Military Afghanistan

At 24 years of age, U.S. Army Ranger Sean Parnell was named commander of a forty-man elite infantry platoon - a unit that came to be known as the Outlaws - and was tasked with rooting out Pakistan-based insurgents from a mountain valley along Afghanistan's eastern frontier. Parnell and his men assumed they would be facing a ragtag bunch of civilians, but in May 2006 what started out as a routine patrol through the lower mountains of the Hindu Kush became a brutal ambush.

Briggs: Remember when we parted ways in Germany? It was the day I broke your heart. What you didn't know was that I was breaking mine too. I thought they'd be enough - my husband and my son. That I'd get home and everything would go back to the way it was...before the war. Before the ambush. Before you. But, no matter how hard I try, I can't erase the trauma we shared. I can't seem to forget the way my heart beat in time with yours. I thought the nightmare was over when they pulled us from that hole in the ground, but nothing could have prepared me for the war I'd face at home.

On August 15, 2021, the world watched in horror as Kabul fell to the Taliban without a fight—erasing 20 years of blood, sweat, and sacrifice in a matter of hours. The sight of Taliban fighters posing in the abandoned U.S. embassy and driving U.S. military Humvees through the streets was a humiliation of historic proportions. How did this happen? How did the United States, the world’s greatest military power, leave Afghanistan in such a disgraceful, chaotic, and deadly manner?

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: Defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off-course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.

A single company of US paratroopers—calling themselves the "Chosen Few"—arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides.

Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, best-selling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.

In 2009 Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after Keating's construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: It was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.

12 Strong is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered 40 to one, they pursued the enemy army across the mountainous Afghanistan terrain and, after a series of intense battles, captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators as they rode into the city. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn.

In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the 19th century.

Vick "The Reaper" Harwood is an esteemed sniper with a record kill count - 33 kills in 90 days - when he is knocked out under mortar attack in Afghanistan. He wakes up back in the United States with little memory of what happened, his spotter and gun both unrecovered from the battlefield. Harwood has resigned himself to slowly picking up the pieces of his life. But when a series of assassinations start occurring in the area, Harwood can't explain why he just happens to be nearby for each killing - or how a sniper rifle that matches the description of the one he lost seems to be involved.

"That Others May Live" is a mantra that defines the fearless men of Alaska's 212th Pararescue Unit, the PJs, one of the most elite military forces on the planet. Whether they are rescuing citizens injured and freezing in the Alaskan wilderness or saving wounded Rangers and SEALs in blazing firefights at war, the PJs are the least known and most highly trained of America's warriors. Never Quit is the true story of how Jimmy Settle, an Alaskan shoe-store clerk, became a Special Forces Operator and war hero.

Doctors, nurses, medics and stretcher-bearers must venture wherever someone is injured and the cry for assistance goes up. Their job is to put themselves in the heart of danger – to risk their own lives as they try to save the dying. War at its rawest is their domain, an ugly place of shattered bodies, severed limbs and death. They fulfil society’s vital pledge to its warriors that they will not be abandoned on the battlefield. Yet, more often than not, what they do goes unnoticed – except by those who survive because of their extraordinary courage and skill.

The Only Thing Worth Dying For chronicles the most important mission in the early days of the Global War on Terror, when the men on the ground knew little about the enemy - and their commanders in Washington knew even less. With unprecedented access to surviving members of ODA 574, key war planners, and Karzai himself, award-winning author Eric Blehm cuts through the noise of politicians and high-level military officials to narrate, for the first time, a story of uncommon bravery and terrible sacrifice.

In the summer of 2006, David Fraser was the Canadian general in charge of NATO's Regional Command South, a territory spanning six Afghan provinces surrounding the Arghandab Valley. Birthplace of the Taliban decades earlier, this fertile region had since become Afghanistan's most deadly turf. It would soon turn deadlier still. Advised in the night by his intelligence officers that the Taliban had secretly amassed for a full-scale military assault, Fraser knew it would fall to him, his Canadians and their allies to avoid the wholesale slaughter of NATO troops.

He shares that experience in Rolling Through Afghanistan for the benefit of those who have wondered what it's like to be part of the United States armed forces fighting on the front lines in war...and to help those who may not be ready to face the memory of their own experiences.

The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion.

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.

Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.

While America held its breath in the days immediately following 9/11, a small but determined group of CIA agents covertly began to change history. This is the riveting first-person account of the treacherous top-secret mission inside Afghanistan to set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and launch the war on terror. As thrilling as any novel, First In is a uniquely intimate look at a mission that began the US retaliation against terrorism - and reclaimed the country of Afghanistan for its people.