The Afghanistan Crisis : Problems and Perspectives

Contents: Preface. 1. The Afghanistan crisis: an overview/Prem Shankar Jha. 2. Indo-US relations in the context of the Afghanistan crisis/K. Shankar Bajpai. 3. India-Pakistan relations in the context of the Afghanistan crisis/Satish Kumar. 4. The issue of fundamentalism in the Afghanistan crisis/Asghar Ali Engineer. 5. The post-Taliban world/Kalim Bahadur. 6. The UN and conflict resolution in Afghanistan/S.S. Misra. 7. The problematic of war and Afghanistan in historical perspective/Anirudh Deshpande. 8. Limitations of western warfare: American military operations in Afghanistan, 2001/Kaushik Roy. 9. Civilisation, civil society and citizenship: a case of nation-building in Afghanistan/Vinayak Narain Srivastava. Summary of discussions.

"The tentacles of terrorism have crippled human efforts to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner. The September 11 terrorist attack on America and her response by declaring a war on terrorism has created a complex scenario which needs critical analysis. The crisis in Afghanistan generated a lot of interest in India because of its being a victim of intense cross-border terrorism for decades.

The present volume has grown out of a seminar organised by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library to discuss the global situation arising out of the Afghanistan crisis. It also examines India's relations with America and Pakistan in the changed atmosphere. The issue of fundamentalism seemed central to this crisis and so has been discussed in some detail. The role of the United Nations and the prospects of a post Taliban Afghanistan are also discussed. It also examines the military operations in Afghanistan in historical perspective and underlines the point that the answer to terrorism is not counter or state terrorism but economic development and establishment of a civil society on democratic foundations.

The volume, on the whole, is a serious academic exercise to understand the wide-ranging implications of the Afghanistan crisis and we hope it will be of interest to the scholarly community, general readers and also the policy makers. (jacket)