Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan To A More Dangerous World

Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan To A More Dangerous World
Christina Lamb

From the award-winning co-author of ‘I Am Malala’, this book asks just how the might of NATO, with 48 countries and 140,000 troops on the ground, failed to defeat a group of religious students and farmers? How did it go so wrong?Twenty-seven years ago, Christina Lamb left Britain to become a journalist in Pakistan. She crossed the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan with mujaheddin fighting the Russians and fell unequivocally in love with this fierce country of pomegranates and war, a relationship which has dominated her adult life.Since 2001, Lamb has watched with incredulity as the West fought a war with its hands tied, committed too little too late, failed to understand local dynamics and turned a blind eye as their Taliban enemy was helped by their ally Pakistan.Farewell Kabul tells how success was turned into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest nations on earth, the Taliban undefeated, and nuclear armed Pakistan perhaps the most dangerous place on earth.With unparalleled access to all key decision-makers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, London and Washington, from heads of state and generals as well as soldiers on the ground, Farewell Kabul tells how this happened.In Afghanistan, Lamb has travelled far beyond Helmand – from the caves of Tora Bora in the south to the mountainous bad lands of Kunar in the east; from Herat, city of poets and minarets in the west, to the very poorest province of Samangan in the north. She went to Guantánamo, met Taliban in Quetta, visited jihadi camps in Pakistan and saw bin Laden’s house just after he was killed. Saddest of all, she met women who had been made role models by the West and had then been shot, raped or forced to flee the country.This deeply personal book not only shows the human cost of political failure but explains how short-sighted encouragement of jihadis to fight the Russians, followed by prosecution of ill-thoughtout wars, has resulted in the spread of terrorism throughout the Islamic world

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Copyright (#ue110efdd-99ae-5c21-ae82-f889fc3c445e)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.williamcollinsbooks.com)

First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015

Copyright © Christina Lamb 2015

Christina Lamb asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Cover photograph: Justin Sutcliffe

Maps by John Gilkes

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007256921

Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008171278

Version: 2016-03-18

Dedication (#ue110efdd-99ae-5c21-ae82-f889fc3c445e)

In memory of all those who lost their lives to terrorism – or fighting it – from New York to London to Kandahar to Peshawar

Epigraph (#ue110efdd-99ae-5c21-ae82-f889fc3c445e)

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

General Douglas MacArthur

Contents

Cover (#u7680c953-a9ad-5075-aead-e3b089d45091)

Title Page (#ulink_1fd09372-11aa-5da1-b61d-f6c45d240f27)

Copyright (#ulink_cc7f481f-6e21-5653-ab64-ab0db785dad2)

Dedication (#ulink_6a30ddbc-56dc-500d-9ad0-c7a9ee1fc117)

Epigraph (#ulink_e730b598-12e0-500f-aa88-720976e8a6cc)

Maps (#litres_trial_promo)

The Leaving (#ulink_3947294a-a611-57e8-86af-5d1b407c6ef9)

PART 1: GETTING IN (#ulink_7e9c4a28-aad8-5e89-a7fc-7ca8e1e2164d)

1 Rule Number One (#ulink_fc06e780-3324-58ba-853d-8bf132665b6a)

2 Sixty Words (#ulink_a15b9fd1-43ff-553f-b4d4-7392a7302a72)

3 Making – and Almost Killing – a President (#ulink_df7de446-4033-5d74-b727-cc3b65e86d18)

4 Ground Zero (#ulink_fa489b79-8c56-5e8a-88b0-4d5547efd42d)

5 Losing bin Laden – the Not So Great Escape (#ulink_165829d1-6d08-5988-bfaf-26cce8ee7ec9)

6 A Tale of Two Generals (#ulink_b4c999dc-32b6-5ce3-87bc-50e6f878aee4)

7 Taliban Central (#ulink_540bb37c-3b6a-56ce-b9d9-c0b4b407f82c)

8 Merchants of Ruin – the Return of the Warlords (#ulink_7c181f9d-eba2-58fb-b7b4-96998ab534e0)

9 Theatre of War (#litres_trial_promo)

10 A Tale of Two Wars (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Voting With Mullah Omar (#litres_trial_promo)

PART II: WAR (#litres_trial_promo)

12 Ambush (#litres_trial_promo)

13 Bringing Dolphins to Helmand (#litres_trial_promo)

14 Tethered Goats (#litres_trial_promo)