Download or read book Operation Pineapple Express written by Scott Mann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a group of retired Green Berets who come together to save a former comrade—and 500 other Afghans—being targeted by the Taliban in the chaos of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban. The message reached Nezam’s former commanding officer, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who couldn’t face the idea of losing another soldier in the long War on Terror. Immediately, he sends out an SOS to a group of Afghan vets (Navy SEALs, Green Berets, CIA officers, USAID advisors). They all answer the call for one last mission. Operating out of basements and garages, Task Force Pineapple organizes an escape route for Nezam and gets him into hiding in Taliban-controlled Kabul. After many tense days, he braves the enemy checkpoints and the crowds of thousands blocking the airport gates. He finally makes it through the wire and into the American-held airport thanks to the frantic efforts of the Pineapple express, a relentless Congressional aide, and a US embassy official. Nezam is safe, but calls are coming in from all directions requesting help for other Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and at-risk women and children. Task Force Pineapple widens its scope—and ends up rescuing 500 more Afghans from Kabul in the three chaotic days before the ISIS-K suicide bombing. Operation Pineapple Express is a thrilling, suspenseful tale of service and loyalty amidst the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Download or read book Military Adaptation in Afghanistan written by Theo Farrell and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When NATO took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan in 2003, ISAF conceptualized its mission largely as a stabilization and reconstruction deployment. However, as the campaign has evolved and the insurgency has proved to more resistant and capable, key operational imperatives have emerged, including military support to the civilian development effort, closer partnering with Afghan security forces, and greater military restraint. All participating militaries have adapted, to varying extents, to these campaign imperatives and pressures. This book analyzes these initiatives and their outcomes by focusing on the experiences of three groups of militaries: those of Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the US, which have faced the most intense operational and strategic pressures; Germany, who's troops have faced the greatest political and cultural constraints; and the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Taliban, who have been forced to adapt to a very different sets of circumstances.

Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Download or read book Our Latest Longest War written by Aaron B. O'Connell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American and Afghan veterans contribute to this anthology of critical perspectives—“a vital contribution toward understanding the Afghanistan War” (Library Journal). When America went to war with Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, it did so with the lofty goals of dismantling al Qaeda, removing the Taliban from power, remaking the country into a democracy. But as the mission came unmoored from reality, the United States wasted billions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. Our Latest Longest War is a chronicle of how, why, and in what ways the war in Afghanistan failed. Edited by prize-winning historian and Marine lieutenant colonel Aaron B. O’Connell, the essays collected here represent nine different perspectives on the war—all from veterans of the conflict, both American and Afghan. Together, they paint a picture of a war in which problems of culture, including an unbridgeable rural-urban divide, derailed nearly every field of endeavor. The authors also draw troubling parallels to the Vietnam War, arguing that ideological currents in American life explain why the US government has repeatedly used military force in pursuit of democratic nation-building. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this created a dramatic mismatch of means and ends that neither money, technology, nor weapons could overcome.

Download or read book NATO in Afghanistan written by David P. Auerswald and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-05 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the field. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with senior officials from around the world, David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman find that domestic constraints in presidential and single-party parliamentary systems--in countries such as the United States and Britain respectively--differ from those in countries with coalition governments, such as Germany and the Netherlands. As a result, different countries craft different guidelines for their forces overseas, most notably in the form of military caveats, the often-controversial limits placed on deployed troops. Providing critical insights into the realities of alliance and coalition warfare, NATO in Afghanistan also looks at non-NATO partners such as Australia, and assesses NATO's performance in the 2011 Libyan campaign to show how these domestic political dynamics are by no means unique to Afghanistan.

Download or read book Inside Afghanistan written by John Weaver and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2002-09-07 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He is living what many would call a nightmare. John Weaver is serving God in a war-torn country that is being blamed for the terrorist acts on American soil. Despite the fact that every day is dangerous and possibly life-threatening, John Weaver believes he sees God at work in Afghanistan and he is optimistic about its spiritual future. Inside Afghanistan is the story of the Taliban and September 11, as only this servant of God can tell it. John Weaver was there as the last American aid worker in the hostile country he now calls home. He is witness to God's ability to use ordinary Christians in the U.S. to "spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a country that otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity." This is John Weaver's riveting account of why he went and why he wouldn't leave.

Download or read book Mission Afghanistan written by Elie Paul Cohen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elie Paul Cohen, a Franco-British civilian emergency doctor, was in his youth an anti-militarist who evaded conscription. But decades later, his military record comes back to haunt him when it turns up in his professional dossier. In a surreal coincidence, the French, British, and Israeli secret services suddenly become interested in recruiting him, and Cohen accepts the deal the French Army offers: he can settle his accounts by serving as a liaison emergency doctor in Afghanistan. After a year and a half of training, Cohen is in 2011 deployed at Camp Bastion, the largest British Military base since World War II. His mission is twofold: First, to study Damage Control Resuscitation, a new treatment for polytraumatized soldiers that was developed by British doctors in Afghanistan. Second, to share these advanced protocols with the French Military Health Service. Combining elements of spy thriller and adventure story with reflections on the costs of war, Cohen’s memoir offers a unique perspective on the conflict in Afghanistan, and on the medical challenges presented by the expansion of terrorism into Europe and America.

Download or read book NATO in Afghanistan written by Sten Rynning and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan has run for more than a decade, and NATO has become increasingly central to it. In this book, Sten Rynning examines NATO's role in the campaign and the difficult diplomacy involved in fighting a war by alliance. He explores the history of the war and its changing momentum, and explains how NATO at first faltered but then improved its operations to become a critical enabler for the U.S. surge of 2009. However, he also uncovers a serious and enduring problem for NATO in the shape of a disconnect between high liberal hopes for the new Afghanistan and a lack of realism about the military campaign prosecuted to bring it about. He concludes that, while NATO has made it to the point in Afghanistan where the war no longer has the potential to break it, the alliance is, at the same time, losing its own struggle to define itself as a vigorous and relevant entity on the world stage. To move forward, he argues, NATO allies must recover their common purpose as a Western alliance, and he outlines options for change.

Download or read book The Hardest Place written by Wesley Morgan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.”—Foreign Policy “A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.”—Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war. Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps—some kept secret from even the troops fighting there—that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century’s most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.

Download or read book No Moment of Victory written by Craig C. Felker and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "No Moment of Victory examines NATO coalition efforts to build Afghan Army and police forces with the objective of transitioning the war to Afghan control. The NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) grew from a handful of senior officers and enlisted personnel to over 6,000 coalition members training Afghans across the country. Yet there was also a deep historical underpinning to the command's programs and processes. This book examines the influence of Cold War modernization theory on NTM-A from 2009 to 2011 and offers a cautionary account of the limits of Western military practices and culture in security force assistance"--

Download or read book Afghanistan Rising written by Faiz Ahmed and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone and the rule of law as a secular-liberal monopoly, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence, codify its own laws, and ratify a constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Afghanistan Rising illustrates how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Kabul--far from being a landlocked wilderness or remote frontier--became a magnet for itinerant scholars and statesmen shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing the country's longstanding but often ignored scholarly and educational ties to Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed explains how the court of Kabul attracted thinkers eager to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shariʿa, and international norms of legality. From Turkish lawyers and Arab officers to Pashtun clerics and Indian bureaucrats, this rich narrative focuses on encounters between divergent streams of modern Muslim thought and politics, beginning with the Sublime Porte's first mission to Afghanistan in 1877 and concluding with the collapse of Ottoman rule after World War I. By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's founding national charter, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on archival research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly as a center of constitutional politics, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and contested visions of reform in the greater Islamicate world.

Download or read book Reconciliation in Afghanistan written by Michael Semple and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely and thorough volume, Michael Semple analyzes the rationale and effectiveness post-2001 attempts at reconciliation in Afghanistan. He explains the poor performance of these attempts and argues that rethinking is necessary if reconciliation is to help revive prospects for peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Download or read book Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond written by Abdulkader H. Sinno and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After we had exchanged the requisite formalities over tea in his camp on the southern edge of Kabul's outer defense perimeter, the Afghan field commander told me that two of his bravest mujahideen were martyred because he did not have a pickup truck to take them to a Peshawar hospital. They had succumbed to their battle wounds. He asked me to tell his party's bureaucrats across the border that he needed such a vehicle desperately. I double-checked with my interpreter that he was indeed making this request. I wasn't puzzled because the request appeared unreasonable but because he was asking me, a twenty-year-old employee of a humanitarian organization, to intercede on his behalf with his own organization's bureaucracy. I understood on this dry summer day in Khurd Kabul that not all militant and political organizations are alike."—from Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond While popular accounts of warfare, particularly of nontraditional conflicts such as guerrilla wars and insurgencies, favor the roles of leaders or ideology, social-scientific analyses of these wars focus on aggregate categories such as ethnic groups, religious affiliations, socioeconomic classes, or civilizations. Challenging these constructions, Abdulkader H. Sinno closely examines the fortunes of the various factions in Afghanistan, including the mujahideen and the Taliban, that have been fighting each other and foreign armies since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Focusing on the organization of the combatants, Sinno offers a new understanding of the course and outcome of such conflicts. Employing a wide range of sources, including his own fieldwork in Afghanistan and statistical data on conflicts across the region, Sinno contends that in Afghanistan, the groups that have outperformed and outlasted their opponents have done so because of their successful organization. Each organization's ability to mobilize effectively, execute strategy, coordinate efforts, manage disunity, and process information depends on how well its structure matches its ability to keep its rivals at bay. Centralized organizations, Sinno finds, are generally more effective than noncentralized ones, but noncentralized ones are more resilient absent a safe haven. Sinno's organizational theory explains otherwise puzzling behavior found in group conflicts: the longevity of unpopular regimes, the demise of popular movements, and efforts of those who share a common cause to undermine their ideological or ethnic kin. The author argues that the organizational theory applies not only to Afghanistan-where he doubts the effectiveness of American state-building efforts—but also to other ethnic, revolutionary, independence, and secessionist conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

Download or read book An Unexpected Light written by Jason Elliot and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-11-17 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Aware of the risks involved, but determined to explore what he could of the Afghan people and culture, Elliot leaves the relative security of the capital, Kabul.

Download or read book What We Won written by Bruce Riedel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message: "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question—why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly? Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States. Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war—the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans—in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come.

Download or read book United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan written by Rhoda Margesson and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United Nations (UN) has had an active presence in Afghanistan since 1988, and it is highly regarded by many Afghans for playing a brokering role in ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As a result of the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, coordinating international donor activity and assistance have been tasked to a United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). However, there are other coordinating institutions tied to the Afghan government, and UNAMA has struggled to exercise its full mandate. The international recovery and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is immense and complicated and, in coordination with the Afghan government, involves U.N. agencies, bilateral donors, international organizations, and local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The coordinated aid programs of the United States and its European allies focus on a wide range of activities, from strengthening the central and local governments of Afghanistan and its security forces to promoting civilian reconstruction, reducing corruption, and assisting with elections. This report examines the role of UNAMA in Afghanistan and discusses the obstacles the organization faces in coordinating international efforts and explores related policy issues and considerations for the 112th Congress.

Download or read book Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan written by Leigh Neville and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence specialist Leigh Neville identifies, describes and illustrates the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the British, American and other Coalition forces committed to the 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan since 2001, providing a fascinating insight into specific operations detailing weapons, equipment and experiences in combat. With a surprising amount of recently declassified material from government departments that are yet to be published in the mass media, this is a ground-breaking analysis of the largest mobilization of Special Forces in recent history. With extensive first-hand accounts providing an eyewitness perspective of the fighting on the ground and including information on the British SAS, the US Delta Force, Australian and Canadian special forces as well as MI6 and CIA operational units, this book provides a crucial study of their skills and successes amidst the Afghan mountains.