DeansMusings

Western accounts of the fight against the Taliban are mostly Hollywood style - Rambo type figures fighting the Taliban. The Afghan army – which did most of the fighting, is hardly mentioned. This is the story of an officer from the Afghan special forces. Four years ago, they were abandoned, when the US pulled out of Afghanistan. He had to flee to Iran and now faces possible deportation to Afghanistan and an uncertain future. This is his story of service in the Afghan army and being abandoned before the Taliban takeover. His identity has to be hidden for fear of his safety, but he has kindly shared his story for this blog. ( he is not fluent in English) My story : I proudly served in the Afghan national army for seven years and four months. During my service, I worked in joint operations units, as well as in an aerial surveillance section. The world sees the Taliban and the war in Afghanistan mostly through a Western lens, with analysis often disconnected from the reality on the grou...

Background ( Rahul Deans) : I used to do business in Afghanistan some 25 years ago. At the time, `business’ in Afghanistan consisted of importing goods from Dubai, into Afghanistan, at zero duty and smuggling it into Iran and Pakistan, which taxed those imports heavily. Control of the border crossings and the smuggling business was heavily contested, between various warlords, as was the other business in Afghanistan – opium cultivation and smuggling out of Afghanistan. To me, that was what much of Afghanistan’s civil war was about.    In more recent times, I found that every account of the situation in Afghanistan was by reporters who had never been to Afghanistan and were relying on old cliches to describe the situation. To give a first-person view, as I did in my recent blogpost on Myanmar, I had invited an old contact, a person from the Afghan army, who had been in intelligence and was unable to leave he country after the Taliban takeover. Unfortunately, he and his social...

This is a list of books I have read, or columns I follow, that I recommend. These pertain to India’s wars both before and after independence, as well as current military affairs. I list these as being useful in  my understanding of Indian military history. Military writing is a bit misleading. There is a  paucity of good books on India's wars, which deep dive into strategies, tactics, or even details of both  side's order of battle. The official history of the 1965 and 1971 wars are still not in the public domain. Accounts of veterans tend to be incomplete and often avoid blame, or take a balanced view of the war they talk about.   I have therefore included books on Indian geopolitics, which have a military dimension. In independent India, it is the political leadership that takes the decision to go to war. Domestic political compulsions decide military strategy, hence an understanding of how our elected leaders thought about war is  important for a serious...

  By Mya Htut Mya Htut is a freelance writer and analyst in the Burmese journalism and revolutionary network. He is from the Ayeyarwady Region, with a background in geography and international relations. He maintains maps and tracks the events of the Myanmar civil war. His interests are in providing the data for broader analyses of the state of the war, for audiences looking to shift through the fog of war and propaganda. Rahul Deans note - This is the first of my articles from guest writers. The conflict in Myanmar as hitherto been seen in India, only from the lens of the Indian media, many of whom have never visited the country or have a particular interest in reporting on it. I have therefore found an analyst from Burma willing to share his thoughts in this exclusive writeup, on the situation in his country, in the context of the recent drone strike on ULFA rebels.     ___________________________________________________________________________________ In the pre-d...