Kabul and the nearby provinces has increased, leading to a profusion of criminal networks in the Afghan heartland. Despite efforts to combat the insurgency in the south, stability in the centre has steadily eroded. Yet, with nearly one fifth of the population residing in Kabul and its surrounding provinces, the Afghan heartland is pivotal to the planned transition from international troops to Afghan forces at the end of 2014. Given the insurgency’s entrenchment so close to the capital, however, it appears doubtful that President Hamid Karzai’s government will be able to contain the threat and stabilise the country by then.

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Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Recently Read

Stuart Creighton Miller: Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903
(****)
Ken Conboy: Elite: The Special Forces of Indonesia 1950-2008
(****)
Robert D. Kaplan: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power
(****)
Francois Jullien: Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking
(***)
G. Hurst I II: Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery
(****)
Paul Michel Munoz: Early Kingdoms of The Indonesi
Eugene Y. Park: Between Dreams and Reality: The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600-1894 (Harvard East Asian Monographs)
It may sound a bad way to open the review but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this book. I had not picked it up for reading pleasure but to try and understand more about the Choson military structure. It is a well written book and while it covers a lot of academic ground it managed to do so with surprising interest. I can thoroughly recommend this book. From the cover it may seem like a dry read but the work is well written and Park hasan engaging style. It is recommended for the reader of Korean history as well as for the more casual reader who may want to understand how a military bureaucracy functioned in pre-modern times. (*****)
Civilization: The West and the Rest. Niall Ferguson
(***)
Hiroko Yoda: Ninja Attack!: True Tales of Assassins, Samurai, and Outlaws
(****)
David C. Kang: East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Contemporary Asia in the World)
Ian Morris: Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
At times it simply read like a very long comparative history of China and Europe. I don't think that he demonstrated his thesis although his breadth of coverage has to be apprteciated. Nor do I think that it had the answers as he did not adequately explain why China could not maintain its dominance in the 1100s. Explaining why one group of people is more 'developed' than another is always dangerous and I don't think that Morris really stepped up to the challenge. I agree with Morris that it is not a matter of genetics and while his argument of geography is important, I think that sociologists and anthropologists will probably be the best placed to tackle the argument. This book will make the reader think but it won't provide all the answers. Still full marks for putting his theory out for discussion. (***)
Shirley Fish: When Britain Ruled the Philippines 1762-1764
Shirley Fish has written an admirable book on this period in Philippines history. Indeed, she has probably tried to write too much and because of that the book starts strongly with the immediate background and preparations to the venture but then meanders through a historical background that goes back to the early days of the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines. As an example, there is a section that comprehensively details the Spanish defences throughout the Philippines that while informative it does not seem to add much to the narrative because the British were limited to Manila in their conquest and so never sought to fully test those defenses. The author did have a good writing style and when she was on story she could relate the events very well. You do not not need to have a background in the Seven Years War or in the history of the Philippines to read this book. It is a good read and it will provide a good starting point for others to build on should they wish to write about the occupation or other facets of the story. (***)
Ronald Spector: In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia
Ronald Spector's In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia is a good book that covers much territory and because of that it will always disappoint as there is so much to say. Spector has done a good job to show that there was more to the story of the Pacific War than the surrender of the Japanese and occupation of Japan by the allies. It was a complex story that involved the Allies having often competing agendas all of which were at odds with what the local inhabitants wanted. It was also a story of lost opportunities. What could have General Marshal achieved if he had stayed in China rather than returned to the US for lobbying and consultations? Could the French and Ho Chi Minh really avoided war if the incoming French left-wing government had received Ho's message prior to the Viet Minh launching its attacks. There seemed to be much left out, including the connections between the OSS and Ho Chi Minh and that is the reason why I have given it only three stars. Although, given the breadth of the subject matter, if Spector had tried to cover everything then it would have been a very long book. Despite that rating I recommend it as a good introduction to what was happening across much of Asia in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. While the endings are well known the stories that engendered them are often forgotten. (***)
Hank Reinhardt: The Book of Swords
Hank wrote that the book was not about the beauty of the form of the sword but about the beauty of the function. Hank does not try to describe every sword that existed nor to give you a complete history of swords, he wants to tell you what he found out from a life time of testing swords. He covered western swords as well as the swords of other cultures, and not just Japan but also the lesser covered swords such as from Africa. It is not so much a book but a written conversation with a knowledgeable uncle about swords; "Uncle Hank, what do you think about Japanese Katanas please?" I saw him on the Reclaiming the Blade DVD and so I often found myself picturing Hank reading the words to me as I read the book; his style just seemed to have that effect. He had some asides in the book but they did not detract from the flow of the book, no story teller talks a straight path, the diverts make the ride more fun. He did not play favourites with the swords although he did not like the rapiers as they are primarily thrusting weapons but he still discussed a rapier that he saw at Ewart Oakeshott house that he fell in love with. He also explained how the materials helped define the type of sword as did the intended use. I can thoroughly recommend this book. It was a pleasure to read and very informative as well. It is a real pity that Hank has passed on and so cannot provide us with more books such as this. (*****)
Kacem Zoughari Ph.D.: The Ninja: Ancient Shadow Warriors of Japan
Dr Zoughari's book on the Ninja is certainly well footnoted and he has gone to a lot of effort to track down sources but at the end of the book I still felt like I did not know what a ninja was. The author showed that the ninja was not the assassin of the popular imagination but that a ninja was a good guard against another ninja who may have been tasked to carry out an atypical assassination mission. I just felt that the book gave me a lot of facts but that it did not not provide the big picture. He did have coherent themes running through the book and he did discuss the possible origins of the ninja, including foreign connections, as well as how their role changed from military intelligence gatherers to something akin to a secret police during the Tokugawa Shogunate but to me the history of the ninjas did not come through. He discussed the Iga and Koga prefectures and how they were the traditional homes of the ninja clans but he also talked about ninjas and shinobi from other clans, assessing that other clans also taught ninja techniques. He described Iga and Koga prefectures as isolated and rugged so being the perfect training areas for the ninja but why just those two areas, why not other rugged and isolated parts of Japan. While Dr Zoughari provided some examples of ninja or shinobi uses I could not see where he gave his view on where they fitted into the martial structure of Japan, which was what I was after. Were ninja's assigned to clans or were they used as a resource of the shogun thus allowing him to control all information. If the ninja were an integral part of the samurai armies then why is there no mention of their work in Korea during Hideyoshi's invasion of 1592-98? Is this dearth of knowledge a result of their effectiveness or because daimyos wanted to claim all credit for themselves and their clans, or have we still not understood what ninjas did and who they were? I suspect that if you are a practitioner of ninjutsu then you will still get much worthwhile information out of the book, especially the later chapters on the essence on ninjutsu and the secret text of ninjutsu. If you are trying to understand what the ninja's or shinobi were and how they fitted in to Japanese warfare model then you will get a lot from the book but I think you will still be left with a lot of questions unanswered. (***)
Antony Cummins: Shinobi Soldiers: An Investigation Into the Ninja
According to the author's notes this book was based on a series of articles that the author wrote for Combat Magazine and the book never seemed to get beyond that genesis. While the book is 164 pages long there is a lot of space filler and I read this book in a few hours with not much trouble. The objective of this volume was to break the misconceptions that people have about ninjas or shinobi. I believe that he did that. Despite achieving his objective, I think that is also the biggest failure of the book. At the end of the book you knew what a ninja was not and you have had some misconceptions broken, depending on how much knowledge you already had, but you have to buy another book, just released in November 2010, to actually find out what a ninja was. If you already know a bit about ninjas or shinobi then I probably would not buy this book as I think you will be frustrated with finding out what a ninja is not without any information telling you what a ninja actually is, especially if you are serious student of Japanese martial history. (***)
Jonathan Clements: A Brief History of the Samurai (Brief History (Running Press))
I have read Clements' books on the Coxinga and the First Emperor of China so I know and enjoy his style and this book is very much in that style. I enjoyed his easy pace while he still ensured that he passed on key information. Clements started with Japan before there were samurai as we would recognise them and then brings them into the picture for us. He deals extensively with the rise of the samurai as seen with the clash of the Taira and Minamoto clans. This chapter is really the start of the meat of the book that concluded with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. That however did not conclude the book as Clements looked as to what the samurai came to mean, especially after Japan's defeat in WW2. I thoroughly recommend this book as Clements delivers very well on a brief history of the samurai providing a great starting point for further reading in a very engaging manner. (*****)
David Graff: Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900 (Warfare and History)
(****)
Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
(*****)
David Loyn: Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Failure in Afghanistan
(*****)