Ghosts of Afghanistan by Jonathan Steele

Ghosts of Afghanistan by Jonathan Steele

This excellent book is a painfully honest account of successive unwinnable wars. It is the text book Mr. Obama and others will need if Afghanistan is ever to be left to find its own peace and prosperity. --Jon Snow, Channel 4 News (UK)

Jonathan Steele, an award-winning journalist and commentator, has covered the country since his first visit there as a reporter in 1981. He tracked the Soviet occupation and the communist regime of Najibullah, which held the Western-backed resistance at bay for three years after the Soviets left. He covered the arrival of the Taliban to power in Kabul in 1996, and their retreat from Kandahar under the weight of U.S. bombing in 2001. Most recently Steele has reported from the epicenter of the Taliban resurgence in Helmand.

Ghosts of Afghanistan turns a spotlight on the numerous myths about Afghanistan that have bedeviled foreign policy-makers and driven them to repeat earlier mistakes. Steele has conducted numerous interviews with ordinary Afghans, two of the country's Communist presidents, senior Soviet occupation officials, as well as Taliban leaders, Western diplomats, NATO advisers, and United Nations negotiators.

Comparing the challenges facing the Obama administration as it seeks to find an exit strategy with those the Kremlin faced in the 1980s, Steele cautions that military victory will elude the West just as it eluded the Kremlin. Showing how and why Soviet efforts to negotiate an end to the war came to nothing, he explains how negotiations today could put a stop to the tragedies of civil war and foreign intervention that have afflicted Afghanistan for three decades.

Steele, Jonathan: - Jonathan Steele was Moscow bureau chief for The Guardian [UK] until the spring of 1994. He was named International Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards in 1981 and in 1991. He also won the London Press Club's Scoop of the Year Award for being the only British or American reporter to get to Gorbachev's prison villa in the Crimea during the 1991 coup.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781619020573
ISBN 10	1619020572
Title	Ghosts of Afghanistan
Author	Jonathan Steele
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Counterpoint
Year published	2012-10-16
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable