Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan * By ANTONIO GIUSTOZZI

Abstract

It is rare to find a book about the history of Afghanistan (1979–2009) in which Kabul is not, in some way, the focus of attention. It is also rare to find a book about the recent politics of Afghanistan in which specific patterns of war-making are seen as, at least potentially, conducive to state-making. Antonio Giustozzi has written a very rare book—one in which the politics of Abdul Rashid Dostum in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif and Ismail Khan in the western city of Herat are set within a Weberian landscape of traditional, charismatic, and rational bureaucratic authority as well as violence, legitimation, and ‘state-formation’. In fact Giustozzi argues that both Dostum and Khan might have emerged as effective state-makers in Afghanistan were it not for the historical disruptions that accompanied the U.S. Army, the International Security Assistance Force (I.S.A.F.), and the United Nations after 11 September 2001. The strength of this book lies in its contribution to an elite-centred understanding of military affairs in northern and western Afghanistan. Countless battles, alliances, and stratagems are recounted to provide a sense of how Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan emerged and survived during the past thirty years. Their strategic relationships, in particular, are recounted in detail—not only with reference to prominent actors outside of their home regions (for example, Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Jamiʿat-i Islami in Kabul or the Taliban in Kandahar), but also with respect to their rivals and subordinates closer to home. What emerges is an extraordinarily rich account of the cauldron within which competing bids for Afghan military power unfolded.