The Ledger Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan by David Kilcullen

Description ‘These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world,’ said Charlie Wilson, of America’s role backing the anti-Soviet mujahideen. ‘And then we fucked up the endgame.’ With no support for Afghanistan after that war, the vacuum was filled by the Taliban and bin Laden. ‘The Ledger’ assesses the West’s similarly failed approach to Afghanistan after 9/11–in military, diplomatic, political and developmental terms. Dr David Kilcullen and Dr Greg Mills are uniquely placed to reflect backwards and forwards on the Afghan conflict: they worked with the international mission both as advisers and within the Arg, and they have considerable experience of counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations elsewhere in the world. Here these two experts show that there is plenty of blame to go around when explaining the failure to bring peace to Afghanistan after 9/11. The signs of collapse were conveniently ignored, in favour of political narratives of progress and success. Yet for Afghans, the war and its geopolitical effects are not over because NATO is gone–Afghanistan remains globally connected through digital communications and networks. This vital book explains why and where failings in Afghanistan happened, warning against exceptionalist approaches to future peacebuilding missions around the globe.About the AuthorDavid Kilcullen is an author, unconventional warfare expert, and former soldier and diplomat. He was a senior counterinsurgency adviser during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Greg Mills, Director of the Brenthurst Foundation, has advised African governments, and served in Afghanistan with COMISAF. His books with Hurst include ‘Why States Recover’.Reviews ‘[The Ledger] is a clear-eyed analysis made with the surgical precision of two insiders who saw, firsthand, the legion of small ways that the war was lost when it could have been won.’ — The Sunday Times ‘A failure to understand the ties that bind Afghanistan and its people underpins the west’s 20-year struggle there, a history whose first draft is masterfully captured in The Ledger.’ — Financial Times ‘The Ledger is not a book of dread and sensationalism. It is a cool and forensic dissection of what a disaster the search for Al-Qaeda following the attack on their Afghan hosts, the Taliban, was to become. […] More than a mere polemic, this is a fine book.’ — The Scotsman ‘[Written] by authors with deep knowledge and great expertise in their subjects, The Ledger [is] very useful in understanding how we got where we are.’ — The IndependentBook InformationISBN 9781787386952Author David KilcullenFormat PaperbackPage Count 368Imprint C Hurst & Co Publishers LtdPublisher C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd