Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many individuals who have assisted me in various ways with
the research and writing of this book. I owe a particular debt to those many
Afghans who, over the past forty or more years since I first visited their country,
have contributed to my knowledge of Afghanistan, told me their stories and
challenged many of my preconceptions. I am also thankful to the many people
who have generously accommodated me and facilitated my work during my visits
to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as those who have
hosted me during my research in the uk.
Profs Jamil Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi and Said Reza Huseini provided
me with comments on various aspects of this study and references to Persian
sources. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi also reviewed the book and made some helpful
and incisive comments. Dr Christopher Wyatt, Research Fellow at the Institute
of Conflict, Cooperation and Security, University of Birmingham, helped with a
number of British Foreign Office reports as well as reviewing the book, making a
number of factual and typographical corrections. I am also thankful for my many
conversations with Dr Wyatt over the past two decades around British imperial
policy in Afghanistan. Bruce Wannell kindly checked, corrected and commented
on the glossary of foreign terms and Warwick Ball fsa generously granted me the
use of some of his archival images and has encouraged the completion of this work.
Others who have contributed in various ways include: Dr Arezu Azad of the
University of Birmingham, and the Balkh Archaeological and Cultural Heritage
group at the Oriental Institute, Oxford; Paul Bucherer-Dietschi of the Bibliotheca
Afghanica; William Dalrymple; Dr Nancy Dupree of the Afghan Study Centre,
Kabul University; Jolyon Leslie of the Afghan Cultural Heritage Consulting
Organization; Dr Arley Loewen; May Schinasi; Brigadier C. W. (‘Bill’) Woodburn
re; and William Trousdale, Emeritus Curator of the Smithsonian Institute. Thanks
too is due to Sebastian Ballard, my cartographer, who has done a superb job.
Like many, I am indebted to the late Ralph Pinder-Wilson fsa, former Director
of the British Institute of Afghan Studies, and Prof. Edmund Bosworth, both of
whom encouraged my studies for many years and whose deaths are a great loss
to Afghan, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Yolande Carter, my 93-year-old
mother-in-law, deserves a medal for proofreading successive drafts and redrafts
of this book. I cannot begin to express my thankfulness to my wife, Kathy, for her
constant encouragement to persist with this and other projects when on occasion
I have despaired that it would never be completed.