A new global history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - an invasion whose consequences are still felt in Afghanistan and across the wider world. On 24 December 1979, Soviet armed forces entered Afghanistan, beginning an occupation that would last almost a decade and creating a political crisis that shook the world. To many observers, the Soviet invasion showed the lengths to which one of the world's superpowers would go to vie for supremacy in the global Cold War. The Soviet war, and parallel covert American aid to Afghan resistance fighters, would come to be a defining event of international politics in the final years of the Cold War, lingering far beyond the Soviet Union's own demise. Yet Cold War competition is only a small part of the story. Soviet troops entered a country already at war with itself. A century of debates within Afghanistan over the nature of modern nationhood culminated in a 1978 coup in which self-described Afghan communists pledged to fundamentally reshape Afghanistan. Instead what broke out was a civil war in which Afghans asserted competing models of Afghan statehood. Afghan socialists and Islamists came to the fore of this conflict in the 1980s, thanks in part to Soviet and American involvement, but they represented a broader movement for local articulations of social and political modernity that did not derive from foreign models. Afghans, in conversation with foreigners, set many of the parameters of the conflict. This sweeping history moves between centres of state in Kabul, Moscow, Islamabad, and Washington, the halls of global governance in Geneva and New York, resistance hubs in Peshawar and Panjshir, and refugee camps scattered across Pakistan's borderlands to tell a story that is much more expansive than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - a global history of a moment of crisis not just for Afghanistan or the Cold War but international relations and the postcolonial state.

About the Author
Elisabeth Leake is Lee E. Dirks Chair in Diplomatic History and Associate Professor of History at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is the author of The Defiant Border: The Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands in the Era of Decolonization, 1936-65.

Reviews
Leake' intensive research in archives located in Russia, the US, Pakistan, and Europe provides rich materials. * Thomas Barfield, Boston University, Middle East Journal *
authoritative * Peter Bergen *
a thoughtful and detailed account of Afghanistan's tumultuous history * Tim Willasey-Wilsey *
A compelling read built on Leake's impressive scholarship and mastery of multiple sources - and an important contribution to our understanding not only of Afghanistan, but its effect on the international politics of the late Cold War era. * James Rodgers, History Today *
Leake has produced a meticulous study of the Soviet invasion and the making of modern Afghanistan. It is a detailed work on a very complicated series of events * Seamus Martin, Irish Times *
comprehensively researched * David Lyon, The Critic *
Groundbreaking * Peter Spiegel, Financial Times *
This is an expert guide to the forces that continue to roil Afghanistan. * Publishers Weekly *
The first book to tell a truly international history of the civil war and Soviet intervention that tore apart Afghanistan. Leake draws out the stories of the political actors who tried to reshape Afghanistan in the twentieth century and shows how their efforts led to a bloody conflict that drew in Cold War superpowers and their allies, with disastrous results still felt today. Beautifully written and drawing on an impressive array of sources, this is a timely and important book. * Artemy M. Kalinovsky, Professor of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet Studies, Temple University *
Afghan Crucible is a classic example of international history - a brilliant account drawing on global sources, covering all the Afghan and non-Afghan participants in Afghan wars of the last fifty years, and doing justice to them all, while preparing readers to understand whatever the rest of the twenty-first century has in store for that benighted country. * William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era and of Gorbachev: His Life and Times *
Elisabeth Leake provides us with the global historical perspective we need to understand the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its legacies.She demonstrates how geopolitical entanglements of the late cold war period, coupled with competing visions of Afghan modernity and post-colonial statehood, are key to understanding the four decades long aftermath of the 1979 moment. Afghan Crucible will be an essential reading in our attempts to write a decolonial modern world history. * Cemil Aydin, Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *
Elisabeth Leake has written an excellent book on the origins of the ongoing struggles in and around Afghanistan. While being focused on the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the book puts the story of that country and its people, not the story of the invaders first. In doing that Leake provides not only a new and original interpterion of one of the final battles of the Cold War but also helps us understand the Afghanistan of today. * Serhii Plokhy, author of Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Chernobyl *
Afghan Crucible is an important, well-written, and timely book on the Soviet-Afghan War that, while it does not revolutionize our understanding of the conflict through new information, stands out by its novel approach of the subject. It presents a compelling international history of the war, exploring the motivations and policies of the multiple local and international actors involved in this pivotal historical moment. * Vassily A. Klimentov, Russian Review *
The book... provides a significant piece of global history, whose importance also for determining the shape of the world today can hardly be overestimated. We must thank Elisabeth Leake for her vivid account, and the manifold insights she provides should indeed be known much more widely as is currently the case. * H-Soz-Kult *


Awards
Winner of Winner, Robert H. Ferrell Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).



Book Information
ISBN 9780198846017
Author Elisabeth Leake
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 162mm * 31mm