A crucial guide to the obscure history of Afghanistan and Central Asia!

• Very topical coverage of Islamic Militancy and how these countries relate to the outside world, including China, Russia, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.
• Clear and accessible introduction for readers with little or no previous knowledge of Central Asia
• Martin McCauley is widely recognized as a specialist in the region.

The Afghan crisis has grabbed the attention of the entire world and underlined the desperate need in the West for a better understanding of the region and its challenges in the face of increasingly militant interpretations of Islam. Carved up and fought over by the British and Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century, and under Soviet domination for much of the twentieth, the lonely passes, deserts and peoples of the five Central Asian republics have remained shrouded in obscurity. Even Afghanistan, the site of almost constant conflict since the Soviet invasion of 1978, is little known beyond the media images of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement. Martin McCauley draws on his vast knowledge of the region and its history to provide a clear and highly readable account of Afghanistan and the Central Asia republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tasikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from their medieval pasts to the unpredictable present. Illuminating languages and landscapes, cultures and society, he examines the rise of militant Islam and its impact for stability in an inherently unstable part of the world.

Martin McCauley is senior lecturer with the University of London, was the Chairman of the Ford Foundation Research and Development committee (1984-97), Chairman of the National Association of Soviet and East European Studies, (1986-89), Deputy Chairman - British National Association of Slavonic and East European Studies (1989-90) and was a member of the ESRC East-West Initiative and Policy and Research Committee, (1990-92) and has published more than 20 books, the most recent of which is:Bandits, Gangsters and the Mafia: Russia, the Baltic States and the CIS , 0582357640, $26.95, Longman, December 2001 He is a specialist in the Central Asian region and Russia, has been a regular contributor to ABC, NBC and CBS news for over 20 years on anything to do with Central Asia, the Soviet Union, Russia and CIS, and the Balkans. Recently he has been interviewed about the Balkans and Milosevic and the Bush/Putin meeting on NBC and ABC networks