If you have any curiosity for what went on in Afghanistan during our years fighting the Talibs. As seen from the Afghani perspective. A must read. ( )

Dopo la ripresa del potere da parte dei Talebani in Afghanistan, volevo leggere qualcosa in tema, ma non mi andava di leggere un libro qualsiasi giusto per fare il post sul blog. Volevo leggere un libro che mi desse l’opportunità di ripagare un torto che sentivo di aver fatto a questo Paese: il torto di non aver insistito di più nel cercare la complessità nascosta dietro quella valanga di retorica e propaganda che voleva giustificare l’invasione dell’Afghanistan.

È vero, ai tempi avevo appena dodici anni e non avevo Internet a disposizione, ma mi ricordo la difficoltà di mettere in discussione la legittimità di questa guerra e gli attacchi pressoché unanimi che ricevevano coloro che ci provavano – mica sarai contrariǝ a salvare quelle povere donne afghane, vero? Era tutto un decantare la nobiltà della resistenza afghana e delle truppe USA che andavano a lottare contro i terroristi cattivi e i loro alleati. Davanti a questo male non c’era esitazione possibile.

Davanti a questo muro di approssimazione sento che l’unica cosa che posso fare è proprio restititure all’Afghanistan la sua tridimensionalità, così mi sono messa alla ricerca di un libro che avesse questo obiettivo, finendo per incrociare No Good Men Among the Living: la buona notizia è che potete prenderlo in prestito su Open Library; la cattiva è che disponibile solo in inglese. Immagino di non dover specificare che il libro contiene diverse descrizioni di torture e violenza estrema.

Gopal ha fatto un lavoro straordinario e posso assicurarvi che dopo aver letto questo libro non potrete che avere un’opinione negativa della guerra in Afghanistan, perché le violenze assolutamente insensate che ha scatenato non possono essere giustificate nemmeno con le strategie e le tattiche di guerra. Le truppe statunitensi hanno agito in maniera talmente stupida e cattiva da aver reso inevitabile il ritorno al potere dei Talebani, rendendo così vana anche la perdita di così tante vite. Uno spreco così totale da suscitare solo rabbia e vergogna. ( )

"In a single thirty-minute stretch the United States had managed to eradicate both of Khas Uruzgan’s potential governments, the core of any future anti-Taliban leadership—stalwarts who had outlasted the Russian invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban years but would not survive their own allies."

Two decades of occupation, an even longer period of interference, and the United States can proudly declare to have achieved nothing. Or—perhaps that's not totally fair—worse than nothing. The MIC got its money, the politicians got their clout, and Afghanistan got death, destruction, and an ugly future. ( )

A useful companion read to 'The Good War', this book is less focussed on and covers fewer of the strategic failings of the coalition intervention, but contains some moving personal stories, and brings out very clearly an element of American strategic ignorance in Afghanistan which that book did not describe in such detail: coalition forces injected themselves into what they saw as a war against the Taliban, when in fact the Taliban were only relatively recent victors in a longer civil war that had descended into inter-tribal conflicts that still lay close under the surface. When coalition forces chose whom to engage with to promote their anti-Taliban agenda, they often unwittingly engaged with one tribe and its leader, and so implicitly against a rival tribe and its leader. Smart tribal leaders fed disinformation to coalition forces in order to use them in the age-old game of deploying foreign imperial force against local rivals. This was at the root of much of the disaster as coalition soldiers arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed people fingered by their tribal allies masquerading as anti-Taliban, pro-government loyalists. The author records tit-for-tat games of life and death, including one where two rival centres of government in a city were simultaneously raided in the night with extreme violence. The result of operating with ignorance of the local scene was captivity to the interests and prejudices of canny local leaders pursuing vendettas, and jails from Bagram to Guantanamo filled with innocent people accused of Taliban and AQ connections. The author says the Americans did by far the worst job in this regard because they were by far the most willing to deploy force in service of their goals. The book argues that this is the process that caused the Taliban insurgency to regroup from an initial post-invasion demise in which the movement quickly collapsed and leaders and footsoldiers sought to come in from the cold. This issue is the most important strategic point the book has to make, and it has much less to say than 'The Good War' about the roles of opium, patriarchy or competing agencies, so I recommend reading 'The Good War' and this book for a rounded picture of the failure. ( )

“When you go back to America, give Obama a message. You say you’ll give us roads and schools? I don’t give a shit about your roads and schools! I want safety for my family."

This book covers the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of those who lived it. About the effect that NATO's imperialist invasion had on this country and her people. This work is insightful and powerfully written. It has caused me to reconsider everything I have been previously told by western media about the subject. VERY IMPORTANT AND HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! ( )