Atamurad Aimaq
What I have done during over forty years in London.
While reading for my BA and MA in Journalism in Kabul and London, I learned about the requirements of my profession and, therefore, have read as many books on Literature, History, Economics and Politics as I could. Starting with the works of the late Graham Greene in 1985, I have read the better part of his works. The works of Jeffrey Archer, several from the works of Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Iris Murdoch, Catherine Cookson, George Orwell, Susan Crosland, Salman Rushdie, Patricia Highsmith, Nobel laureates (Sir William Golding, Patrick White and Rudyard Kipling), Douglas Hurd, Edwina Currie and some run-of-the-mill writers have followed.PRIVATE
Books written by Dr Henry Kissinger, President Carter, President Obama, Bob Woodward, John L Gaddis, Gen H Norman Schwarzkopf, Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Hillary R Clinton, the American writer on the Middle East Anthony Cordesman, the American Afghanologist the late Louis Dupree, the former Afghan diplomat Abdul Samad Ghaus, The Afghan Academic Amin Saikal, the British authors Godfrey Hodgson, Brian Reading, Peter Wright, Richard Tomlinson, Anthony Cavendish, Stella Rimington, Anthony Hyman, Dag Smith, Mark Hollingsworth, Philip Gould, the British academics, Peter Calvocoressi, Alen R Ball, AJR Groom and Fred Halliday, the former British diplomat Sir Anthony Parsons, the British MPs George Walden, Tony Benn, Giles Radice, Ken Livingstone and Michael Heseltine, the former Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson, Margret Thatcher and Gordon Brown, the former Labour Foreign Secretary Lord Owen, the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, the British journalists John Bullock, Christopher Johnson, Jonathan Steele, Sandy Gall, John Ranelagh, John Cole, Peter Hopkirk, John Simpson and Dr Christopher Bellamy, ‘A Question of Judgement’ by Sara Keays, ‘The Great Game’ explaining the rival designs of the former British and Russian empires in Central Asia, the works of the Egyptian writer Mohammed H Heikal, the Iranian writers Amir Taheri, ShaulBakhash, Abbas Milani and FredoonHoveyda, the Indian writers Dilip Hiro and Anthony Mascarenhas, and the Pakistani writers Ahmed Rashid and Benazir Bhutto have been the main part of my reading on the contemporary events in the world.
Biographies of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mohandas K Gandhi, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Yasser Arafat, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Charles de Gaulle, Marshal JB Tito, Mikhail S Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Gen N Giap and Rupert Murdoch, ‘A Concise History of Germany’, ‘Makers of China’, ‘Organisation of African Unity’ and ‘Glimses of World Religions’ comprises the political and historical part.
In addition to reading daily the British and some American and Middle Eastern newspapers and magazines as well as listening to and watching the world broadcasts on Current Affairs and using the Internet, I have read all the books recently published on the area I come from.
My reading on Afghanistan and Central Asia are:
1. Afghanistan: A Decade of Sovietisation, by Prof Mohammad Yousuf Elmi
2. Afghanistan, by Louis Dupree
3. Afghanistan the Soviet War, by Edward Girardet
4. Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, by Anthony Hyman
5. The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, by John Fullerton
6. Afghanistan, Key to a Continent, by John C Griffiths
7. Report from Afghanistan, by Gerard Chaliand
8. From Dost Mohammad to Babrak [Karmal] by Dr Sher Ahmad NasriHaqshunas
9. Caught in theCrossfire, by Jan Goodwin
10. War in Afghanistan, by Mark Urban
11.The Fall of Afghanistan, by Abdul Samad Ghaus
12. The Decade of Constitution, by SabahuddinKushkaki
13. Afghanistan in the Nineteenth Century, by Sayed QasemRishtia
14. Agony of a Nation, By Sandy Gall
15. Behind Russian Lines, By Sandy Gall
16. Journey Through Afghanistan, by Peregrine Hodson
17. The Bear Trap, Afghanistan's Untold Story, by Mohammad Yousaf & Mark Adkin
18. The Great Game (Secret Service in High Asia), by Peter Hopkirk
19. The Hidden War, by Artyom Borovik (a Russian Journalist)
20. Between Marx and Muhammad, the Changing face of Central Asia, by Dilip Hiro
21. Central Asia, by John King, John Noble and Andrew Humphreys
22. A Traveller’s Companion to Central Asia, by Kathleen Hopkirk
23. Setting the East Ablaze (Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia), by Peter Hopkirk
24. Iran and the Former Soviet South, by Dr Edmund Herzig
25. Islam and Politics in Afghanistan, by Asta Olesen
26. The Resurgence of Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid
27. Journey to Khiva, by Philip Glazebrook
28. The Taliban, by Peter Marsden
29. TALIBAN, Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid
30. The Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, by Karl E Meyer &Shareen BlairBrysac
31. JIHAD, The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid
32. BUSH AT WAR, by Bob Woodward
33.The Persian Sphinx, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, by Abbass Milani
34. Islam and the West, Conflict or Cooperation, by Amin Saikal
35. The New A-Z of the Middle East, by French authors Alain Gresh& Dominique Vidal
36. Winning Modern Wars, by General Wesley K Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe
37. America’s Secret War, by Dr George Friedman, founder of Stratfor
38. In The Line Of Fire, A Memoir, by General Pervez Musharraf
39. State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III, by Bob Woodward
40. The Hubris Syndrome, Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power, by Lord Owen, the former Labour Foreign Secretary
41. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, by President Jimmy Carter
42. Dreams from My Father, by President Barack Obama
43.Colossus-The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, by Professor Niall Ferguson
44. Behind TheBlack Door (10 Downing Street), by Sarah Brown, the wife of Gordon Brown the former British Prime Minister
45. WikiLeaks, Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding
46. Return of a King,The Battle for Afghanistan, by William Dalrymple, a British Historian
47. Hard Choices by Hillary RodhamClinton, former US First Lady and Secretary of State
48. My Life, Our Times (2017), by Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister
49. A Promised Land, by President Barack Obama (Dec 2020), London
50. AfghanNapoleon: The life of Ahmad Shah Massoud, by Sandy Gall, Sept 2021
