December 15, 2010
Afghanistan Trip Report, Part II: So You're Deploying to Afghanistan...
A few weeks ago, I asked for some help from the readership in
compiling suggested readings for company and field grade officers about to
deploy to Afghanistan. The response I received was overwhelming, and there is
simply no way I can include all the wonderful and varied texts suggested by
officers on the ground in Afghanistan, veterans of the conflict there, civilian
researchers, journalists and amateur students of Afghanistan and the conflict. My original intent was to write this post before leaving myself for a two-week trip to Afghanistan, but I am glad I waited to write this upon my return. This is hardly an exhaustive list but is rather stuff you can actually find the time to read in between rehearsing small unit battle drills and filling out your life insurance forms. Enjoy, because all of the works listed below are genuinely fun to read.
Afghanistan: Its History and its Peoples
If you only read just one thing ...
... read Barfield's Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Witty, learned, well written, this is
the single-volume introduction to Afghanistan that all officers deploying to
Afghanistan should read. I heard David Petraeus himself say he has "a lot of time for [Barfield]," and this book was on his shelf as well as the desks of half his staff.
And if you have a little more time ...
... I really love the two books by David B. Edwards. Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier
is my favorite, but Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad
will be most relevant to military
officers.
Your (primary) Adversary
If you only read just one thing ...
... read Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. This was the only book I read
on Afghanistan before deploying there as a young rifle platoon leader in early
2002. I was sent to Kuwait just after the 11 September attacks and read Taliban
while there. It has since been updated, but looking back on it, my otherwise
incurious 23-year old self did well to pick this one out and have relatives
send it to me.
And if you have a little more time ...
... I recommend you introduce yourself to the work of Antonio
Giustozzi. I read and enjoyed Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007, but you're best off reading chapters of
his latest edited volume, Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field. You should also seek to introduce yourself,
scholarly speaking, to the insurgency where you will be operating. Martine van Bijlert is
very good on the insurgency in Uruzgan, for example, while Anand
Gopal is worth reading on Kandahar. Others, obviously, have written well on other areas in conflict, and you should take a little initiative and reach out to people at places like the Afghan Analysts Network for help in learning about the area into which you will deploy.
Your Fight
If you only read just one thing ...
... read David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. No single volume can ever prepare you for fighting low-intensity or
limited conflicts. And counterinsurgency theory sadly remains more a collection of assumptions and "best practices" based on historical experience rather than empirically tested lessons that can be applied to new conflict environments. That having been said, fighting a counterinsurgency is more about having the right mentality than executing a step-by-step playbook. It's about education, not training. The training you do for counterinsurgency should look a lot like the training you would do for conventional warfare: small unit battle drills, marksmanship, physical fitness, and medical skills training. But spending a Sunday afternoon with Galula's slim volume will do more to get you in the right frame of mind for fighting an insurgency than anything else you will read.
And if you have a little more time ...
... read The Logic of Violence in Civil War
by Stathis Kalyvas and The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. The former will make you think more critically about the latter as well as a bunch of assumptions that continue to underpin our strategy and operations in Afghanistan.
You
The people of Afghanistan are the result of a particular set of geographical and historical circumstances. They are sui generis. So too are you. Know how unique and, to the Afghan perspective, how weird you really are.
If you only read just one thing ...
... this essay by Mark Lilla will get you thinking about how unique we Westerners are in having, among other things, this curious separation of church and state. There is a lot of intellectual history packed into this short essay, adapted from a longer book that someone should buy Sarah Palin for Christmas.
And if you have a little more time ...
... Hilary Mantel's historical novel of the English Reformation will reinforce some of the themes in Lilla's essay and is fun to read as well. Don't shy from reading other good books of intellectual
and religious history
of the United States and the West while you are in Afghanistan. It always helps, when studying another culture, to know your own and recognize its quirks as well.