Links to Related Web sites
Arundhati Roy’s essay "The Greater Common Good" drew world attention
to the ecological and social consequences of large dam development. The Friends
of River Narmada have made this article available online.
http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html
In response to Roy's essay, the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD)
defines its position on dams and the environment.
http://www.icold-cigb.org/chartean.html
James C. Scott’s Seeing like a State describes the "high modernist" experiments of the mid-twentieth century, the planned cities, rural development schemes, and nation-building projects that often went awry despite good intentions. http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/reviews/books/chris_scott.html
Published by the Asia Society in Asian Update (March 2002),
"Afghanistan's Reform Agenda: Four Perspectives," written by Sima
Samar, Frederick Starr, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and Mohammed Ehsan Zia, addresses
the vision behind the rebuilding process in Afghanistan.
http://www.asiasociety.org/publications/update_afghanreform.html
Maps of Afghanistan are available from the library at the University of Texas.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/afghanistan.html
Taliban leaders styled themselves as "engineers" and Osama Bin Laden
owned a heavy construction firm. So were Islamic terrorists resisting modernization
or were they part of the project? Take the case of Mohammad Atta, urban planner/suicide
pilot. In this excerpt from the forthcoming edition of Reaping the Whirlwind:
The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, Michael Griffin traces Mohammed Atta's
transformation from quiet but brilliant graduate student of urban conservation
to Al-Qaeda terrorist.
http://www.nthposition.com/politics_griffin_1.html