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About the Author
Amin Saikal, reader in political science at the Australian National University, is currently a visiting fellow at the Center of International Studies, Princeton University. He has previously been a visiting fellow at Cambridge University and the University of Sussex. He is the author or coauthor of numerous works on the Middle East and West Asia, including The Rise and Fall of the Shah (1980) and Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the Politics of Legitimacy (1991), and coeditor of The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan (1989).