Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid
Ahmed Rashid speaking at a Chatham House event in January 2014
Born	1948 (age 67–68) Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Occupation	Journalist, author

Ahmed Rashid (Urdu:احمد رشید; born 1948) is a former Pakistani militant, a journalist and best-selling foreign policy author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.

Life and career

Rashid was born in Rawalpindi. He attended Malvern College, England, Government College Lahore, and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

After graduating, Rashid spent ten years in the hills of Balochistan, western Pakistan attempting to organise an uprising against the Pakistani military dictatorships of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. He ended his guerrilla fighting days frustrated and defeated and turned his attentions to writing about his homeland.^[1]

He has been the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph for more than 20 years and a correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Daily Times (Pakistan) and academic journals. He appears regularly on international TV and radio networks such as CNN and BBC World.

Rashid and Pauline Neville-Jones at the Halifax International Security Forum

He is a well known and vocal critic of the Bush administration in relation to the Iraq war and its alleged neglect of the Taliban issue.^[1] Rashid's 2000 book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, was a New York Times bestseller for five weeks, translated into 22 languages, and has sold 1.5 million copies since the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[2] The book was used extensively by American analysts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Rashid charged that former President George W. Bush plagiarized his work in writing his memoirs.^[3]

His commentary also appears in the Washington Post's PostGlobal segment.

Rashid lives in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan with his wife and two children.

Selected works

• The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism?, St. Martin's Press (May 1994), ISBN 1-85649-131-5.
• Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Yale University Press (March 2000) ISBN 0-300-08340-8.
• Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Yale University Press (January 25, 2002) ISBN 0-300-09345-4. (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2002)
• Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, Viking, 2008, ISBN 978-0-670-01970-0.
• Taliban: The Power of Militant Islam in Afghanistan and Beyond, 2nd ed, I.B.Tauris (April 2010), ISBN 978-1-84885-446-8
• Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Viking Adult (March 15, 2012), ISBN 978-0-670-02346-2.

See also

• The Great Game
• The Oil Factor

References

External links

• Ahmed Rashid Official website
• Contributor from The New York Review of Books
• Column archive at The Guardian
• Ahmed Rashid at Journalisted
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • C-SPAN Q&A interview with Rashid, May 2, 2010
• Ahmed Rashid at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Ahmed Rashid in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Profile of Ahmed Rashid from Speaker's Booklet : Creating opportunity from Change, Arab Strategy Forum, page 20, 4–6 December 2006
• Profile, The New York Times, 5 July 2008
• In a Taliban Stranglehold, Ramon Schack, Qantara, 11 April 2010 interview
• After the Death of Osama bin Laden: Now to Break the Al-Qaeda Franchise, 19 May 2011
• "Worse than Afghanistan" Pakistani writer and Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid reports on the failures of the international community in Mali.