Endgame in Afghanistan: For Whom the Dice Rolls covers a wide territory related to the war in Afghanistan, the stakes the whole world-and not just the United States-has in it, and its possible outcome. It shows that it is not merely a war for the future of Afghanistan, but a conflict between the regressive worldview of the Taliban and al Qaeda and modernity.
The book examines the consequences of an American exit from Afghanistan under circumstances indicating a defeat; the ability of the Karzai government or its successor to hold its own thereafter; and the regional and global geo-strategic consequences, including those on Pakistan, of a Taliban-al Qaeda takeover of Afghanistan. It also explores the possibility of the United States arriving at a peace settlement with the Taliban as well as that of the Americans winning the Afghan war.
Taking an analytical multi-disciplinary approach, coupled with meticulous research, this book focuses on areas hitherto neglected. Linking known but scattered information in entirely new and cohesive analyses, the author presents the kind of comprehensive picture of the Afghan war and its consequences that no other book has done.
Karlekar, Hiranmay: -
Hiranmay Karlekar, a distinguished Indian journalist, is Consultant Editor of The Pioneer and, currently, a member of the Animal Welfare Board of India, India's apex governmental body dealing with animal welfare. Mr Karlekar frequently writes on animals in his column which appears in The Pioneer every Thursday and has also written about them in The Tribune and the Outlook magazine.
A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard (Class of 1967), Mr Karlekar, in his career as a journalist spanning four-and-a-half decades, has been Editor of Hindustan Times, Deputy Editor of The Indian Express, and Assistant Editor of The Statesman and the Hindusthan Standard, an erstwhile publication of the Ananda Bazar Patrika group in Kolkata. Starting his journalistic career with Ananda Bazar Patrika as a Staff reporter in 1963, Mr Karlekar has also been Associate Editor of Aajkaal published from Kolkata.
A member of the Press Council of India in two stints during 1978-80 and 2004-07, Mr Karlekar has been a General Secretary of the Editors Guild of India, a member of the Board of Directors of the Press Trust of India, one of India's two national news agencies, and a nominee of the Editors Guild in the Central Press Accreditation Committee of the Government of India.
Apart from his innumerable journalistic writings, Mr Karlekar's publications include two Bengali Novels, Bhabisyater Ateet (1994) and Mehrunnisa (1995), the latter based on Bangladesh's Liberation struggle, a socio-political work in English, In the Mirror of Mandal: Social Justice, Caste, Class and the Individual (1992), and Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? (2005). He edited--and contributed two chapters to--Independent India: The First Fifty Years (1998), an anthology of essays published to mark 50 years of India's independence. Mr Karlekar is a keen photographer.
