Military Afghanistan

Nearly 100,000 US soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan at the height of the campaign, fighting the longest war in the nation's history. But what do Americans know about the land where this conflict is taking place? Many have come to have a grasp of the people, history, and geography of Iraq, but Afghanistan remains a mystery. Historian Brian Glyn Williams, who has traveled to Afghanistan frequently over the past decade, provides essential background to the war, tracing the rise, fall, and reemergence of the Taliban.

Afghanistan's strategically significant lands have long been fought over by foreign invaders. Today, as yet another generation risks life and limb in this inhospitable territory, an ever-rising death toll puts back under the spotlight the way the modern war in Afghanistan is being run, and demands answers. Drawing on interviews with Afghan politicians, businessmen and ordinary people, British, American and European diplomats and soldiers, Sandy Gall addresses the challenges that face those now fighting on the most dangerous frontier in the world.

J. Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan working for the US State Department in some of the most dangerous frontline locations. Upon his return home, while traveling the country to pay respect to the dead and wounded, he asked himself: When will these wars end? How will they be remembered and memorialized? What lessons can we learn from them?

Packed with a 30mm cannon, 2.75 rockets or Hellfire missiles the Apache makes its presence known. Some of the Apache systems are truly amazing such as being able to read a car number plate at 2 miles away with its 127 times-magnification day TV camera. A thermal camera so powerful it can identify a human at over 2 miles and spots of blood on the ground from half a mile. The Apache is the world's most fearsome attack helicopter its pilots refer to flying it as 'Riding the Dragon'.2012 Afghanistan, and 664 Squadron of the Army Air Corps are in daily action over the rugged and harsh Afghan ...

Senior Chief Turbo, Memoir of a Navy SEAL K-9 recounts the life of a military working dog named Turbo, from his birth in Holland and participation in Dutch police dog (KNPV) trials, to training with a Navy SEAL dog handler and joining him for two combat deployments to Afghanistan. Written from a dog's unique perspective, and based on actual, first-hand accounts of a SEAL handler-dog team, Senior Chief Turbo illustrates the bonds of loyalty and friendship that drive all warriors.

When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.

Rafe Stoner is a gun for hire, a former Navy SEAL whose skills are in constant demand in his adopted home of Afghanistan. His legitimate business is selling surplus machinery, or so his tax return states. His real work is less prosaic, and makes him a good living from a grateful client base. The removal of inconvenient rivals is a way of life in the violent and war-torn nation.

Four US Navy SEALs, attached to the ship’s company of the USS Ronald Reagan, are leaving the dark continent of Africa after a long, hard fight against fanatic Islamists that came close to costing them their lives. Relaxing on the flight deck, Master Chief Rod Cooper’s dreams of a long spell of shore leave are rudely shattered. The hard fight is not over and things just got worse. A lot worse. Africa is no stranger to tinpot dictators. Warlords luring the gullible into joining and frequently dying for their violent coup. The latest in this long line of warlords is planning to establish ...

Fresh out of high school, Kelsi Sheren, a diminutive nineteen-year-old woman, sought to join the military to help liberate those oppressed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. While she was often the smallest person in basic training, she proved she had the biggest heart and often the most energy. She made it to Afghanistan and joined a British military unit for house-to-house insurgent patrol. What she saw there was unimaginable death and destruction.

In August 2021 a women's creative writing group in Afghanistan shared news of political turmoil and the Fall of Kabul. These women were in the process of publishing a short-story collection when their world was turned upside down by the Taliban. In staying connected via WhatsApp messages, they established a lifeline; a vital space to keep their creativity alive, support each other and bear witness to the events unfolding around them.

At just eighteen years old, Miles Lagoze joined the Marine Corps a decade after the war began and found himself surrounded by people not unlike those he’d left behind at home—aimless youth searching for stability, community, and economic security. Deployed to Afghanistan as a Combat Cameraman—an active-duty videographer and photographer—Lagoze produced slick images of glory and heroism for public consumption. But his government-approved footage concealed a grim reality. Here, Lagoze pulls back the curtain and illustrates the grisly truth of the longest war in American history.

The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the former Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post.

Jayson Clark was always the life of the party. He enjoyed goofing off, fooling around, and cracking jokes, all to keep people around him from guessing at his tortured past and the memories that threaten to destroy any peace he could have… until Molly somehow finds out the truth. Molly Goode deals with children all day long as a teacher – so she knew exactly how to handle her flirtatious pen pal, or so she thought. Stumbling upon Jayson’s past unexpectedly, she discovers the vulnerable secrets he keeps hidden away from the rest of the world. Could opening up to him, revealing her own ...

Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses.

The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. In an eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre mercy of the Taliban.

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics and their influence is felt to this day.

When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance, but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; and generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places.

(De-gwail-yo) Music played by the Mexican army bands on the morning of March 6th, 1836, was the signal for Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's attack on the Alamo. The word Degüello signifies the act of beheading or throatcutting and in Spanish history became associated with the battle music, which, in different versions, meant complete destruction of the enemy without mercy. Based on the incredible true story - Just days after the horrific attacks in New York, a handful of Green Berets from the decorated 5th Special Forces Group were secretly inserted deep behind enemy lines in Northern ...

Three Russian agents are trying to stop nuclear weapons stolen from Pakistan by the Taliban. The Taliban wants to use the stolen weapons to force America out of Afghanistan for good and return to power in Kabul. Will nuclear strikes in multiple locations across Afghanistan let them succeed? Or, can Russian agents and American special forces stop the Taliban in time?

Former General and Governor Simon Pack appears to be in the background in the newest Pack novel, but in truth he’s giving new life to a young man who’s been betrayed repeatedly—in war, love, and on smokejumper fire lines. Josh Panchrest is now so deep into his melancholic state the only solution he can imagine is to turn to Pack, his former Superintendent at West Point. Josh was the lone survivor in a major operation to snatch a Taliban leader. Readjusting to the too-soft America he returns to after combat is difficult. He finds solace in the rugged, disciplined life of a smokejumper ...