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AFGHANISTAN: Mullah, Marx, and Mujahid. By Ralph H. Magnus and Eden Naby. Boulder (Colorado) and Oxford: Westview Press. 1998. xiii, 274 pp. (B&W photos, snaps, tables.) US$30.00, cloth. ISBN 0-86531-513-2.
THIS long-awaited study is a welcome addition to the growing literature on modern Afghan politics. While it does not bear comparison in its range with such magisterial works as Barnett R. Rubin's The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (Yale University Press,1995) or Asta Olesen's Islam and Politics in Afghanistan (Curzon Press, 1995), it nonetheless provides a good deal of information for the lay reader in a well-organised and accessibly written form.
The book is divided into seven chapters. After an introduction which offers a neat summary of geographical, demographic and sociocultural data, Magnus and Naby give a brisk account of Afghan political history before Mohammad Daoud's 1973 coup. This is followed by an analysis of Afghanistan's unhappy geopolitical position, which the authors well captures with the soubriquet "A Dangerous Neighborhood." From this point,...