Table of Contents

Chapter One: Thinking About America's War in Afghanistan
Chapter Two: The Country and Peoples of Afghanistan
Chapter Three: The First Taliban Regime
Chapter Four: The United States Enters Afghanistan
Chapter Five: The Karzai Regime
Chapter Six: Disorder in Kandahar
Chapter Seven: The Taliban Offensive
Chapter Eight: A Second Taliban Regime, 2007-2010
Chapter Nine: The War in the East
Chapter Ten: Kandahar City and Lashkar Gah
Chapter Eleven: The New Administration and the Surge
Chapter Twelve: The Surge in Helmand
Chapter Thirteen: The Surge in Kandahar
Chapter Fourteen: End of the Surge
Chapter Fifteen: Ghazni and the East
Chapter Sixteen: The new army and police, insider attacks, and the bilateral security agreement
Chapter Seventeen: The 2014 Elections
Chapter Eighteen: The Taliban Offensives of 2015 and 2016
Chapter Nineteen: The Trump Administration
Chapter Twenty: Peace Talks
Chapter Twenty-One: Looking Back on Eighteen Years of War in Afghanistan
References
Notes
Index

About the Author

Carter Malkasian, Special Assistant for Strategy to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Joseph Dunford), from 2015 to 2019.

Carter Malkasian was the Special Assistant for Strategy to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, from 2015 to 2019. He has extensive experience working in Afghanistan through multiple deployments throughout the country. The highlight of his work is nearly two years in Garmser district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, as a State Department political officer and the district stabilization team leader. He is the author of War Comes to Garmser:
Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (Oxford University Press) and Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State (Oxford). He has a doctorate in history from Oxford and is fluent in
Pashto.

Reviews

"...compelling..." -- Christina Lamb, Foreign Affairs