Civil war in Afghanistan
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Since the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the country has been torn apart by civil war. Ethnic groups have been fighting a war characterized by shifting alliances and no sign that anyone can ever win. In addition to ethnic rivalries, there are religious disputes between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims. None of the factions seems interested in seceding from the state, although many, such as the Uzbeks and the Tajiks, live mainly in areas that border the 'home' nations of their ethnic groups. Western interest in Afghanistan dropped off once the Soviets fled and the wars are seldom reported in the Western daily press. Five articles on the civil war in Afghanistan are reviewed here. They range from August 1993 to July 1995. All are concerned with the same subject, but address it from different points of view. The writers' perspectives range from the ultra-conservative American viewpoint expressed in Radek Sikorski's article in the National Review to the more detached scholarly review by Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady in Asian Survey. The articles include eyewitness accounts of the war (Sikorski, Davis), an analysis of the situation in a historical context ("Tank"), a newsmagazine summary (MacFarquhar), and a historical review of Afghan ethnic conflict (Ahady). Three were published in United States periodicals, one in a British magazine, and one in a Hong Kong news weekly (reprinted in World Press Review). The political orientation of the two news weeklies, The Economis
. . .
ortar explosions" (1994, p. 15). His account starts with his fear and his "urge to vomit" as he enters a mosque filled with the bloody victims of a mortar attack (1994, p. 15). Davis is filled with a sense of utter amazement at being in a place where nothing seems to fit with any of his previous ideas of what the world was like. "In a country where unconventional use of weapons is an art form, the preferred deployment of antiaircraft guns is horizontal" (1994, p. 16). Where Sikorski did not speculate at all on the what drove this endless war, Davis seems to look at the people he is with. Observing an engagement in which teen-aged soldiers fired aimlessly in the direction of the enemy, despite orders to conserve ammunition, Davis wonders, "how much of this runaway conflict . . . is fueled by the murderous enthusiasms of adolescents?" (1994, p. 16). Davis mentions the dangerous narcotics trade and the problem of terrorism, but he ends with an old adage which states that "you can hire and Afghan, but you can never buy one" (1994, p. 16). This, it seems to him, is the essence of the war--the relentless devotion to the age-old hatreds that can never be relieved for people who are "condemned by history to live together" (1994, p.
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Anthony Davis', British Russian, Soviet Union's, Press Review, Program MacFarquhar, Afghanistan Ahady, Abdul Momen, Richard III, Kabul Afghan, Western Afghanistan, tank 1994, 1994 16, tank 1994 38, macfarquhar 1993, sikorski 1993, 1994 38, macfarquhar 1993 69, world press, asian survey, richard iii, davis 1994, 1993 69, world press review, 1993 69 article, tank kingdom tank,
Approximate Word count = 1952
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Civil war in Afghanistan
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
