Download or read book The Taliban Don t Wave written by Robert Semrau and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-08-17 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captain Robert Semrau’s military trial made international headlines—a Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan arrested for allegedly killing a grievously wounded Taliban soldier in the field. The trial and its outcome are a matter of public record. What you are about to read about the tour of duty that inspired this book is not. What you are about to read is an emotionally draining and mind-snapping firsthand account of war on the ground in Afghanistan. It’s raw and explosive. Names have been changed to protect the brave and not so brave alike. What you are about to read is an account of soldiers who live, fight and die in a moonscape of a country where it’s sometimes hard to tell your friend from your enemy. It’s about trying to hold it together when a mortar attack is ripping your friends and allies apart, and your world unravels before your eyes. Rob Semrau wrote this book to tell us about the sheer hell that is the Stan, but also to recognize the incredible courage and compassion he witnessed in the heat of battle. The soldiers you are about to meet and the events that befall them will linger on in your mind long after you have closed these pages.

Download or read book Chasing the Taliban written by Andrew Squires and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-03-03 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a small town boy who grows up to join the military and deploys to Afghanistan and makes it home. But he brings home some baggage of the war such as PTSD.

Download or read book The TALIBAN and the SOLDIER written by Gordon Clark and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 20 years of fighting. Teaching the locals. Thousands of lives lost or destroyed. Then Kabul fell in just two weeks. For many veterans, this was the last straw, their sacrifices and pain all for nothing. It started out as a routine patrol. The only difference was the new man, a young Lieutenant, straight out of Sandhurst. He didn't know the reality, only the theory. "Stop, Sir!" Corporal Ben Noon yelled out, panic in his voice, already knowing it was too late. He watched as the officer pulled open the wooden door, praying that he was wrong, knowing that he was right. Time seemed to stretch, every movement taking forever. It was that easy. One second of lost concentration, and it was all over. Blackness. A rebuilt Ben Noon wanted to put things right, to give Veterans like himself a meaning, a value, but the only way to do this was to build bridges with his old enemy. An enemy that had stolen his life, left him a cripple. To deal with the devil. To cut cake with the Taliban.

Download or read book The Taliban the Soldier written by Gordon Clark and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 20 years of fighting. Teaching the locals. Thousands of lives lost or destroyed. Then Kabul fell in just two weeks. For many veterans, this was the last straw, their sacrifices and pain all for nothing. It started out as a routine patrol. The only difference was the new man, a young Lieutenant, straight out of Sandhurst. He didn't know the reality, only the theory. "Stop, Sir!" Corporal Ben Noon yelled out, panic in his voice, already knowing it was too late. He watched as the officer pulled open the wooden door, praying that he was wrong, knowing that he was right. Time seemed to stretch, every movement taking forever. It was that easy. One second of lost concentration, and it was all over. Blackness. A rebuilt Ben Noon wanted to put things right, to give Veterans like himself a meaning, a value, but the only way to do this was to build bridges with his old enemy. An enemy that had stolen his life, left him a cripple. To deal with the devil. To cut cake with the Taliban.

Download or read book American Cipher written by Matt Farwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive narrative of the life, captivity, and trial of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was abducted by the Taliban and whose story has served as a symbol for America's foundering war in Afghanistan ”An unsettling and riveting book filled with the mysteries of human nature.” —Kirkus Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl left his platoon's base in eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of June 30, 2009. Since that day, easy answers to the many questions surrounding his case—why did he leave his post? What kinds of efforts were made to recover him from the Taliban? And why, facing a court martial, did he plead guilty to the serious charges against him?—have proved elusive. Taut in its pacing but sweeping in its scope, American Cipher is the riveting and deeply sourced account of the nearly decade-old Bergdahl quagmire—which, as journalists Matt Farwell and Michael Ames persuasively argue, is as illuminating an episode as we have as we seek the larger truths of how the United States lost its way in Afghanistan. The book tells the parallel stories of a young man's halting coming of age and a nation stalled in an unwinnable war, revealing the fallout that ensued when the two collided: a fumbling recovery effort that suppressed intelligence on Bergdahl's true location and bungled multiple opportunities to bring him back sooner; a homecoming that served to deepen the nation's already-vast political fissure; a trial that cast judgment on not only the defendant, but most everyone involved. The book's beating heart is Bergdahl himself—an idealistic, misguided soldier onto whom a nation projected the political and emotional complications of service. Based on years of exclusive reporting drawing on dozens of sources throughout the military, government, and Bergdahl's family, friends, and fellow soldiers, American Cipher is at once a meticulous investigation of government dysfunction and political posturing, a blistering commentary on America's presence in Afghanistan, and a heartbreaking story of a naïve young man who thought he could fix the world and wound up the tool of forces far beyond his understanding.

Download or read book An Ordinary Soldier written by Doug Beattie and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Other Face of Battle written by Wayne E. Lee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lackedtriumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson focus on, respectively, the Battle of Monongahela (1755), the Battle of Manila (1898), and the Battle of Makuan, Afghanistan (2020) - conflicts in which American soldiers were forced to engage in"irregular" warfare, confronting an enemy entirely alien to them. This enemy rejected the Western conventions of warfare and defined success and failure - victory and defeat - in entirely different ways. Symmetry of any kind is lost. Here was not ennobling engagement but atrocity, unanticipatedinsurgencies, and strategic stalemate.War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat and what its effects have been. They are therefore worth comparing for what they hold incommon as well as what they reveal about our attitude toward war itself. The Other Face of Battle reminds us that "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare is now not the exception but the rule. Understanding its roots seems more crucial than ever.

Download or read book My Life with the Taliban written by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef and published by Hurst & Company Limited. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abdul Zaeef describes growing up in poverty in rural Kandahar province, which he fled for Pakistan after the Russian invasion of 1979. Zaeef joined the jihad in 1983, was seriously wounded in several encounters and met many leading figures of the resistance, including the current Taliban head, Mullah Mohammad Omar. Disgusted by the lawlessness that ensued after the Soviet withdrawal, Zaeef was one among the former mujahidin who were closely involved in the emergence of the Taliban, in 1994. He then details his Taliban career, including negotiations with Ahmed Shah Massoud and role as ambassador to Pakistan during 9/11. In early 2002 Zaeef was handed over to American forces in Islamabad and spent four and a half years in prison in Bagram and Guantanamo before being released without charge. My Life with the Taliban offers insights into the Pashtun village communities that are the Taliban's bedrock and helps to explain what drives men like Zaeef to take up arms against the foreigners who are foolish enough to invade his homeland.

Download or read book The Taliban at War written by Antonio Giustozzi and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction --The collapse of the Emirate and the early regrouping, 2002-4 --The apogeum of the Quetta Shura, 2005-9 --The emergence of alternative centres of power to Quetta --The crisis of the Quetta Shura 2009-13 --The Taliban's tactical adaptation --Organisational adaptation --The troubled comeback of the Quetta Shura 2014 --Conclusion.The impossible centralisation of an anti-centralist movement --Epilogue.

Download or read book An Ordinary Soldier written by Doug Beattie MC and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-21 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 11th September 2006 - exactly five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers - a modern day Rorke's Drift was played out in the town of Garmsir, known as the Taliban gateway to Helmand Province. 40-year-old Capt. Doug Beattie of the 1stBattalion Royal Irish Regiment was charged with the mission to help retake Garmsir from the Taliban. His commanders said it would take two days; it actually took two weeks of exhausting, bloody conflict in which at times he would be one of only a small unit up against a ferocious enemy in impossible conditions.For his repeated bravery Doug Beattie was decorated with the Military Cross. AN ORDINARY SOLDIER offers an extraordinary insight into the mission in Afghanistan and, crucially, the relationship between British troops and the Afghans they serve alongside. Above all, it's Beattie's personal story of being what he modestly calls 'an ordinary soldier' - someone who balances being a loving father and husband with that of fighting in the world's most hostile place. It demands to be read.

Download or read book The Tender Soldier written by Vanessa M. Gezari and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Pentagon's most daring and controversial attempt since Vietnam to bring social science to the Afghanistan battlefield, three tough-minded American civilians find their humanity tested and their lives forever changed by this little-known mission.

Download or read book Honourable Warriors written by Richard Streatfeild and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009 Major Richard Streatfeild and his men fought for six months against the Taliban in Sangin, northern Helmand. They were engaged in over 800 fire-fights. They were the target of more than 200 improvised explosive devices. Ten men in his company were killed, 50 were wounded. This is their story and it is the story, from the front line, of Western intervention in Afghanistan. His graphic personal account gives an inside view of the physical, psychological and political battle to come to terms with severe casualties and the stress of battle while seeking the support of the local population. It is also an account of strategy being turned into action - of the essential interplay of the personal and professional in the most testing of circumstances. He describes the day-to-day operations, and he provides a fascinating record of the Taliban's guerrilla tactics and the British response to them. His narrative gives a direct insight into the experiences of soldiers who had to face down their fear throughout a prolonged tour of duty on the Afghan battlefield.His narrative is essential reading for anyone who cares to understand the nature of the war in Afghanistan and how the odds are stacked against the army's success. For the British intervention in Helmand is a microcosm of the Nato-led mission launched against the Taliban and al Qaeda.As seen in The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, Sussex Express and The Argus, Featured on BBC Radio 4 ' The Today' programme and on BBC South East Television

Download or read book The American War in Afghanistan written by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Winner of 2022 Lionel Gelber Prize The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners. The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Malkasian is both a leading academic authority on the subject and an experienced practitioner, having spent nearly two years working in the Afghan countryside and going on to serve as the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, the US military commander in Afghanistan and later the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge, understanding of Pashto, and review of primary source documents, Malkasian moves through the war's 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 2018-2020 peace talks. Malkasian lived through much of it, and draws from his own experiences to provide a unique vantage point on the war. Today, the Taliban is the most powerful faction, and sees victory as probable. The ultimate outcome after America leaves is inherently unpredictable given the multitude of actors there, but one thing is sure: the war did not go as America had hoped. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major attack on the American homeland was carried out after 2001, the United States was unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, which could not survive without US military backing. The American War in Afghanistan explains why the war had such a disappointing outcome. Wise and all-encompassing, The American War in Afghanistan provides a truly vivid portrait of the conflict in all of its phases that will remain the authoritative account for years to come.

Download or read book Soldiers of God written by Robert D. Kaplan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century. Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

Download or read book The Outpost written by Jake Tapper and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis of the film starring Orlando Bloom and Scott Eastwood, The Outpost is the heartbreaking and inspiring story of one of America's deadliest battles during the war in Afghanistan, acclaimed by critics everywhere as a classic. At 5:58 AM on October 3rd, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 Americans there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war for the U.S. that year. Four months after the battle, a Pentagon review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place. In The Outpost, Jake Tapper gives us the powerful saga of COP Keating, from its establishment to eventual destruction, introducing us to an unforgettable cast of soldiers and their families, and to a place and war that has remained profoundly distant to most Americans. A runaway bestseller, it makes a savage war real, and American courage manifest. "The Outpost is a mind-boggling, all-too-true story of heroism, hubris, failed strategy, and heartbreaking sacrifice. If you want to understand how the war in Afghanistan went off the rails, you need to read this book." -- Jon Krakauer

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 Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare Implications for Army and Defense Policy written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The defense debate tends to treat Afghanistan as either a revolution or a fluke: either the "Afghan Model" of special operations forces (SOF) plus precision munitions plus an indigenous ally is a widely applicable template for American defense planning, or it is a nonreplicable product of local idiosyncrasies. In fact, it is neither. The Afghan campaign of last fall and winter was actually much closer to a typical 20th century mid-intensity conflict, albeit one with unusually heavy fire support for one side. And this view has very different implications than either proponents or skeptics of the Afghan Model now claim. Afghan Model skeptics often point to Afghanistan's unusual culture of defection or the Taliban's poor skill or motivation as grounds for doubting the war's relevance to the future. Afghanistan's culture is certainly unusual, and there were many defections. The great bulk, however, occurred after the military tide had turned not before-hand. They were effects, not causes. The Afghan Taliban were surely unskilled and ill-motivated. The non-Afghan al Qaeda, however, have proven resolute and capable fighters. Their host's collapse was not attributable to any al Qaeda shortage of commitment or training. Afghan Model proponents, by contrast, credit precision weapons with annihilating enemies at a distance before they could close with our commandos or indigenous allies. Hence the model's broad utility: with SOF-directed bombs doing the real killing, even ragtag local militias will suffice as allies. All they need do is screen U.S. commandos from the occasional hostile survivor and occupy the abandoned ground thereafter. Yet the actual fighting in Afghanistan involved substantial close combat. Al Qaeda counterattackers closed, unseen, to pointblank range of friendly forces in battles at Highway 4 and Sayed Slim Kalay.