Aiding Afghanistan demonstrates that the long Soviet civil involvement in Afghanistan was so much more coherent and extensive than our own, yet still it failed. In doing so the book asks tough questions about the whole concept of "intervention." The intelligent reader looking for reasons why things went awry in our own occupation could do no better than read it. Indeed there are lessons here for all of those engaged in so-called "stabilisation activities" wherever they are.
Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan Little attention has been paid either by Russian or foreign scholars to Soviet attempts to re-engineer the state and economy of Afghanistan both before and during the long war they fought in that country. This important and well-researched book goes a long way towards filling the gap. The authors judge that Soviet aid policy was well-intentioned. But it failed, for many of the reasons that Western aid policies are failing in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is a bleak conclusion.
Rodric Braithwaite, British Ambassador to Moscow 1988-1992, and author of Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-1989 A fresh look at a topic which was wildly mis-analysed during the cold war, this volume represents a balanced analysis of achievements and failures of Soviet aid to Afghanistan. The authors have something important to say concerning development aid more generally, based on shared problems between Soviet and western aid experiences.
Antonio Giustozzi, author of Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan and editor of Decoding the New Taliban: Insights From the Afghan Field