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In
The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first authoritative history of the entire conflict. He moves through its multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the light American footprint during the 2003 Iraq invasion; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006, the Obama-era surge, and the various resets in strategy and force allocations that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the US exit from Afghanistan in 2021. This new paperback edition ends with a detailed chapter on the final defeat of the government and the dramatic American evacuation. Wise and all-encompassing, this book-updated to cover the end of the conflict-will stand as the most significant account of America's longest war for years to come.
List of contents
- List of Maps
- List of Figures
- Chapter One: Thinking About America's War in Afghanistan
- Chapter Two: The Country and Peoples of Afghanistan
- Chapter Three: The Taliban Emirate
- Chapter Four: The United States Enters Afghanistan
- Chapter Five: The Karzai Regime
- Chapter Six: Disorder in Kandahar
- Chapter Seven: The 2006 Taliban Offensive
- Chapter Eight: Taliban Rule, 2007-2010
- Chapter Nine: War in the East
- Chapter Ten: Taliban Advances
- Chapter Eleven: The Obama Administration and the Decision to Surge
- Chapter Twelve: The Surge in Helmand
- Chapter Thirteen: The Surge in Kandahar
- Chapter Fourteen: End of the Surge
- Chapter Fifteen: Ghazni and the Andar Awakening
- Chapter Sixteen: Intervention and Identity
- Chapter Seventeen: The 2014 Elections
- Chapter Eighteen: The Taliban Offensives of 2015 and 2016
- Chapter Nineteen: The Trump Administration
- Chapter Twenty: Peace Talks
- Chapter Twenty-One: Looking Back
- Notes
- Glossary and Abbreviations
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Carter Malkasian, Special Assistant for Strategy to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Joseph Dunford), from 2015 to 2019.
Carter Malkasian was the Special Assistant for Strategy to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, from 2015 to 2019. He has extensive experience working in Afghanistan through multiple deployments throughout the country. The highlight of his work is nearly two years in Garmser district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, as a State Department political officer and the district stabilization team leader. He is the author of War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (Oxford University Press) and Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State (Oxford). He has a doctorate in history from Oxford and is fluent in Pashto. He is the Chair of the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.
Summary
The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners, this New York Times notable book of 2021 has now been updated to cover the final phase of the conflict.
The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001 and ended in 2021, was the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge and a rich array of primary sources, Malkasian moves through the war's multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006; the Obama-era surge; the various resets in strategy that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the US exit from the war in 2021; and finally the calamitous ending. Today, the Taliban run the country, having achieved the victory they always thought inevitable. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major attack on the American homeland occurred after 2001, the United States was unable to end the violence or hand of the war to the Afghan authorities, which did not survive without US military backing. This new paperback edition explains why the war had such a disappointing outcome and also includes a detailed account of the end of the war. A wise and all-encompassing portrait of the conflict, The American War in Afghanistan will remain the authoritative account for years to come.
Additional text
A rigorous, blow-by-blow chronicle of the US war in Afghanistan...Synthesizing a vast array of literature from both sides of the conflict, including Oval Office transcripts and Taliban war poetry, Malkasian gets deep into the weeds, but offers a refreshingly nuanced and well-informed perspective. Foreign policy wonks will savor this comprehensive reckoning with America's 'forever war'.
