Deeper Understanding of Afghanistan (#153)

Lots of people have been doing phenomenal work writing about Afghanistan. After last week’s post, Leaving the Graveyard Redux (#151), and the continued withdrawal of people from Kabul, several people reached out to try to learn more about Afghanistan. Here are six articles and five books to help you understand what’s going on and what happened in Afghanistan.

Best Six Articles:

1. What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Read it here. The executive summary is only 6 pages but chronicles the enormous challenges of rebuilding Afghanistan

2. How We as a Nation — and I as a Military Officer — Failed in Afghanistan by Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, US Army Retired. Read it here. An account of some of our missteps in Afghanistan.

3. He Spent His Adult Life Helping U.S. Soldiers. Now, He’s Desperately Fleeing Afghanistan by Wesley Morgan. Read it here. One interpreter/soldiers journey to HKIA.

4. Vets See Many US Failures in Kabul. Military Intelligence is Just One by Anna Mulrine. Read it here. Several vets talk about Afghanistan.

5. What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan by Colonel Mike Jason, US Army, Retired. Read it here. One veterans take on what went wrong.

6. How We Lost the War We Won: Rolling Stone’s 2008 Journey Into Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan by Nir Rosen. Read it here. This one is older — Nir Rosen embedded with the Taliban in 2008. It helps see the war from the Taliban’s perspective.

Best Five Books I have read:

1. The Hardest Place: the American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley by Wesley Morgan. Chronicles the US military’s efforts in one province in Afghanistan from 2001-2019.

2. The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian. A history from 2001 to 2020 of the American involvement in Afghanistan.

3. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. Best book on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan pre-9/11.

4. A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan by Artemy M. Kalinovsky. Best book on the Soviet departure from Afghanistan.

5. Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda by Sean Naylor. Details the 2002 operation in eastern Afghanistan.

Conclusion

As I said before, there was goodness, badness, and ugliness from our two decades in Afghanistan. I am proud of my time in Afghanistan and the soldiers that I fought alongside. The rest of it, I’m still sorting out and will probably be at it for another decade. These books and articles can help you understand the United States’ efforts in Afghanistan better.