Please direct your attention to the first couple maps I have created for this series. Let me be clear: I MADE these. It took me a long time and a lot of effort. So if you appreciate them, please let me know?
First we have a comprehensive geographic map of Afghanistan - major highways and smaller roads in red, terrain marked out, rivers, the whole shebang. Have a look!
Shoulda put a legend in here. Maybe I'll fix that later. Maybe.
Next we have ethnicities. Will they be important? They'll be super important!
What a mess! Look at that jagged eastern border of Afghanistan, dividing a massive ethnic group in half! What kind of weirdo would draw borders like this? What kind of empire-building, tea-drinking, polo-playing redcoated island nation would make such a mess by drawing a border that didn't make any sense and made everything worse for everyone? It's a mystery.
Also note that the color doesn't mean "this area is 100% this group. This is just "who's the majority in this area."
More to follow as we move through the series.
SOURCES (yes, I read all of these)
Alexievich, Svetlana. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. Trans. Julia and Robin Whitby. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.
Amstutz, J. Bruce. Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 1986.
Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Braithwaite, Rodric. Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Campbell, David. Soviet Paratrooper versus Mujahideen Fighter: Afghanistan 1979-89. Oxford: Osprey, 2017.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Press, 2004.
Crump, Thomas. Brezhnev and the Decline of the Soviet Union. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Ewans, Martin. Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
Feifer, Gregory. The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. New York: Harper, 2009.
Galeotti, Mark. Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Last War. London: Frank Cass, 1995.
Galeotti, Mark. The Panjshir Valley 1980-86. Oxford: Osprey, 2021.
Galeotti, Mark. Storm-333: KGB and Spetsnaz Seize Kabul, Soviet-Afghan War 1979. Oxford: Osprey, 2021.
Grau, Lester W.; Gress, Michael A. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002.
Grau, Lester W. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan. Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1996.
Grau, Lester W.; Jalali, Ali Ahmad. The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War. Quantico, VA: U.S. Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division, 1998.
Hanson, Philip. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy. New York: Pearson, 2003.
Isby, David. Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army. London: Jane’s Publishing Company, 1988.
Isby, David. Russia’s War in Afghanistan. Oxford: Osprey, 1986.
Kakar, M. Hassan. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Plokhy, Serhii. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Roy, Olivier. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2002.
Tompson, William J. The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev. London: Routledge, 2014.
Zaloga, Steven J. Inside the Soviet Army Today. Oxford: Osprey, 1987.
Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
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