Full Description
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.
Contents
Chapter One: Thinking About America's War in Afghanistan
Chapter Two: The Country and Peoples of Afghanistan
Chapter Three: The First Taliban Regime
Chapter Four: The United States Enters Afghanistan
Chapter Five: The Karzai Regime
Chapter Six: Disorder in Kandahar
Chapter Seven: The Taliban Offensive
Chapter Eight: A Second Taliban Regime, 2007-2010
Chapter Nine: The War in the East
Chapter Ten: Kandahar City and Lashkar Gah
Chapter Eleven: The New Administration and the Surge
Chapter Twelve: The Surge in Helmand
Chapter Thirteen: The Surge in Kandahar
Chapter Fourteen: End of the Surge
Chapter Fifteen: Ghazni and the East
Chapter Sixteen: The new army and police, insider attacks, and the bilateral security agreement
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 on Eighteen Years of War in Afghanistan
References
Notes
Index
