Native name	جمهوری اسلامی افغانستان''Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī-ye Afġānistān''(Persian)د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوریت''Da Afġānistān Islāmī Jomhoriyat''(Pashto)
Conventional long name	Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Common name	Afghanistan
Image coat	Coat of arms of Afghanistan.svg
Symbol type	Emblem
National anthem	''Afghan National Anthem''
Official languages	Dari (Persian)Pashto
Demonym	Afghan
Capital	Kabul
Largest city	Kabul
Government type	Islamic republic
Leader title1	President
Leader title2	Vice President
Leader name1	Hamid Karzai
Leader name2	Mohammed Fahim
Leader title3	Vice President
Leader name3	Karim Khalili
Leader title4	Chief Justice
Leader name4	Abdul Salam Azimi
Legislature	National Assembly
Upper house	House of Elders
Lower house	House of the People
Area rank	41st
Area magnitude	1_E11
Area km2	647500
Area sq mi	251772
Percent water	negligible
Population estimate	29,835,392
Population estimate year	2011
Population estimate rank	42nd
Population census	15.5 million
Population census year	1979
Population density km2	43.5
Population density sq mi	111.8
Population density rank	150th
Gdp ppp year	2011
Gdp ppp	$29.731 billion
Gdp ppp per capita	$956
Gdp nominal year	2011
Gdp nominal	$18.181 billion
Gdp nominal per capita	$585
Hdi year	2011
Hdi	0.398
Hdi rank	172st
Hdi category	low
Gini	29
Gini year	2008
Gini category	low
Fsi	102.3 2.5
Fsi year	2007
Fsi rank	8th
Fsi category	Alert
Sovereignty type	Establishment
Established event1	First Afghan state
Established date1	October 1747
Established event2	Independence (from United Kingdom)
Established date2	August 19, 1919
Currency	Afghani
Currency code	AFN
Country code	AFG
Time zone	D†
Utc offset	+4:30
Drives on	right
Cctld	.af
Calling code	+93
Footnote1	}}

Afghanistan (Persian/Pashto: , ''Afġānistān''), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming part of South Asia, Central Asia, and Greater Middle East, it is also considered to be part of a broader West Asia. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and the east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.

Afghanistan has been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation from as far back as 50,000 BC. Urban civilization may have begun in the area as early as 3,000 to 2,000 BC. Sitting at an important geostrategic location that connects the Middle East with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the land has been home to various peoples through the ages and witnessed many military campaigns, notably by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and in modern era Western forces. The land also served as a source from which the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Timurids, Mughals and many others have risen to form major empires.

The political history of the modern state of Afghanistan begins in 1709 with the rise of the Pashtuns, when the Hotaki dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power in 1747. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the "Great Game" between the British and Russian empires. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 and the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi, King Amanullah started modernization of the country. During the Cold War, after the withdraw of British from neighboring India in 1947, the United States and the Soviet Union began spreading their influence in Afghanistan. Between 1979 and 1989, the country experianced a major war between the US-backed mujahideen forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government in which over a million Afghans lost their lives mainly due to land-mines. This was followed by the 1990s Afghan civil war, the rise and fall of the extremist Taliban government and the 2001-present war. In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to help maintain security in Afghanistan and assist the Karzai administration.

The decades of war made Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country, including the largest producer of refugees and asylum seekers. While the international community is rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan, terrorist groups such as the Haqqani network and Hezbi Islami are actively involved in a nationwide Taliban-led insurgency, which includes hundreds of assassinations and suicide attacks. According to the United Nations, the insurgents were responsible for 75% of civilian casualties in 2010 and 80% in 2011.

Etymology[link]

The name ''Afghānistān'' (, ) means ''"Land of the Afghans"'', which originates from the ethnonym ''"Afghan"''. The first part of the name ''"Afghan"'' designates the Pashtun people since ancient times, the founders and the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. This name is mentioned in the form of ''Abgan'' in the 3rd century CE by the Sassanians and as ''Avagana'' (''Afghana'') in the 6th century CE by Indian astronomer Varahamihira. A people called the ''Afghans'' are mentioned several times in a 10th century geography book, Hudud al-'alam, particularly where a reference is made to a village.}} Al-Biruni referred to them in the 11th century as various tribes living on the western frontier mountains of the Indus River, which would be the Sulaiman Mountains. Ibn Battuta, a famous Moroccan scholar visiting the region in 1333, writes: "We travelled on to Kabul, formerly a vast town, the site of which is now occupied by a village inhabited by a tribe of Persians called ''Afghans''. They hold mountains and defiles and possess considerable strength, and are mostly highwaymen. Their principle mountain is called Kuh Sulayman."

One prominent 16th century Persian scholar explains extensively about the Afghans. For example, he writes:

It is widely accepted that the terms ''"Pashtun"'' and ''Afghan'' are synonyms. In the writings of the 17th-century Pashto poet Khushal Khan Khattak it is mentioned:

The last part of the name, ''-stān'' is a Persian suffix for "place", prominent in many languages of the region. The name ''"Afghanistan"'' is described by the 16th century Mughal Emperor Babur in his memoirs as well as by the later Persian scholar Firishta and Babur's descendants, referring to the traditional ethnic Afghan (Pashtun) territories between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River. In the early 19th century, Afghan politicians decided to adopt the name ''Afghanistan'' for the entire Afghan Empire after its English translation had already appeared in various treaties with Qajarid Persia and British India. In 1857, in his review of J.W. Kaye's ''The Afghan War'', Friedrich Engels describes "Afghanistan" as:

The Afghan kingdom was sometimes referred to as the ''Kingdom of Kabul'', as mentioned by the British statesman and historian Mountstuart Elphinstone. Afghanistan was officially recognized as a sovereign state by the international community after the signing of the 1919 Treaty of Rawalpindi.

Geography[link]

A landlocked mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest, Afghanistan is described as being located within South Asia or Central Asia. It is part of the Greater Middle East Muslim world, which lies between latitudes and , and longitudes and . The country's highest point is Noshaq, at above sea level. , and hot summers in the low-lying areas of the Sistan Basin of the southwest, the Jalalabad basin in the east, and the Turkestan plains along the Amu River in the north, where temperatures average over in July.|date=October 2011}}

Despite having numerous rivers and reservoirs, large parts of the country are dry. The endorheic Sistan Basin is one of the driest regions in the world. Aside from the usual rain falls, Afghanistan receives snow during winter in the Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains, and the melting snow in the spring season enters the rivers, lakes, and streams. However, two-thirds of the country's water flows into neighboring countries of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. The state needs more than to rehabilitate its irrigation systems so that the water is properly managed. The northeastern Hindu Kush mountain range, in and around the Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan, is in a geologically active area where earthquakes may occur almost every year. They can be deadly and destructive sometimes, causing landslides in some parts or avalanche during winter. The last strong earthquakes were in 1998, which killed about 6,000 people in Badakhshan near Tajikistan. This was followed by the 2002 Hindu Kush earthquakes in which over 150 people of various regional countries were killed and over 1,000 injured. The 2010 earthquake left 11 Afghans dead, over 70 injured and more than 2,000 houses destroyed.

The country's natural resources include: coal, copper, iron ore, lithium, uranium, rare earth elements, chromite, gold, zinc, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, marble, precious and semi-precious stones, natural gas, and petroleum among other things. In 2010, US and Afghan government officials estimated that untapped mineral deposits located in 2007 by the US Geological Survey are worth between and .

At , Afghanistan is the world's 41st largest country, slightly bigger than France and smaller than Burma, about the size of Texas in the United States. It borders Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far east.

History[link]

Excavations of prehistoric sites by Louis Dupree and others suggest that humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago, and that farming communities in the area were among the earliest in the world. An important site of early historical activities, many say that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites.

Afghanistan is at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and often fought. It has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, the Islamic Empire and the Sassanid Empire.

Many kingdoms have also risen to power in what is now Afghanistan, such as the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Kabul Shahis, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Kartids, Timurids, Mughals, and finally the Hotaki and Durrani dynasties that marked the political origins of the modern state of Afghanistan.

Pre-Islamic period[link]

Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the geographical area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by the culture of and trade with neighboring regions to the east, west, and north. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages have been found in Afghanistan. Urban civilization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar in the south of the country) may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization.

After 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia moved south into the boundaries of modern Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further south to India, west to what is now Iran, and towards Europe via the area north of the Caspian. The region was called Ariana. The ancient Zoroastrianism religion is believed by some to have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 and 800 BCE, as its founder Zoroaster is thought to have lived and died in Balkh. Ancient Eastern Iranian languages may have been spoken in the region around the time of the rise of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Achaemenid Persians overthrew the Medians and incorporated Afghanistan (Arachosia, Aria and Bactria) within its boundaries. An inscription on the tombstone of King Darius I of Persia mentions the Kabul Valley in a list of the 29 countries he had conquered.

Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army arrived in the area of Afghanistan in 330 BCE after defeating Darius III of Persia a year earlier in the Battle of Gaugamela. Following Alexander's brief occupation, the successor state of the Seleucid Empire controlled the area until 305 BCE when they gave much of it to the Indian Maurya Empire as part of an alliance treaty.|Strabo|64 BC – 24 AD}} The Mauryans brought Buddhism from India and controlled the area south of the Hindu Kush until about 185 BCE when they were overthrown. Their decline began 60 years after Ashoka's rule ended, leading to the Hellenistic reconquest of the region by the Greco-Bactrians. Much of it soon broke away from the Greco-Bactrians and became part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. The Indo-Greeks were defeated and expelled by the Indo-Scythians in the late 2nd century BCE.

During the 1st century BCE, the Parthian Empire subjugated the region, but lost it to their Indo-Parthian vassals. In the mid to late 1st century CE the vast Kushan Empire, centered in modern Afghanistan, became great patrons of Buddhist culture. The Kushans were defeated by the Sassanids in the 3rd century CE. Although various rulers calling themselves Kushanshas (generally known as the Indo-Sassanids) continued to rule at least parts of the region, they were probably more or less subject to the Sassanids.

The late Kushans were followed by the Kidarite Huns who, in turn, were replaced by the short-lived but powerful Hephthalites, as rulers in the first half of the 5th century. The Hephthalites were defeated by Khosrau I in CE 557, who re-established Sassanid power in Persia. However, in the 6th century CE, the successors to the Kushans and Hepthalites established a small dynasty in Kabulistan called Kabul Shahi.

Islamization and Mongol invasion[link]

Between the fourth and nineteenth centuries, much of modern Afghanistan was known by the regional name as Khorasan. Two of the four main capitals of Khorasan (i.e. Balkh, Merv, Nishapur and Herat) are now located in modern Afghanistan, while Kandahar, Zabulistan, Ghazni and Kabulistan formed the frontier between Khorasan and Hindustan. The land inhabited by the Afghan tribes (i.e. ancestors of modern Pashtuns) was called Afghanistan, which loosely covered the area between the Hindu Kush and the Indus River, with the Sulaiman Mountains being the center. Arab Muslims brought the message of Islam to the western area of what is now Afghanistan during the 7th century and began spreading eastward, some of the native inhabitants they encountered accepted it while others revolted. Afghanistan at that time was Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu, with smaller populations of Jews, Christians and others. The Shahi rulers lost their Kabul capital in around 870 AD after it was conquered by the Saffarid Muslims of Zaranj. Later, the Samanids extended their Islamic influence into the Hindu Kush area from Bukhara in the north. It is reported that Muslims and non-Muslims lived side by side.|Istahkrí|921 AD}}

Afghanistan became one of the main centers in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. By the 11th century the Ghaznavids had finally Islamized all of the remaining non-Muslim areas, with the exception of the Kafiristan region. They were replaced by the Ghurids who expanded and advanced the already powerful empire. In 1219 AD, Genghis Khan and his Mongol barbarians overran the region. His troops are said to have annihilated the Khorasanian cities of Herat and Balkh. The destruction caused by the Mongols depopulated major cities and forced many of the locals to revert to an agrarian rural society. Mongol rule continued with the Ilkhanate in the northwest while the Khilji dynasty controlled the Afghan tribal areas south of the Hindu Kush, until the invasion of Timur who established the Timurid dynasty in 1370. During the Ghaznavid, Ghurid, and Timurid eras, Afghanistan produced many fine Islamic architectural monuments as well as numerous scientific and literary works.

Babur, a descendant of both Timur and Genghis Khan, arrived from Central Asia and captured Kabul from the Arghun dynasty, and from there he began to seize control of the central and eastern territories of Afghanistan. He remained in Kabulistan until 1526 when he and his army invaded Delhi in India to replace the Afghan Lodi dynasty with the Mughal Empire. From the 16th century to the early 18th century, Afghanistan was part of three regional kingdoms: the Khanate of Bukhara in north, the Shi'a Safavids in the west and the remaining larger area was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate.

Afghan nation-state[link]

Hotaki dynasty and the Durrani Empire[link]

Mirwais Hotak, seen as Afghanistan's George Washington, successfully rebelled against the Persian Safavids in 1709. He overthrew and killed Gurgin Khan, and made the Afghan region independent from Persia. By 1713, Mirwais had decisively defeated two larger Persian armies, one was led by Khusraw Khán (nephew of Gurgin) and the other by Rustam Khán. The armies were sent by Sultan Husayn, the Shah in Isfahan (now Iran), to re-take control of the Kandahar region. Mirwais died of a natural cause in 1715 and was succeeded by his brother Abdul Aziz followed by his son Mahmud. In 1722, Mahmud led an Afghan army to the Persian capital of Isfahan, sacked the city after the Battle of Gulnabad and proclaimed himself King of Persia. The Persians were disloyal to the Afghan rulers, and after the massacre of thousands of religious scholars, nobles, and members of the Safavid family, the Hotaki dynasty was ousted from Persia after the 1729 Battle of Damghan. In 1738, Nader Shah and his Afsharid forces captured Kandahar from Shah Hussain Hotaki, at which point the incarcerated 16 year old Ahmad Shah Durrani was freed and made the commander of Nader Shah's four thousand Abdali Afghans. From Kandahar they set out to conquer India, passing through Ghazni, Kabul, Lahore and ultimately plundering Delhi after the Battle of Karnal. Nader Shah and his army abandoned Delhi but took with them huge treasure, which included the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-ye Noor diamonds. After the death of Nader Shah in 1747, the Afghans chose Ahmad Shah Durrani as their head of state. Regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan, Durrani and his Afghan army conquered the entire present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, along with Delhi in India. He defeated the Sikhs of the Maratha Empire in the Punjab region nine times, one of the biggest battles was the 1761 Battle of Panipat.

In October 1772, Ahmad Shah Durrani died of a natural cause and was buried at a site now adjacent to the Shrine of the Cloak in Kandahar. He was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani, who transferred the capital of Afghanistan from Kandahar to Kabul in 1776. After Timur Shah's death in 1793, the Durrani throne was passed down to his son Zaman Shah followed by Mahmud Shah, Shuja Shah and others.

The Afghan Empire was under threat in the early 19th century by the Sikhs in the east and the Persians in the west. The western provinces of Khorasan and Kohistan were taken by the Persians in 1800. The Sikhs of Punjab, under Ranjit Singh, invaded Afghanistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region and in 1834 captured its second capital, Peshawar. The regions of Multan, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan were also lost. Fateh Khan, leader of the Barakzai tribe, had installed 21 of his brothers in positions of power throughout the Afghan Empire. After his death, they rebelled and divided up the provinces of the empire between themselves. During this turbulent period, Afghanistan had many temporary rulers until 1826 when Dost Mohammad Khan rose to power. In 1837, Akbar Khan and the Afghan army crossed the Khyber Pass to defeat the Sikhs at the Battle of Jamrud, killing Sikh Commander Hari Singh Nalwa before returning to Kabul. By this time the British were advancing to the area from the east and the First Anglo-Afghan War or better known as the Great Game was initiated.

Western influence[link]

Following the 1842 Battle of Gandamak that was fought between Akbar Khan and William Elphinstone, the British established diplomatic relations with the Afghan government but withdrew all forces from the country. They returned during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in the late 1870s for about two year military operations, which was to defeat Ayub Khan and assist Abdur Rahman Khan establish authority. The United Kingdom began to exercise a great deal of influence after this and even controlled the state's foreign policy. In 1893, Mortimer Durand made Amir Abdur Rahman Khan sign a controversial agreement in which the ethnic Pashtun and Baloch territories were divided by the Durand Line. This was a standard divide and rule policy of the British and would lead to strained relations, especially with the later new state of Pakistan.

After the Third Anglo-Afghan War and the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, King Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan a sovereign and fully independent state. He moved to end his country's traditional isolation by establishing diplomatic relations with the international community and, following a 1927–28 tour of Europe and Turkey, introduced several reforms intended to modernize his nation. A key force behind these reforms was Mahmud Tarzi, an ardent supporter of the education of women. He fought for Article 68 of Afghanistan's 1923 constitution (declared through a loya jirga), which made elementary education compulsory.

Some of the reforms that were actually put in place, such as the abolition of the traditional burqa for women and the opening of a number of co-educational schools, quickly alienated many tribal and religious leaders. Faced with overwhelming armed opposition, Amanullah Khan was forced to abdicate in January 1929 after Kabul fell to rebel forces led by Habibullah Kalakani. Prince Mohammed Nadir Shah, Amanullah's cousin, in turn defeated and killed Kalakani in November 1929, and was declared King Nadir Shah. He abandoned the reforms of Amanullah Khan in favor of a more gradual approach to modernisation but was assassinated in 1933 by Abdul Khaliq, a Hazara school student.

Mohammed Zahir Shah, Nadir Shah's 19-year-old son, succeeded to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. Until 1946 Zahir Shah ruled with the assistance of his uncle, who held the post of Prime Minister and continued the policies of Nadir Shah. Another of Zahir Shah's uncles, Shah Mahmud Khan, became Prime Minister in 1946 and began an experiment allowing greater political freedom, but reversed the policy when it went further than he expected. He was replaced in 1953 by Mohammed Daoud Khan, the king's cousin and brother-in-law. Daoud Khan sought a closer relationship with the Soviet Union and a more distant one towards Pakistan. Afghanistan remained neutral and was neither a participant in World War II, nor aligned with either power bloc in the Cold War. However, it was a beneficiary of the latter rivalry as both the Soviet Union and the United States vied for influence by building Afghanistan's main highways, airports and other vital infrastructure. By the late 1960s, many Western travelers were using these as part of the hippie trail. In 1973, while King Zahir Shah was on an official overseas visit, Daoud Khan launched a bloodless coup and became the first President of Afghanistan.

Marxist revolution and Soviet war[link]

In April 1978, a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mir Akbar Khyber, was mysteriously killed. Leaders of the PDPA feared that the government was planning to dismantle them because many were being arrested. Hafizullah Amin along with other PDPA members managed to remain at large and organised an uprising. The PDPA, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Hafizullah Amin, overthrew the regime of Daoud by assassinating the President along with his family and relatives. Taraki quickly took over and moved to carry out an ill-conceived land reform, which was misunderstood by virtually all Afghans. The PDPA began imprisoning, torturing and murdering thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia. On the other hand, they prohibited usury, made statements on women's rights by declaring equality of the sexes and introducing women to political life. Anahita Ratebzad was one of several female Marxist leaders and a member of the Revolutionary Council. As part of its Cold War strategy, the United States strengthened political ties with Pakistan although Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, has warned that this might prompt a Soviet intervention. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began using Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as a proxy network to recruit, finance and arm the multi-national Mujahideen fighters inside Pakistan, which was aimed to prevent the Soviet Union from reaching the oil-rich Persian Gulf through Balochistan. In March 1979, Hafizullah Amin took over as Prime Minister of Afghanistan, retaining the position of field marshal and becoming Vice-President of the Supreme Defence Council. Taraki remained the president and in control of the army until he was killed in September 1979.

To bolster the Parcham faction and as part of its Cold War strategy to ultimately reach Gwadar in Balochistan, the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan in December 1979 by sending 100,000 soldiers of the Red Army to its southern neighbor. In the meantime, Hafizullah Amin was killed and replaced by Babrak Karmal. In response to all these, the Reagan administration in the U.S. increased arming and funding of the Mujahideen, thanks in large part to the efforts of Charlie Wilson and CIA officer Gust Avrakotos. Early reports estimated $6–20 billion but more recent reports suggest that up to $40 billion were provided by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. This was in the forms of cash and weapons, which included over two thousand FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles. The money and weapons were directly given to Pakistani Armed Forces, which was distributed by its ISI network to various Mujahideen groups although much of it was secretly kept for Pakistan's own defense and other purposes. Despite receiving only minor aid compared to leaders of other Mujahideen groups, Ahmad Shah Massoud was named "the Afghan who won the Cold War" by the ''Wall Street Journal''.

The 10-year Soviet war resulted in the deaths of over 1 million Afghans, mostly civilians and due to land-mines. About 6million fled to Pakistan and Iran, and from there tens of thousands began emigrating to the European Union, United States, Australia and other parts of the world. Faced with mounting international pressure and great number of casualties, the Soviets withdrew in 1989 but continued to support Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah until 1992.

Foreign interference and war[link]

After the fall of Najibullah's government in 1992, the Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement (the Peshawar Accords). The accords created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period to be followed by general elections. According to Human Rights Watch: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal concludes in ''Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival'': In addition, Saudi Arabia and Iran – as competitors for regional hegemony – supported Afghan militias hostile towards each other. According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was backing the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari to "maximize Wahdat's military power and influence". Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction.}} Conflict between the two militias soon escalated into a full-scale war.

Due to the sudden initiation of the war, working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability for the newly-created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. Atrocities were committed by individuals of the different armed factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Because of the chaos, some leaders increasingly had only nominal control over their (sub-)commanders. For civilians there was little security from murder, rape and extortion. When the Taliban took control of the city in 1994, they forced the surrender of dozens of local Pashtun leaders. The Islamic State government took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again. Massoud tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections, also inviting the Taliban to join the process but they refused as they did not believe in a democratic system.

Taliban Emirate and the United Front[link]

The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. (see video) Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report: The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses which led analysts to believe the Taliban movement had run its course. Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. On 26 September 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on 27 September 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam issuing edicts especially targeting women. The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) analyze: After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 27 September 1996, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former enemies, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban that were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and those under the control of Dostum. (see video) The United Front included beside the dominantly Tajik forces of Massoud and the Uzbek forces of Dostum, Hazara factions under the command of leaders such as Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq or Haji Abdul Qadir. The Taliban defeated Dostum's Junbish forces militarily by seizing Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. Dostum subsequently went into exile.

According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001 and that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." The Taliban especially targeted people of Shia religious or Hazara ethnic background. Upon taking Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, 4,000-6,000 civilians were killed by the Taliban and many more reported tortured. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the UN quotes "eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people".

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and bin Laden against the forces of Massoud. According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban. In 2001 alone, there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals, many either from the Frontier Corps or army, fighting inside Afghanistan. An estimated 8,000 Pakistani militants were recruited in madrassas filling the ranks of the estimated 25,000 regular Taliban force. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. 3,000 fighters of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian militants. Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. As a consequence many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban. (see video) National Geographic concluded in its documentary ''"Inside the Taliban"'': : In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.

Recent history (2001–present)[link]

On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan and two days later about 3,000 people became victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States. The US government identified Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the Al-Qaeda organization based in and allied to the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the perpetrators of the attacks. The Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to US authorities and to disband al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. In October 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in which teams of American and British special forces worked with ground forces of the United Front (Northern Alliance) to remove the Taliban from power and dispel Al-Qaeda. At the same time the US-led forces were bombing Taliban and al-Qaida targets everywhere inside Afghanistan with cruise missiles. These actions led to the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north followed by all the other cities, as the Taliban and al-Qaida fled over the porous Durand Line border into Pakistan. In December 2001, after the Taliban government was toppled and the new Afghan government under Hamid Karzai was formed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to help assist the Karzai administration and provide basic security to the Afghan people.

While the Taliban began regrouping inside Pakistan, more coalition troops entered the escalating US-led war. Meanwhile, the rebuilding of war-torn Afghanistan kicked off in 2002. The Afghan nation was able to build democratic structures over the years, and some progress was made in key areas such as governance, economy, health, education, transport, and agriculture. NATO is training the Afghan armed forces as well its national police. ISAF and Afghan troops led many offensives against the Taliban but failed to fully defeat them. By 2009, a Taliban-led shadow government began to form in many parts of the country complete with their own version of mediation court. After U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deployment of another 30,000 soldiers in 2010 for a period of two years, Der Spiegel published images of the US soldiers who killed unarmed Afghan civilians.

At the 2010 International Conference on Afghanistan in London, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he intends to reach out to the Taliban leadership (including Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar). Supported by NATO, Karzai called on the group's leadership to take part in a loya jirga meeting to initiate peace talks. These steps have resulted in an intensification of bombings, assassinations and ambushes. Some Afghan groups (including the former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) believe that Karzai plans to appease the insurgents' senior leadership at the cost of the democratic constitution, the democratic process and progess in the field of human rights especially women's rights. Dr. Abdullah stated: :"I should say that Taliban are not fighting to be accommodated. They are fighting to bring the state down. So it's a futile exercise, and it's just misleading. ... There are groups that will fight to the death. Whether we like to talk to them or we don't like to talk to them, they will continue to fight. So, for them, I don't think that we have a way forward with talks or negotiations or contacts or anything as such. Then we have to be prepared to tackle and deal with them militarily. In terms of the Taliban on the ground, there are lots of possibilities and opportunities that with the help of the people in different parts of the country, we can attract them to the peace process; provided, we create a favorable environment on this side of the line. At the moment, the people are leaving support for the government because of corruption. So that expectation is also not realistic at this stage."

Over five million Afghan refugees were repatriated in the last decade, including many who were forcefully deported from NATO countries. This large return of Afghans may have helped the nation's economy but the country still remains one of the poorest in the world due to the decades of war, lack of foreign investment, ongoing government corruption and the Pakistani-backed Taliban insurgency. According to a report by the United Nations, the Taliban and other militants were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011. In 2011 a record 3,021 civilians were killed in the ongoing insurgency, the fifth successive annual rise. After the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, many prominent Afghan figures began being assassinated, including Mohammed Daud Daud, Ahmad Wali Karzai, Jan Mohammad Khan, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, Burhanuddin Rabbani and others. Also in the same year, the Pak-Afghan border skirmishes intensified and many large scale attacks by the Pakistani-based Haqqani network took place across Afghanistan. This led to the United States warning Pakistan of a possible military action against the Haqqanis in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The U.S. blamed Pakistan's government, mainly Pakistani Army and its ISI spy network as the masterminds behind all of this. |Admiral Mike Mullen|Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff}} U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told Radio Pakistan that "The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago, that was the work of the Haqqani network. There is evidence linking the Haqqani Network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop." Other top U.S. officials such as Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta made similar statements. On 16 October 2011, "Operation Knife Edge" was launched by NATO and Afghan forces against the Haqqani network in south-eastern Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, explained that the operation will "help eliminate the insurgents before they struck in areas along the troubled frontier".

In anticipation of the 2014 NATO withdrawal and a subsequent expected push to regain power by the Taliban, the anti-Taliban United Front (Northern Alliance) groups have started to regroup under the umbrella of the National Coalition of Afghanistan (political arm) and the National Front of Afghanistan (military arm).

Governance[link]

The government of Afghanistan is an Islamic republic consisting of three branches, executive, legislative and judicial. The nation is currently led by the Karzai administration with Hamid Karzai as the President and leader since late 2001. The National Assembly is the legislature, a bicameral body having two chambers, the House of the People and the House of Elders.

The Supreme Court is led by Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi, a former university professor who had been a legal advisor to the president. The current court is seen as more moderate and led by more technocrats than the previous one, which was dominated by fundamentalist religious figures such as Chief Justice Faisal Ahmad Shinwari who issued several controversial rulings, including seeking to place a limit on the rights of women.

According to Transparency International's corruption perceptions index 2010 results, Afghanistan was ranked as the third most-corrupt country in the world. A January 2010 report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that bribery consumes an amount equal to 23 percent of the GDP of the nation. A number of government ministries are believed to be rife with corruption, and while President Karzai vowed to tackle the problem in late 2009 by stating that "individuals who are involved in corruption will have no place in the government", top government officials were busy stealing and misusing hundreds of millions of dollars through the Kabul Bank. Although the nation's institutions are newly formed and steps have been taken to arrest some, the United States warned that aid to Afghanistan would be reduced to very little if the corruption is not stopped.

Elections and parties[link]

The 2004 Afghan presidential election was relatively peaceful, in which Hamid Karzai won in the first round with 55.4% of the votes. However, the 2009 presidential election was characterized by lack of security, low voter turnout and widespread electoral fraud. The vote, along with elections for 420 provincial council seats, took place in August 2009, but remained unresolved during a lengthy period of vote counting and fraud investigation.

Two months later, under international pressure, a second round run-off vote between Karzai and remaining challenger Abdullah was announced, but a few days later Abdullah announced that he is not participating in the 7 November run-off because his demands for changes in the electoral commission had not been met. The next day, officials of the election commission cancelled the run-off and declared Hamid Karzai as President for another 5-year term.

In the 2005 parliamentary election, among the elected officials were former mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists, warlords, communists, reformists, and several Taliban associates. In the same period, Afghanistan reached to the 30th nation in terms of female representation in parliament. The last parliamentary election was held in September 2010, but due to disputes and investigation of fraud, the sworn in ceremony took place in late January 2011. After the issuance of computerized ID cards for the first time, which is a $101 million project that the Afghan government plans to start in 2012, it is expected to help prevent major fraud in future elections and improve the security situation.

Administrative divisions[link]

Afghanistan is administratively divided into 34 provinces (''wilayats''), with each province having its own capital and a provincial administration. The provinces are further divided into about 398 smaller provincial districts, each of which normally covers a city or a number of villages. Each district is represented by a district governor.

The provincial governors are appointed by the President of Afghanistan and the district governors are selected by the provincial governors. The provincial governors are representatives of the central government in Kabul and are responsible for all administrative and formal issues within their provinces. There are also provincial councils which are elected through direct and general elections for a period of four years. The functions of provincial councils are to take part in provincial development planning and to participate in monitoring and appraisal of other provincial governance institutions.

According to article 140 of the constitution and the presidential decree on electoral law, mayors of cities should be elected through free and direct elections for a four-year term. However, due to huge election costs, mayoral and municipal elections have never been held. Instead, mayors have been appointed by the government. As for the capital city of Kabul, the mayor is appointed by the President of Afghanistan.

The following is a list of all the 34 provinces of Afghanistan in alphabetical order and on the right is a map showing where each province is located:

Badakhshan Badghis Baghlan Balkh Bamyan Daykundi Farah Faryab Ghazni Ghor Helmand Herat Jowzjan Kabul Kandahar Kapisa Khost

Konar Kunduz Laghman Logar Nangarhar Nimruz Nurestan Oruzgan Paktia Paktika Panjshir Parvan Samangan Sare Pol Takhar Wardak Zabol

Foreign relations and military[link]

The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for managing the foreign relations of Afghanistan. The nation has been a member of the UN since 1946, and has maintained good relations with the United States and other NATO member states since the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was established in 2002 under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1401 to help the nation recover from decades of war and establish a normal functioning government. Today, more than 22 NATO nations deploy about 140,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Apart from close military links, Afghanistan also enjoys strong economic relations with NATO members and their allies.

Afghanistan also has diplomatic relations with neighboring Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the People's Republic of China, including regional states such as India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Russia, United Arab Emirate, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Japan, South Korea, and others. Afghanistan's relationship with Pakistan has often fluctuated since 1947. They have cultural, security and economic links with each other but disputes between the two states remain. Afghanistan continues to reject the porous and poorly-marked Durrand Line as its international border with Pakistan, and has repeatedly accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban insurgents, Haqqani network, and other anti-Afghanistan terrorist groups. Economically, Afghanistan is highly dependent on Pakistan in terms of imports, supplies and trade routes. Conversely, Pakistan considers Afghanistan as an important trade route for access to Central Asian resources.

Pakistan harbors concerns over the growing influence of its rival India in Afghanistan. Relations between the two states were strained further after recent border skirmishes. Afghan officials allege that Pakistani intelligence agencies are involved in terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan. Pakistan has denied supporting the Taliban and claimed that a stable Afghanistan is in its interest.

India and Iran have actively participated in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, with India being the largest regional donor to the country. Since 2002, India has pledged up to $2 billion in economic assistance to Afghanistan and has participated in multiple socio-economic reconstruction efforts, including power, roads, agricultural and educational projects. There are also military ties between Afghanistan and India, which is expected to increase after the October 2011 strategic pact that was signed by President Karzai and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The military of Afghanistan is under the Ministry of Defense, which includes the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Air Force. It currently has about 180,000 active soldiers and is expected to reach 260,000 in the coming years. They are trained and equipped by NATO countries, mainly by the United States Department of Defense. The ANA is divided into 7 major Corps, with the 201st Selab ("Flood") in Kabul being the main one. The ANA also has a commando brigade which was established in 2007. The National Military Academy of Afghanistan serves as the main educational institute for the militarymen of the country. A new $200 million Afghan Defense University (ADU) is under construction near the capital.

Crime and law enforcement[link]

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) is the nation's domestic intelligence agency, which operates similar to that of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has between 15,000 to 30,000 employees. The nation also has about 126,000 national police officers, with plans to recruit more so that the total number can reach 160,000. The Afghan National Police (ANP) is under the Ministry of the Interior, which is based in Kabul and headed by Bismillah Khan Mohammadi. The Afghan National Civil Order Police is the main branch of the Afghan National Police, which is divided into five Brigades and each one commanded by a Brigadier General. These brigades are stationed in Kabul, Gardez, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif. Every province of the country has a provincial Chief of Police who is appointed by the Ministry of the Interior and is responsible for law enforcement in all the districts within the province.

The police are being trained by NATO countries through the Afghanistan Police Program. According to a 2009 news report, large percent of the police officers are illiterate and are accused of demanding bribes. Jack Kem, deputy to the commander of NATO Training Mission Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan, stated that the literacy rate in the ANP will rise to over 50 percent by January 2012. What began as a voluntary literacy program became mandatory for basic police training in early 2011. Approximately 17 percent of them test positive for illegal drug use. In 2009, President Karzai created two anti-corruption units within the Interior Ministry. Former Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said that security officials from the U.S. (FBI), Britain (Scotland Yard) and the European Union will train prosecutors in the unit.

The south and eastern parts of Afghanistan are the most dangerous due to the flourishing drug trade and militancy. These areas in particular are often patrolled by Taliban insurgents, and in many cases they plan attacks by using suicide bombers and planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on roads. Kidnapping and robberies are also often reported. Every year many Afghan police officers are killed in the line of duty in these areas. The Afghan Border Police are responsible for protecting the nation's airports and borders, especially the disputed Durand Line border which is often used by members of criminal organizations and terrorists for their illegal activities. Reports in 2011 suggested that up to 3 million people are involved in the illegal drug business in Afghanistan, many of the attacks on government employees and institutions are carried out not only by the Taliban militants but also by powerful criminal gangs. Drugs from Afghanistan are exported to Iran, Pakistan, Russia, India, the United Arab Emirate, and the European Union. The Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics is dealing with this problem.

Economy[link]

Afghanistan is an impoverished and least developed country, one of the world's poorest due to the decades of war and nearly complete lack of foreign investment. The nation's GDP stands at about $27 billion with an exchange rate of $15 billion, and the GDP per capita is about $900. Its unemployment rate is 35% and roughly the same percentage of its citizens live below the poverty line. About 42 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day, according to a 2009 report. On the positive side, the nation has a very low external debt and is recovering by the assistance of the world community.

The Afghan economy has been growing at about 10% per year in the last decade, which is due to the infusion of over $50 billion dollars in international aid and remittances from Afghan expats. It is also due to improvements made to the transportation system and agricultural production, which is the backbone of the nation's economy. The country is known for producing some of the finest pomegranates, grapes, apricots, melons, and several other fresh and dry fruits, including nuts.

While the nations's current account deficit is largely financed with the donor money, only a small portion is provided directly to the government budget. The rest is provided to non-budgetary expenditure and donor-designated projects through the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations. The Afghan Ministry of Finance is focusing on improved revenue collection and public sector expenditure discipline. For example, government revenues increased 31% to $1.7 billion from March 2010 to March 2011.

Da Afghanistan Bank serves as the central bank of the nation and the "Afghani" (AFN) is the national currency, with an exchange rate of about 47 Afghanis to 1 US dollar. Since 2003, over 16 new banks have opened in the country, including Afghanistan International Bank, Kabul Bank, Azizi Bank, Pashtany Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, First Micro Finance Bank, and others.

One of the main drivers for the current economic recovery is the return of over 5 million expatriates, who brought with them fresh energy, entrepreneurship and wealth-creating skills as well as much needed funds to start up businesses. For the first time since the 1970s, Afghans have involved themselves in construction, one of the largest industries in the country. Some of the major national construction projects include the ''New Kabul City'' next to the capital, the ''Ghazi Amanullah Khan City'' near Jalalabad, and the ''Aino Mena'' in Kandahar. Similar development projects have also begun in Herat in the west, Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and in other cities.

In addition, a number of companies and small factories began operating in different parts of the country, which not only provide revenues to the government but also create new jobs. Improvements to the business-enabling environment have resulted in more than $1.5 billion in telecom investment and created more than 100,000 jobs since 2003. The Afghan rugs are becoming popular again and this gives many carpet dealers around the country to expand their business by hiring more workers.

Afghanistan is a member of SAARC, ECO and OIC. It is hoping to join SCO soon to develop closer economic ties with neighboring and regional countries in the so-called ''New Silk Road'' trade project. Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul told the media in 2011 that his nation's "goal is to achieve an Afghan economy whose growth is based on trade, private enterprise and investment". Experts believe that this will revolutionize the economy of the region. Opium production in Afghanistan has soared to a record in 2007 with about 3 million people reported to be involved in the business but then declined significantly in the years following. The government started programs to help reduce cultivation of poppy, and by 2010 it was reported that 24 out of the 34 provinces were free from poppy grow.

Mining and energy[link]

Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution explains that if Afghanistan generates about $10 bn per year from its mineral deposits, its gross national product would double and provide long-term funding for Afghan security forces and other critical needs. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated in 2006 that northern Afghanistan has an average (bbl) of crude oil, 15.7 trillion cubic feet ( bn m³) of natural gas, and of natural gas liquids. In December 2011, Afghanistan signed an oil exploration contract with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for the development of three oil fields along the Amu Darya river in the north.

Other reports show that the country has huge amounts of lithium, copper, gold, coal, iron ore and other minerals. The Khanashin carbonatite in Helmand Province contains of rare earth elements. In 2007, a 30-year lease was granted for the Aynak copper mine to the China Metallurgical Group for $3 billion, making it the biggest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan's history. Government officials estimate that the country's untapped mineral deposits are worth between and . One official asserted that "this will become the backbone of the Afghan economy" and a Pentagon memo stated that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium".

Transport and communications[link]

Afghanistan has about 53 airports, with the biggest ones being the Kabul International Airport, serving the capital and nearby regions followed Kandahar International Airport in the south, Herat International Airport in the west, and Mazar-i-Sharif Airport in the north. Ariana Afghan Airlines is the national carrier, with domestic flights between Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif. International flights include to United Arab Emirate, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan and a number of other Asian destinations.

There are also domestic and international flight services available from the locally owned Kam Air, Pamir Airways and Safi Airways. Airlines from a number of regional nations such as Turkish Airlines, Gulf Air, Air Arabia, Air India, PIA and others also provide services to Afghanistan. Flights between Dubai and Kabul take roughly 2 hours to reach.

The country has limited rail service with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in the north. The government plans to extended the rail line to the capital and then to the eastern border town of Torkham by 2014, connecting with Pakistan Railways. Long distant road journeys are made by older model company-owned Mercedes-Benz coach buses or carpool and private cars. Newer automobiles have recently become more widely available after the rebuilding of roads and highways. They are imported from the United Arab Emirates through Pakistan and Iran. As of 2012, vehicles that are older than 10 years are banned from being imported into the country. The development of the nation's road network is a major boost for the economy due to trade with neighboring countries. Afghanistan's postal and package services such as FedEx, DHL and others make deliveries to major cities and towns.

Telecommunication services in the country are provided by Afghan Wireless, Etisalat, Roshan, MTN Group and Afghan Telecom. In 2006, the Afghan Ministry of Communications signed a $64.5 million agreement with ZTE for the establishment of a countrywide optical fiber cable network. As of 2011, Afghanistan has around 17 million GSM phone subscribers and over 1 million internet users. It only has about 75,000 fixed telephone lines and little over 190,000 CDMA subscribers.

Health [link]

According to the Human Development Index, Afghanistan is the 15th least developed country in the world. The average life expectancy is anywhere between 47 to 64 years. It is the most dangerous place for a child to be born, with the highest infant mortality rates in the world. According to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, about 1 in 50 women die while giving birth and the number of children who died before the age of 5 is about 1 in 10. While these statistics are tragic, the government plans to further cut the infant mortality rate to 400 for every 100,000 live births by 2020. The country currently has more than 3,000 midwives with an additional 300 to 400 being trained each year.

A number of new hospitals and clinics have been built over the last decade, with the most advanced treatments being available in Kabul. The French Medical Institute for Children and Indira Gandhi Childrens Hospital in Kabul are the leading children's hospitals in the country. Some of the other main hospitals in Kabul include the 350-bed Jamhuriat Hospital and the Jinnah Hospital, which is still under construction. There are also a number of well-equipped military controlled hospitals in different regions of the country.

It was reported in 2006 that nearly 60% of the population lives within two hours walking distance of the nearest health facility, up from nine percent in 2002. Latest surveys show that 57 percent of Afghans say they have good or very good access to clinics or hospitals. The nation also has one of the highest incidences of people with disabilities, with an estimated one million handicapped people. About 80,000 citizens have lost limbs, mainly as a result of landmines. Non-governmental charities such as Save the Children and Mahboba's Promise assist orphans in association with governmental structures. Demographic and Health Surveys is working with the Indian Institute of Health Management Research and others to conduct a survey in Afghanistan focusing on Maternal death, among other things.

Education [link]

Education in the country includes K-12 and Higher Education, which is supervised by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education. The nation's education system was destroyed due to the decades of war, but it began reviving after the Karzai administration came to power in late 2001. More than 5,000 schools were built or renovated, with more than 100,000 teachers being trained and recruited. It was reported in 2011 that more than seven million male and female students were enrolled in schools.

As of 2011, about 82,000 students are enrolled in different universities around the country. Kabul University reopened in 2002 to both male and female students. In 2006, the American University of Afghanistan was established in Kabul, with the aim of providing a world-class, English-language, co-educational learning environment in Afghanistan. The capital of Kabul serves as the learning center of Afghanistan, with many of the best educational institutions being based there. Major universities outside of Kabul include Kandahar University in the south, Herat University in the northwest, Balkh University in the north, Nangarhar University and Khost University in the eastern zones, as well as a number of others. The National Military Academy of Afghanistan, modeled after the United States Military Academy at West Point, is a four-year military development institution dedicated to graduating officers for the Afghan armed forces. The $200 million Afghan Defense University is under construction near Qargha in Kabul. The United States is building six faculties of education and five provincial teacher training colleges around the country, two large secondary schools in Kabul and one school in Jalalabad.

Literacy rate of the entire population is low, around 28%. Female literacy may be as low as 10%. In 2010, the United States began establishing a number of Lincoln learning centers in Afghanistan. They are set up to serve as programming platforms offering English language classes, library facilities, programming venues, Internet connectivity, educational and other counseling services. A goal of the program is to reach at least 4,000 Afghan citizens per month per location. The military and national police are also provided with mandatory literacy courses. In addition to this, Baghch-e-Simsim (based on the American Sesame Street) was launched in late 2011 to help Afghan children learn from preschool and onward.

Demographics[link]

As of 2011, the population of Afghanistan is around 29,835,392, which includes the roughly 2 million Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan and Iran. In 1979, the population was reported to be about 15.5 million. The only city with over a million residents is its capital, Kabul. The other largest cities in the country are, in order of population size, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad, Lashkar Gah, Taloqan, Puli Khumri, Khost, Ghazni, Sheberghan, Sar-e Pol, and Farah. Urban areas are experiencing rapid population growth following the return of over 5 million expats. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the Afghan population is estimated to increase to 82 million by 2050.

Ethnic groups[link]

Afghanistan is a multiethnic society, and its historical status as a crossroads has contributed significantly to its diverse ethnic makeup. The population of the country is divided into a wide variety of ethnolinguistic groups. Because a systematic census has not been held in the nation in decades, exact figures about the size and composition of the various ethnic groups are unvailable. An approximate distribution of the ethnic groups is shown in the chart below:

+Ethnic groups in Afghanistan
Ethnic group	Image
Others (Pashai, Nuristani, Arab, Brahui, Pamiri, Gujjar, etc.)

The 2004–present suggested estimations in the above chart are supported by recent national opinion polls, which were aimed at knowing how a group of 7,760 Afghan citizens felt about the current war, political situation, as well as the economic and social issues affecting their daily lives. Two of the surveys were conducted between 2006 to 2010 by the Asia Foundation (with technical assistance by the Indian ''Centre for the Study of Developing Societies'' and the ''Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research'') and one between 2004 to 2009 by a combined effort of the broadcasting companies NBC News, BBC, and ARD.

Languages[link]

Dari (Persian) and Pashto are the official languages of Afghanistan, making bilingualism very common. Both are Indo-European languages from the Iranian languages sub-family. Persian has always been the prestige language and as the main means of inter-ethnic communication, maintaining its status of lingua franca. Persian is the native tongue of various Afghan ethnic groups including the Tajiks, Hazaras, Aimaks and Kizilbash. Pashto is the native tongue of the Pashtuns, although some Pashtuns often use Persian and many non-Pashtuns are fluent in Pashto.

Other languages, such as Uzbek, Arabic, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi and Nuristani languages (Ashkunu, Kamkata-viri, Vasi-vari, Tregami and Kalasha-ala), are used as native tongue by minority groups across the country and have official status in the regions where they are widely spoken. Minor languages also include Pamiri (Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi and Wakhi), Brahui, Hindko, Kyrgyz, etc. Many Afghans are also fluent in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, English, and other languages.

{|class="wikitable" |- !|Language !|}} |- style="text-align:center;" ! Dari (Persian) | 50% |- style="text-align:center;" ! Pashto | 35% |- style="text-align:center;" ! Uzbek and Turkmen | 11% |- style="text-align:center;" ! 30 minor languages | 4% |}

Religions[link]

Over 99% of the Afghan population is Muslim: approximately 80–85% follow the Sunni sect, 15–19% are Shi'a, and 1% other. Until the 1890s, the region around Nuristan was known as Kafiristan (land of the kafirs) because of its inhabitants: the Nuristanis, an ethnically distinctive people who practiced animism, polytheism and shamanism. Other than Muslims, there are thousands of Sikhs and Hindus found living in different major cities of the country. There was also a small Jewish community in Afghanistan who emigrated to Israel and the United States by the end of the last century, and only one individual by the name of Zablon Simintov remains today.

Culture[link]

The Afghan culture has been around for over two millennia, tracing record to at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire in 500 BCE. It is mostly a nomadic and tribal society, with different regions of the country having their own tradition, reflecting the multi-cultural and multi-lingual character of the nation. In the southern and eastern region, as well as western Pakistan which was historically part of Afghanistan, the people live according to the Pashtun culture by following Pashtunwali, which is an ancient way of life that is still preserved. The remaining of the country is culturally Persian and Turkic. Some non-Pashtuns who live in close proximity with Pashtuns have adopted Pashtunwali in a process called Pashtunization (or ''Afghanization'') while some Pashtuns have been Persianized. Millions of Afghans who have been living in Pakistan and Iran over the last 30 years have been influenced by the cultures of those neighboring nations.

Afghans display pride in their culture, nation, ancestry, and above all, their religion and independence. Like other highlanders, they are regarded with mingled apprehension and condescension, for their high regard for personal honor, for their tribe loyalty and for their readiness to use force to settle disputes. As tribal warfare and internecine feuding has been one of their chief occupations since time immemorial, this individualistic trait has made it difficult for foreigners to conquer them. Tony Heathcote considers the tribal system to be the best way of organizing large groups of people in a country that is geographically difficult, and in a society that, from a materialistic point of view, has an uncomplicated lifestyle. There are an estimated 60 major Pashtun tribes, and the Afghan nomads are estimated at about 2–3 million.

The nation has a complex history that has survived either in its current cultures or in the form of various languages and monuments. However, many of its historic monuments have been damaged in recent wars. The two famous Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban, who regarded them as idolatrous. Despite that archaeologists are still finding Buddhist relics in different parts of the country, some of them date back to the 2nd century. This indicates that Buddhism was widespread in Afghanistan. Other historical places include the cities of Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Zarang. The Minaret of Jam in the Hari River valley is a UNESCO World Heritage site. A cloak reputedly worn by Islam's Prophet Muhammad is kept inside the Shrine of the Cloak in Kandahar, a city founded by Alexander and the first capital of Afghanistan. The citadel of Alexander in the western city of Herat has been renovated in recent years and is a popular attraction for tourists. In the north of the country is the Shrine of Hazrat Ali, believed by many to be the location where Ali was buried. The Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture is renovating 42 historic sites in Ghazni until 2013, when the province will be declared as the capital of Islamic civilization. The National Museum of Afghanistan is located in Kabul.

Although literacy level is low, classic Persian and Pashto poetry play an important role in the Afghan culture. Poetry has always been one of the major educational pillars in the region, to the level that it has integrated itself into culture. Some notable poets include Rumi, Rabi'a Balkhi, Sanai, Jami, Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Khalilullah Khalili, and Parwin Pazhwak.

Media and entertainment[link]

The Afghan mass media began in the early 20th century, with the first newspaper published in 1906. By the 1920s, Radio Kabul was broadcasting local radio services. Afghanistan National Television was launched in 1974 but was closed in 1996 when the media was tightly controlled by the Taliban. Since 2002, press restrictions were gradually relaxed and private media diversified. Freedom of expression and the press is promoted in the 2004 constitution and censorship is banned, though defaming individuals or producing material contrary to the principles of Islam is prohibited. In 2008, Reporters Without Borders listed the media environment as 156 out of 173, with the 1st being most free. 400 publications were registered, at least 15 local Afghan television channels and 60 radio stations. Foreign radio stations, such as Voice of America, BBC World Service, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) broadcast into the country.

The city of Kabul has been home to many musicians in the past, who were masters of both traditional and modern Afghan music, especially during the Nowruz (New Year) and National Independence Day celebrations. Ahmad Zahir, Nashenas, Ustad Sarahang, Sarban, Ubaidullah Jan, Farhad Darya, and Naghma are some of the notable Afghan musicians but there are many others. Most Afghans are accustomed to watching Bollywood films from India and listening to its filmi hit songs. Many of the Bollywood film stars have roots in Afghanistan, including Madhubala, Feroz Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Fardeen Khan, Sohail Khan, Celina Jaitley and many others. In addition, several Bollywood films such as Dharmatma, Khuda Gawah, Escape from Taliban and Kabul Express have been shot inside Afghanistan.

Sports[link]

The Afghanistan national football team has been competing in international football since 1941 and currently has a world ranking of 179. The national team plays its home games at the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul, while football in Afghanistan is governed by the Afghanistan Football Federation. The national team has never competed or qualified for the World Cup. The country also has a national team in the sport of futsal, a game very similar to football. Some of the other popular sports in Afghanistan include cricket, volleyball, basketball, taekwondo, boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, and bodybuilding.

Cricket, which is a newly introduced sport in Afghanistan fuelled by the success of the Afghan national cricket team is growing in popularity. It has risen from the lower levels of international cricket to qualifying for the 2010 Twenty20 World Cup. More recently the under-19 team has qualified for the 2012 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) is the official governing body of the sport and is headquartered in Kabul. The Ghazi Amanullah Khan International Cricket Stadium serves as the nation's main cricket stadium, followed by the Kabul National Cricket Stadium. Several other stadiums are under construction. Cricket is played between teams from different provinces, mostly by the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.

Buzkashi is a traditional sport, mainly among the northern Afghans. It is similar to polo, played by horsemen in two teams, each trying to grab and hold a goat carcass. Afghan Hounds (a type of running dog) originated in Afghanistan and was originally used in the sport of hunting.

See also[link]

Durrani Empire

Barakzai dynasty

Outline of Afghanistan

Bibliography of Afghanistan

Index of Afghanistan-related articles

Afghanistanism

International rankings of Afghanistan

Notes[link]

{| |valign="top"|a. |valign="top"|Other terms that have been used as demonyms are Afghani and Afghanistani. |}

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Office of the President ''official government website''

Images of Afghanistan on Panoramio

Category:Central Asian countries Category:Iranian Plateau Category:Islamic republics Category:Islamic states Category:Landlocked countries Category:Least developed countries Category:Member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Category:Member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Category:Member states of the United Nations Category:Middle Eastern countries Category:Pashto-speaking countries and territories Category:Persian-speaking countries and territories Category:South Asian countries Category:States and territories established in 1709 Category:States and territories established in 1747 Category:Territories under military occupation Category:Republics

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Birthname	Norman Gary Finkelstein
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.)Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Jewish
Influences	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Website	normanfinkelstein.com }}

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Personal background and education[link]

Finkelstein has written of his Jewish parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone, her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. After immigrating to the United States, his father became a factory worker, while his mother was a homemaker. Finkelstein's mother was an ardent pacifist. Both his parents died in 1995.

Finkelstein grew up in New York City, where he attended James Madison High School and was a childhood friend of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), who was two years ahead of him. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. One childhood friend recalls his mother's "emotional investment in left-wing humanitarian causes as bordering on hysteria." He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago. According to ''The New York Times'' he left Hunter College in 2001 "after his teaching load and salary were reduced" by the college administration.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis at Princeton, Finkelstein's career has been marked by controversy. A self-described "forensic scholar", he has written sharply critical academic reviews of several prominent writers and scholars whom he accuses of misrepresenting the documentary record in order to defend Israel's policies and practices. His writings, noted for their support of the Palestinian cause, have dealt with politically charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage," and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work. Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim, as well as Chomsky.

Finkelstein has described himself as "an old-fashioned communist," in the sense that he "see(s) no value whatsoever in states."

Academic career[link]

On ''From Time Immemorial''[link]

In Finkelstein's doctoral thesis, he examined the claims made in Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', a best-selling book at the time.

Peters's "history and defense" of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from emigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards. It followed, for Peters and many of her readers, that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda, and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land.

''From Time Immemorial'' had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote in a jacket endorsement that: :"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax". He later opined that, while Peters's book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

:"By the end of 1984, ''From Time Immemorial'' had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices ... in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly ''In These Times'', which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in ''The Nation'' exposing the hoax. ... The periodicals in which ''From Time Immemorial'' had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. ''The New Republic'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''Commentary''). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. ''The Village Voice'', ''Dissent'', ''The New York Review of Books''). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax."

Noam Chomsky later reminisced:

:"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

In 1986, the ''New York Review of Books'' published Yehoshua Porath's review and an exchange with critics of the review in which he criticized the assumptions and evidence on which Peters's thesis relied, thus lending independent support from an expert in Palestinian demographics to Finkelstein's doctoral critique. In the house journal of the American Council on Foreign Relations, ''Foreign Affairs'', William B. Quandt, the Edward Stettinius professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and authority on Middle Eastern politics, later described Finkelstein's critique of ''From Time Immemorial'' as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit", in its "demonstration" of the "shoddy scholarship" of Peters's book.

According to Noam Chomsky, the controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Chomsky wrote in ''Understanding Power'' that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation]" and that Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment [for Princeton]" but refused to give him any further professional backing.

Finkelstein published portions of his thesis in the following publications:

"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial''." Chapter 2 of ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (1988); and

"A Land Without a People (Joan Peters' "Wilderness" Image)." Chapter 2 of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' (1995).

''The Holocaust Industry''[link]

''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'' was published in 2000. Here, Finkelstein argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon." This is so the state of Israel, "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism." He also alleges what he calls a "double shakedown" by "a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters" seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors.

The book met with a hostile reception in some quarters, with critics charging that it was poorly researched and/or allowed others to exploit it for antisemitic purposes. For example, German historian Hans Mommsen disparaged the first edition as "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices." Israeli holocaust historian Israel Gutman called the book "a lampoon," stating "this is not research; it isn't even political literature... I don't even think it should be reviewed or critiqued as a legitimate book." The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

However, preeminent scholar of the Holocaust Raul Hilberg said the book expressed views Hilberg himself subscribed to in substance, in that he too found the exploitation of the Holocaust, in the manner Finkelstein describes, "detestable." Asked on another occasion if Finkelstein's analysis might play into the hands of neo-Nazis for antisemitic purposes, Hilberg replied: "Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I'm afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing."

Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel''[link]

Shortly after the publication of the book ''The Case for Israel'' by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book. He also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. Finkelstein noted 20 instances, in as many pages, where Dershowitz's book cites the same sources and passages used by Joan Peters in her book, in largely the same sequence, with ellipses in the same places. In two instances, Dershowitz reproduces Peters's errors (see below). From this Finkelstein concluded that Dershowitz had not checked the original sources himself, contrary to the latter's claims. Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas. Examining a copy of a proof of Dershowitz's book he managed to obtain, he found evidence that Dershowitz had his secretarial assistant, Holly Beth Billington, check in the Harvard library the sources he had read in Peters's book. Dershowitz answered the charge in a letter to the University of California's Press Director Lynne Withey, arguing that Finkelstein had made up the ''smoking gun'' quotation, in that he had changed its wording (from 'cite' to 'copy') in his book. In public debate he has stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain.

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, as a consequence of which, the publisher deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication. Finkelstein also agreed to remove the suggestion that Dershowitz was not the true author of ''The Case for Israel'' because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters's book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters's ideas without citation. "Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and claiming they're your own. There are no borrowed words from anybody. There are no borrowed ideas from anybody because I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of Peters's book." In a footnote in ''The Case for Israel'' which cites Peters's book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".

In their joint interview on ''Democracy Now'', however, Finkelstein cited specific passages in Dershowitz's book in which a phrase that he says Peters coined was incorrectly attributed to George Orwell:

"[Peters] coins the phrase, 'turnspeak', she says she's using it as a play off of George Orwell which as all listeners know used the phrase 'Newspeak.' She coined her own phrase, 'turnspeak.' You go to Mr. Dershowitz's book, he got so confused in his massive borrowings from Joan Peters that on two occasions, I'll cite them for those who have a copy of the book, on page 57 and on page 153 he uses the phrase, quote, George Orwell's 'turnspeak.' 'Turnspeak' is not Orwell, Mr. Dershowitz, you're the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard, you must know that Orwell would never use such a clunky phrase as 'turnspeak'."

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein's] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein's] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.

Responding to an article in ''The Nation'' by Alexander Cockburn, Dershowitz also cited ''The Chicago Manual of Style'':

Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This...helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in...') is generally to be discouraged...."

...to which Cockburn responded:

Quoting ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. He misrepresents Chicago here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material, which is, in this instance, Peters.

Now look at the second bit of the quote from Chicago, chastely separated from the preceding sentence by a demure three-point ellipsis. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727, which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipsis, in a section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dershowitz left out set in bold: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."

So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, QED, plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.

On behalf of Dershowitz, Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to investigate the assertion of plagiarism; Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the charge.

Although the plagiarism allegations by Finkelstein received the most attention and attracted a lot of controversy, Finkelstein has maintained that "the real issue is Israel's human rights record."

In an April 3, 2007 interview with the ''Harvard Crimson'', "Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent a letter last September to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure."

In April 2007, Dr. Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review, published an analysis of the charges made against Finkelstein by Alan Dershowitz, finding no merit in any single charge, and that, on the contrary, "Dershowitz is deliberately misrepresenting what Finkelstein wrote". In a follow-up analysis he concluded that he could find 'no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', and not from the original source', as Dershowitz claimed.

Controversies[link]

Tenure denial and resignation[link]

In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar who was also Jewish. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Elie Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. Amidst considerable public debate, Alan Dershowitz actively campaigned to block Finkelstein's tenure bid. In June 2007, a 4-3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure.

The university denied that Dershowitz, who had been criticized for his campaign against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. At the same time, the university denied tenure to international studies assistant professor Mehrene Larudee, a strong supporter of Finkelstein, despite unanimous support from her department, the Personnel Committee and the Dean. Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."

In June 2007, after two weeks of protests, some DePaul students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in support of both professors denied tenure. The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors also sent a letter to the university’s president stating: "It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research ... might hurt a college’s reputation" and that the association has "explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members".

Denied entry to Israel in 2008[link]

On May 23, 2008 Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel, according to unnamed Shin Bet security officials, because "of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon" and that he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions." Finkelstein had previously visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the 2006 Lebanon War. He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and detained for 24 hours in a holding cell. After speaking to Israeli attorney Michael Sfard he was placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin. In an interview with ''Haaretz'', Finkelstein stated "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide... no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations." He had been travelling to visit friends in the West Bank and stated he had no interest in visiting Israel. Sfard said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."

Reception[link]

Finkelstein's books are an attempt to examine the works of mainstream scholarship. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly, have in turn accused Finkelstein of grossly misrepresenting their work, and selectively quoting from their books.

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors from around the world. Notable supporters of his work include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays "academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him... I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."

Criticism[link]

Criticism has been leveled against Finkelstein from several angles. The first sources are responses from those whose work Finkelstein has discussed. Daniel Goldhagen, whose book ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'' Finkelstein criticized, claimed his scholarship has "everything to do with his burning political agenda." Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticized the latter's work, describing it as "trash." Similarly, Alan Dershowitz, whose book ''The Case for Israel'' and Finkelstein's response ''Beyond Chutzpah'' sparked an ongoing feud between the two, has claimed Finkelstein's complicity in a conspiracy against pro-Israel scholars: "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn't actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud," arguing that Finkelstein has leveled charges against many academics, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters', 'hoaxters' (''sic''), 'thieves,' 'extortionists', and worse."

Israeli historian Omer Bartov, writing for ''The New York Times Book Review'', judged ''The Holocaust Industry'' to be marred by the same errors he denounces in those who exploit the Holocaust for profit or politics:

'It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority... Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.'

In 2003, Finkelstein published a considerably expanded second edition of this book, focusing especially on the Swiss Banks case. He identifies areas where people have attacked the book, and says that none of them question his actual findings.

Finkelstein has accused Jeffrey Goldberg of "torturing" Palestinian prisoners during his IDF service in the First Intifada. Goldberg referred to the allegation as "ridiculous" and he had "never laid a hand on anybody." Goldberg said his "principal role" was "making sure prisoners had fresh fruit." He characterized Finkelstein as a "ridiculous figure" and accused him of "lying and purposely misreading my book."

2009 film about Finkelstein[link]

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' is an award-winning documentary film about the life and career of Norman Finkelstein, released in 2009 and directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. It has been screened in Amsterdam IDFA, in Toronto Hot Docs and in more than 40 other national and international venues, it received a freshness rating over 90% on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Statements on Israel and Israelis[link]

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. In a telephone interview with ''Today's Zaman'', in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza, Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel." On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

Finkelstein is an advocate of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Hezbollah and Hamas[link]

Finkelstein has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas with respect to defensive actions, alleging that Israel had invaded Lebanon as a signal of rejection when Hamas was seeking a diplomatic settlement with Israel. He also condemned Israel's refusal "to abide by international law (and) to abide by the opinion of the international community" to settle the conflict".

"I don’t care about Hizbullah as a political organization. I don’t know much about their politics, and anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I don’t live in Lebanon. It’s a choice that the Lebanese have to make: Who they want to be their leaders, who they want to represent them. But there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question."

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians if Israel targets civilians.

During the Second Intifada, Finkelstein stated a moral equivalence exists between Hamas and the state of Israel in regards to the military policy of targeted killings. Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivations for launching the 2008 offensive in Gaza was that Hamas was “signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border.” Finkelstein believes Hamas had joined the international community in “seeking a diplomatic settlement” and describes Hamas's stance towards Israel prior to the war as a “peace offensive.”

Statements on the BDS movement[link]

In February 2012, Finkelstein "launched a blistering attack" of the BDS movement, saying it was a "hypocritical, dishonest cult" that tries to cleverly pose as human rights activists while in reality their goal is to destroy Israel. In addition, he said: "I'm getting a little bit exasperated with what I think is a whole lot of nonsense. I'm not going to tolerate silliness, childishness and a lot of leftist posturing. I loathe the disingenuousness. We will never hear the solidarity movement [back a] two-state solution." Furthermore, Finkelstein stated that the BDS movement has had very few successes, and that just like a cult, the leaders pretend that they are hugely successful when in reality the general public rejects their extreme views.

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

2012: ''Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End'', OR Books, New York: 2012., ISBN 978-1-935928-77-5 2012: ''What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage'', OR Books, New York: 2012., ISBN 978-1-935928-79-9 2011: ''Goldstone Recants. Richard Goldstone renews Israel’s license to kill'', OR Books, New York: 2011., ISBN 978-1-935928-51-5

2010: ''This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion''. OR Books, New York: 2010. , ISBN 978-1-935928-43-0

2005: ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History''. U of California P, ISBN 0-520-24598-9. 2nd updated edition, U of Cal. P. June 2008, ISBN 0-520-24989-5, contains an appendix written by Frank J. Menetrez, ''Dershowitz vs Finkelstein. Who's Right and Who's Wrong?, p. 363-394,

2000: ''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-488-X.

1998: ''A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth'' (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.

1996: ''The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years''. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.

1995: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-442-1

1987: ''From the Jewish Question to the Jewish State: An Essay on the Theory of Zionism'', thesis, Princeton University.

Articles and chapters[link]

”Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's 'From Time Immemorial.'“ in ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''. Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One:

”Peace process or peace panic? - The scourge of Palestinian moderation”, ''Middle East Report'', 19 (1989) 3/158, pp. 25–26,28-30,42

”Zionist orientations”, ''Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives'' 9 (March 1990) 1. p. 41-69

”Bayt Sahur in year II of the intifada. - A personal account”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 19 (Winter 1990) 2/74.p. 62-74

”Israel and Iraq. - A double standard”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 20 (1991) 2/78. p. 43-56

"Reflections on Palestinian attitudes during the Gulf war", '' Journal of Palestine Studies'', 21 (1992) 3/83, p. 54-70

”Réflexions sur la responsabilité de l´État et du citoyen dans le conflit arabo-israélien” (Reflections on the responsibility of state and citizen in the Arab-Israeli conflict), in ''L' homme et la société'', L'Harmattan 1994, 114, S. 37-50

”Whither the `peace process'?”, ''New Left Review'', (1996) 218, p. 138

”Securing occupation: The real meaning of the Wye River Memorandum”, ''New Left Review'', (1998) 232, p. 128-139

Contributor to ''The Politics of Anti-Semitism''. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4.

”Lessons of Holocaust compensation”, in ''Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return''. Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001, S. 272-275. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6.

”Abba Eban with Footnotes”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'',, vol 32. (2003), p. 74-89

”Prospects for Ending the Occupation”, ''Antipode'', 35 (2003) 5, p. 839-845

Contributor to ''Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel'', by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3.

”The Camp David II negotiations. - how Dennis Ross proved the Palestinians aborted the peace process”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', vol. 36 (2007), p. 39-53

”Dennis Ross and the peace process: subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli ‘needs’” Institute for Palestine Studies, 2007 ISBN 0-88728-308-X

Others on Finkelstein and his works[link]

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein[link]

Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.

Cole, Tim. "Representing the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," ''The Public Historian'', Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131

Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 3, Special Issue in Honor of Edward W. Said. (Spring, 2004), pp. 123–124.

Pelham, Nicolas. Reviewed Work: ''Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''International Affairs'', Vol. 72, No. 3, Ethnicity and International Relations. (July 1996), pp. 627–628.

Pappe, Ilan. "Valuable New Perspectives," Reviewed Work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 26, No. 4. (Summer, 1997), pp. 113–115.

Beinin, Joel. "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict after Oslo," Reviewed work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''Middle East Report'', No. 201, Israel and Palestine: Two States, Bantustans or Binationalism?. (Oct. - Dec., 1996), pp. 45–47.

Reviews of books by Finkelstein[link]

Blokker, Bas. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''NRC Handelsblad'' 24 February 2006.

Pappe, Ilan. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''BOOKFORUM'' Feb./March 2006.

De Zayas, Alfred. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' 3 February 2006.

Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Christianity Today'' January/February 2006.

Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''The American Conservative'' 5 Dec. 2005

Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' 10 Dec. 2005

Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Red Pepper (magazine)'' Jan. 2006

Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Z Magazine'' November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11

McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Village Magazine, Ireland'' 17 Nov. 2005

Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''History News Network'' 12 Oct. 2005

Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''El Mundo'' 23 Oct. 2003

Bogdanor, Paul. The Finkelstein Phenomenon. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''Judaism'', Fall, 2002.

Abse, Tobias. Finkelstein's Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New Interventions'', vol. 10, no. 2, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New York Times Book Review'' 6 Aug. 2000.

Profiles of Finkelstein[link]

Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." ''Times Higher Education Supplement'' 16 December 2005.

Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." ''The Jerusalem Post'' 12 December 2005.

Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." ''The Observer'' 16 July 2000.

Sheleg, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." ''Ha'aretz'' 30 March 2001.

Critics of Finkelstein and replies[link]

Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance

* Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen

William Rubinstein et al., Uses of Holocaust, letters to the ''London Review of Books''

Alex Callinicos, Finkelstein and the Holocaust, criticism in ''Socialist Worker''

David Friedman, Anti-Defamation League letter, calling Finkelstein a Holocaust denier

* How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism

* The Washington Post Publishes a Retraction, Marc Fisher, WP columnist, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism

References[link]

External links[link]

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - official website of the documentary film on Norman Finkelstein

"Depaul University -- Against" bibliography at "Norman G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign"

'An Interview with Norman Finkelstein' State of Nature interview with Norman Finkelstein (2008)

Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein, featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.

Video[link]

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - broadcast of the documentary in two parts

Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jan 21, 2009.

Interview Broadcasted on Lebanese TV January 20, 2008

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace, presentation in Seattle, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - The Coming Breakup of American Zionism, presentation in Olympia, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein at Brown University, April 15, 2008

Finkelstein in a dual interview with former US-Israel ambassador Martin Indyk, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.

Doha Debate at the Oxford Union Video of debate on whether the "pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions" with Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, and David Aaronovitch, May 1, 2007

Debate with Shlomo Ben-Ami on Democracy Now!, February 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments March 23, 2010

Category:1953 births Category:American atheists Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:American political scientists Category:American political writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:DePaul University faculty Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish American historians Category:Jewish anti-Zionism Category:Jewish atheists Category:Jewish peace activists Category:Living people Category:New York University faculty Category:Personae non gratae Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Writers on Zionism

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birth name	Alan Morton Dershowitz
alt	photograph
birth date	September 01, 1938
birth place	Brooklyn, New York
nationality	American
ethnicity	Jewish
education	Brooklyn College (A.B.) Yale Law School (LL.B)
occupation	Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
spouse	1. Sue Barlach 2. Carolyn Cohen
parents	Harry and Claire Dershowitz
website	www.alandershowitz.com

Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He has held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there since 1993.

Dershowitz is known for his involvement in several high-profile legal cases and as a commentator on the Arab–Israeli conflict. As a criminal appellate lawyer, he has won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he has handled, and has represented a series of celebrity clients, including Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, and Jim Bakker. His most notable cases include his role in 1984 in overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, and as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.

A political liberal, he is the author of a number of books about politics and law, including ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case'' (1985), the basis of the 1990 film; ''Chutzpah'' (1991); ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case'' (1996); the best-selling ''The Case for Israel'' (2003); ''Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights'' (2004) and ''The Case for Peace'' (2005).

Early life[link]

Dershowitz was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Harry and Claire Dershowitz, an Orthodox Jewish couple, and was raised in Borough Park. His father was a founder and president of the Young Israel Synagogue in the 1960s, served on the board of directors of the Etz Chaim School in Borough Park, and in retirement was co-owner of the Manhattan-based Merit Sales Company. According to Dershowitz, Harry had a strong sense of justice and talked about how it was "the Jew's job to defend the underdog."

Dershowitz's first job was at a deli factory on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1952, at age 14. He recalls tying the strings that separated the hot dogs and once getting locked in the freezer. He attended Yeshiva University High School, where he played on the basketball team. He was a rebellious student, often criticized by his teachers. The school's career placement center told him he had talent and was capable of becoming an advertising executive, funeral director, or salesman. He later said his teachers told him to do something that "requires a big mouth and no brain ... so I became a lawyer." After graduating from high school, he attended Brooklyn College and received his A.B. in 1959. Next he attended Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the ''Yale Law Journal'', and graduated first in his class with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1962. He has been a member of a Conservative minyan at Harvard Hillel, but is now a secular Jew. He is married to Carolyn Cohen and has three children.

Career [link]

After being admitted to the bar, Dershowitz served as a clerk for David L. Bazelon, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He said that "Bazelon was my best and worst boss at once ... He worked me to the bone; he didn't hesitate to call at 2 a.m. He taught me everything—how to be a civil libertarian, a Jewish activist, a mensch. He was halfway between a slave master and a father figure." During the 1963–1964 term, he served as law clerk for the Supreme Court Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg. He told Tom Van Riper of ''Forbes'' that getting a Supreme Court clerkship was probably his second big break; his first was when, at age 14 or 15, a camp counselor told him he was smart but that his mind operated a little differently. He joined the faculty of Harvard Law School as an assistant professor in 1964, and was made a full professor in 1967 at the age of 28, at that time the youngest full professor of law in the school's history. He was appointed Felix Frankfurter professor of law in 1993.

Much of his legal career has focused on criminal law, and his clients have included high-profile figures such as Patty Hearst, Harry Reems, Leona Helmsley, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, Michael Milken, O.J. Simpson and Kirtanananda Swami. He sees himself as a "lawyer of last resort"—someone to turn to when the defendant has few other legal options—and takes those cases that are what he calls "the most challenging, the most difficult and precedent-setting cases." He is currently advising Julian Assange's legal team.

Recognition [link]

Dershowitz has been described by ''Newsweek'' as America's "most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights." He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979, and in 1983 received the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award from the Anti-Defamation League for his work on civil rights. In November 2007, he was awarded the Soviet Jewry Freedom Award by the Russian Jewish Community Foundation. In December 2011, he was awarded the Menachem Begin Award of Honor by the Menachem Begin Heritage Center at an event co-sponsored by NGO Monitor. He has been awarded honorary doctorates in law from Yeshiva University, the Hebrew Union College, Monmouth University, University of Haifa, Syracuse University, Fitchburg State College, Bar-Ilan University, and Brooklyn College. In addition, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.

Cases[link]

Pornography (1976) [link]

In 1976, Dershowitz handled the successful appeal of Harry Reems, who had been convicted of distribution of obscenity resulting from his acting in the pornographic movie ''Deep Throat''. In public debates, Dershowitz commonly argues against censorship of pornography on First Amendment grounds, and maintains that consumption of pornography is not harmful.

Claus von Bülow (1984)[link]

Dershowitz represented Claus von Bülow, a British socialite, at appeal for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow, who died in 2008 after going into a coma in Newport, Rhode Island in 1980. He had the conviction overturned, and von Bülow was acquitted in a retrial. Dershowitz told the story of the case in his book, ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow case'' (1985), which was turned into a movie in 1990. Dershowitz was played by actor Ron Silver, and Dershowitz himself had a cameo role as a judge.

Józef Glemp (1989)[link]

In 1989, Dershowitz filed a defamation suit against Cardinal Józef Glemp, then Archbishop of Warsaw, on behalf of Rabbi Avi Weiss. Glemp had accused Weiss and six other New York Jews of attacking nuns at a much-disputed convent on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Glemp's statement about Weiss, made in July 1989, was coupled with suggestions that Jews control the world's news media. Dershowitz's account of the lawsuit appears in his book ''Chutzpah'' (1991).

Mike Barnicle (1990) [link]

Dershowitz sued ''The Boston Globe'' in 1990 over a remark reporter Mike Barnicle attributed to him, in which Dershowitz allegedly said he preferred Asian women because they are deferential to men. Dershowitz reportedly received a $75,000 out-of-court settlement and the newspaper's ombudsman questioned Barnicle's credibility, according to ''The Boston Phoenix''.

O.J. Simpson (1995)[link]

O.J. Simpson murder case Dershowitz acted as an appellate adviser to O.J. Simpson's defense team during the trial, and later wrote a book about it, ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case'' (1996). He wrote: "the Simpson case will not be remembered in the next century. It will not rank as one of the trials of the century. It will not rank with the Nuremberg trials, the Rosenberg trial, Sacco and Vanzetti. It is on par with Leopold and Loeb and the Lindbergh case, all involving celebrities. It is also not one of the most important cases of my own career. I would rank it somewhere in the middle in terms of interest and importance." The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history.

Jeffrey Epstein (2006)[link]

Dershowitz provided legal assistance to friend and reported billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was investigated following accusations that he had repeatedly solicited sex from minors. Dershowitz investigated some of Epstein's accusers and provided both the police and the State attorney’s office with a dossier containing information about their personal behavior, which had been obtained from their personal MySpace pages, including allegations of alcohol and drug use. Eventually, in 2008, Epstein plead guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution and began serving an 18-month sentence.

Views[link]

On Israel [link]

While Dershowitz is a leading supporter of Israel, Dershowitz self-identifies as "Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine". Dershowitz engaged in highly publicized debates with a number of other commentators, including Meir Kahane, Noam Chomsky, and Norman Finkelstein. When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter had his book ''Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid'' (2006) published—in which he argues that Israel's control of Palestinian land is the primary obstacle to peace—Dershowitz challenged Carter to a debate at Brandeis University. Carter declined, saying, "I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz. There is no need to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." Carter did address Brandeis in January 2007, but only Brandeis students and staff were allowed to attend. Dershowitz was invited to respond on the same stage only after Carter had left.

He also took part in the Doha Debates at Georgetown University in April 2009, where he spoke against the motion "this House believes it's time for the US to get tough on Israel," with Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Speakers for the motion were Avraham Burg, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former Speaker of the Knesset; and Michael Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA Bin Laden Issue Station. Dershowitz's side lost the debate, with 63 percent of the audience voting for the motion.

Harvard-MIT divestment petition [link]

Randall Adams of ''The Harvard Crimson'' writes that, in the spring of 2002, a petition within Harvard calling for Harvard and MIT to divest from Israel and American companies that sell arms to Israel gathered over 600 signatures, including 74 from the Harvard faculty and 56 from the MIT faculty. Among the signatures was that of Harvard's Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson, in response to which Dershowitz staged a debate for 200 students in the Winthrop Junior Common Room. He called the petition's signatories antisemitic, bigots, and said they knew nothing about the Middle East. "Your House master is a bigot," he told the students, "and you ought to know that." Adams writes that Dershowitz cited examples of human rights violations in countries that the United States supports, such as the execution of homosexuals in Egypt and the repression of women in Saudi Arabia, and said he would sue any professor who voted against the tenure of another academic because of the candidate's position toward Israel, calling them "ignoramuses with PhDs."

"New Response to Palestinian Terrorism" (2002)[link]

In March 2002, Dershowitz published an article in ''The Jerusalem Post'' entitled "New Response to Palestinian Terrorism." In it, he wrote that Israel should announce a unilateral cessation in retaliation, at the end of which it would "announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings." The list of targets would be made public in advance. The proposal attracted criticism from within Harvard University and beyond. James Bamford argued in ''The Washington Post'' that it would violate international law. Norman Finkelstein wrote that "it is hard to make out any difference between the policy Dershowitz advocates and the Nazi destruction of Lidice, for which he expresses abhorrence—except that Jews, not Germans, would be implementing it."

Mearsheimer and Walt [link]

In March 2006, John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, co-wrote a paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," published in ''The London Review of Books''. Mearsheimer and Walt criticized what they described as "the Israel lobby" for influencing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in a direction away from U.S. interests and toward Israel's interests. They referred to Dershowitz specifically as an "apologist" for the Israel lobby. In an interview in March 2006 for ''The Harvard Crimson'', Dershowitz called the article "one-sided" and its authors "liars" and "bigots." The following day on MSNBC's ''Scarborough Country'', he suggested the paper had been taken from various hate sites: "every paragraph virtually is copied from a neo-Nazi Web site, from a radical Islamic Web site, from David Duke’s Web site." Dershowitz subsequently wrote a report challenging the paper, arguing that it contained "three types of major errors: quotations are wrenched out of context, important facts are misstated or omitted, and embarrassingly weak logic is employed." In a letter in the ''London Review of Books'' in May 2006, Mearsheimer and Walt denied that they had used any racist sources for their article, writing that Dershowitz had offered no evidence to support what they said was his false claim.

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict [link]

In July 2006, Dershowitz wrote a series of articles defending the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. There was an international outcry at the time regarding escalating Lebanese civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure resulting from Israel's stated attempt to weaken or destroy Hezbollah. After the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour indicated that Israeli officials might be investigated and indicted for possible war crimes, Dershowitz labeled her statement "bizarre," called for her dismissal, and wrote about what he called the "absurdity and counterproductive nature of current international law." In a ''Boston Globe'' editorial several days later, he argued that Israel was not to blame for civilian deaths: "Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them—on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the killing of their own civilians."

Second Amendment and the U.S. Constitution [link]

Dershowitz is strongly opposed to firearms ownership and the Second Amendment, and supports repealing the amendment, but he vigorously opposes using the judicial system to read it out of the Constitution because it would open the way for further revisions to the Bill of Rights and Constitution by the courts. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

Views on torture[link]

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Dershowitz published an article in ''The San Francisco Chronicle'' entitled "Want to Torture? Get a Warrant," in which he advocated the issuance of warrants permitting the torture of terrorism suspects, if there were an "absolute need to obtain immediate information in order to save lives coupled with probable cause that the suspect had such information and is unwilling to reveal it." He argued that authorities should be permitted to use non-lethal torture in a "ticking time bomb scenario," and that it would be less destructive to the rule of law to regulate the process than to leave it to the discretion of individual law-enforcement agents. He favors preventing the government from prosecuting the subject of torture based on information revealed during such an interrogation. The "ticking time bomb scenario" is the subject of a play, ''The Dershowitz Protocol'', by Canadian author Robert Fothergill, in which the American government has established a protocol of "intensified interrogation" for terrorist suspects.

William F. Schulz, Executive Director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International, found Dershowitz's ticking-bomb scenario unrealistic because, he argued, it would require that "the authorities know that a bomb has been planted somewhere; know it is about to go off; know that the suspect in their custody has the information they need to stop it; know that the suspect will yield that information accurately in a matter of minutes if subjected to torture; and know that there is no other way to obtain it." James Bamford of ''The Washington Post'' described one of the practices recommended by Dershowitz—the "sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails"—as "chillingly Nazi-like."

Animal rights [link]

Dershowitz is one of a number of scholars at Harvard Law School who have expressed their support for limited animal rights. In his ''Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights'' (2004), he writes that, in order to avoid human beings treating each other the way we treat animals, we have made what he calls the "somewhat arbitrary decision" to single out our own species for different and better treatment. "Does this subject us to the charge of speciesism? Of course it does, and we cannot justify it, except by the fact that in the world in which we live, humans make the rules. That reality imposes on us a special responsibility to be fair and compassionate to those on whom we impose our rules. Hence the argument for animal rights."

Support For The People's Mujahedin of Iran [link]

On February 29, 2012, Dershowitz filed an Amicus Brief in support of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the MEK, a group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. The MEK was placed on the list for attacks on U.S. military personal and civilian contractors, and is believed responsible for the deaths of three U.S. Army officers, three U.S. civilian contractors, as well as the wounding of USAF General Harold Price, during an assassination attempt.

The People's Mujahedin of Iran renounced violence in 2001. However, a 2004 FBI report on the group states that, "MEK is currently actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism.” Additionally, in 2009, seven people plead guilty to providing material support to the People's Mujahedin of Iran.

Criticism[link]

Norman Finkelstein [link]

Shortly after the publication of Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel'' (2003), Norman Finkelstein of DePaul University said the book contained plagiarism. Dershowitz denied the allegation. Harvard's president, Derek Bok, investigated the allegation and determined that no plagiarism had occurred. However, Dr. Frank Menetrez investigated and corresponded with both Harvard and Dershowitz and concluded that "neither Dershowitz nor Harvard, however, has identified the specific issues or arguments that Harvard allegedly investigated and rejected. In particular, neither of them has ever said whether Harvard investigated the identical errors issue."

In October 2006, Dershowitz wrote to DePaul University faculty members to lobby against Finkelstein's application for tenure. The university's Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty voted to send a letter of complaint to Harvard University. In June 2007, DePaul University denied Finkelstein tenure.

Books [link]

1982: ''The Best Defense''. ISBN 978-0-394-50736-1. 1985: ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case''. ISBN 978-0-394-53903-4. 1988: ''Taking Liberties: A Decade of Hard Cases, Bad Laws, and Bum Raps''. ISBN 978-0-8092-4616-8. 1991: ''Chutzpah''. ISBN 978-0-316-18137-2. 1992: ''Contrary to Popular Opinion''. ISBN 978-0-88687-701-9. 1994: ''The Advocate's Devil'' (fiction). ISBN 978-0-446-51759-1. 1994: ''The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-Outs, Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility''. ISBN 978-0-316-18135-8. 1996: ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case''. ISBN 978-0-684-83021-6. 1997: ''The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century''. ISBN 978-0-316-18133-4. 1998: ''Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis''. ISBN 978-0-465-01628-0. 1999: ''Just Revenge'' (fiction). ISBN 978-0-446-60871-8. 2000: ''The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law''. Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-67677-9. 2001: ''Letters to a Young Lawyer''. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01631-0. 2001: ''Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514827-5. 2002: ''Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge''. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09766-5. 2002: ''Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age''. Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-18141-9.

2003: ''The Case for Israel''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-46502-7

2003: ''America Declares Independence''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-26482-8. 2004: ''America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation''. Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-52058-4. 2004: ''Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights''. ISBN 978-0-465-01713-3. 2005: ''The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-74317-0); . 2006: ''Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways''. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06012-6. 2007: ''Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence''. ISBN 978-0-470-08455-7. 2007: ''Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age of Terrorism''. ISBN 978-0-470-16711-3.

2008: ''Is There a Right to Remain Silent?: Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11''. ISBN 978-0-19-530779-5.

2008: ''The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace''. ISBN 978-0-470-37992-9.

2009: ''Mouth of Webster, Head of Clay'' essay in ''The Face in the Mirror: Writers Reflect on Their Dreams of Youth and the Reality of Age''. ISBN 978-1-59102-752-2.

2009: ''The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza''. ISBN 978-0-9661548-5-6.

2010: ''The Trials of Zion''. ISBN 978-0-446-57673-4.

Notes [link]

Further reading [link]

Upham, S. Phineas (ed.). ''Philosophers in Conversation: Interviews from the Harvard Review of Philosophy'', Routledge, 2002, pp. 64–70.

Berkow, Ira. ''Court Vision: Unexpected Views on the Lure of Basketball'', University of Nebraska Press, 2004, pp. 207–216.

Dershowitz, Alan (ed.). ''What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists'', John Wiley & Sons, 2007, pp. 1–6.

Goldberg, Elizabeth Swanson. ''Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights'', Rutgers University Press, 2007, pp. 88–95, 101.

Loewenstein, Antony. ''My Israel Question'', Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Dershowitz, Alan. "Echoes of 1938" in Helmreich, William B.; Rosenblum, Mark; Schimel, David. (eds.). ''The Jewish Condition: Challenges and Responses – 1938–2008'', Transaction Publishers, 2008, pp. 39–44.

Norwood, Stephen H.; Pollack, Eunice G. (eds.). ''Encyclopedia of American Jewish History'' (Volume 1), ABC-CLIO, 2008, pp. 53–54.

Rejali, Darius. ''Torture and Democracy'', Princeton University Press, 2009.

External links[link]

Alan Dershowitz at ''The Huffington Post'' (June 2005– ). Dershowitz's blog.

Alan M. Dershowitz Faculty directory entry at Harvard Law School, incl. hyperlinked "Bibliography."

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Alan M. Dershowitz Official website. (Top menu features hyperlinks to his biography and selected publications.)

Interview with Alan Dershowitz from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Alan M. Dershowitz Personal group space at Gather.com.

SWINDLE Magazine Interview

Alan Dershowitz debates Meir Kahane 1985

Alan Dershowitz Playlist Appearance on WMBR's ''Dinnertime Sampler'' May 11, 2005

Category:1938 births Category:Living people Category:People from Brooklyn Category:American lawyers Category:American legal writers Category:American legal scholars Category:Criminal defense lawyers Category:Jewish American writers Category:Brooklyn College alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:Harvard Law School faculty Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:O. J. Simpson murder case Category:Interdisciplinary Center faculty Category:Zionists Category:People associated with the American Civil Liberties Union Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Scholars of antisemitism Category:Historians of Israel Category:Academic scandals Category:Animal rights advocates

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