About
My name is Christian Bleuer. I am in the research phase of my PhD. I will write here about conflict related issues in Afghanistan: politics, culture, society, reconstruction, civil-military relations and insurgency.
I am a PhD student at The Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East and Central Asia). I received my MA from Indiana University’s Central Eurasian Studies Department. My BA is also from IU with a major in political science and a minor from the Russian and East European Institute. I am a graduate of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, Canada.
This is my contact info:
My hometown is Pemberton, British Columbia. It is a small agricultural, forestry and tourist town surrounded by the territory of the Lil’wat Nation and neighboring Xit’olacw. I have not lived in Canada for about ten years now, so don’t ask me about Canadian politics as I am really out of touch.
I focus on rural and peripheral social, political and military dynamics in Afghanistan and Southern Central Asia. Of particular interest to me are local solidarity groups, identity and loyalty, especially how these factors affect survival strategies during conflict and competition. At the moment I am finding anthropological writings to be quite useful. But I steal liberally from most of the social sciences.
I have studied Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajiki and Russian during my time at Indiana University and I highly recommend their intensive summer language program (which includes Pashto). I am currently studying Farsi.
I am also the creator/editor of The Afghanistan Analyst, an online research portal for Afghanistan.
I will never blog about anything based on personal contacts without explicit permission from that person, except for the occasional broad, vague and untraceable anecdote from anonymous Afghan friends (this anecdote, for example). Everything here is open-source information. I will also likely not discuss my case studies here to any serious degree. My views are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my academic department or any of my fellow students.
I came up with the title of this blog independently. However, after a quick google search I must give the historian Frank Holt credit. He wrote:
When Englishmen arrived in the 19th century to play out the infamous “Great Game” between Czarist Russia and British India, they found the hoary ghosts of Alexander and his army everywhere in Afghanistan. Tribesmen in remote valleys claimed to be the direct descendants of the ancient Greeks…
The url is a reference to Alexander’s eastern campaigns.
