Military Afghanistan

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.

Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war.

The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon - but only after a stay of nearly two decades.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain was written by Soviet officers, who had served in Afghanistan and returned for the extensive Command and Staff course at the Frunze Combined Arms Academy in Moscow. While they were at the Academy, the History of the Military Art Department had the Afghanistan veterans write vignettes of their experience. They analyzed these, edited the best and added commentary as lessons learned for future war in mountain-desert terrain. The department published them as an in-house a book in 1991.

In Level Zero Heroes, Michael Golembesky follows the members of U.S. Marine Special Operations Team 8222 on their assignment to the remote and isolated Taliban stronghold known as Bala Murghab as they conduct special operations in an effort to break the Taliban's grip on the Valley. What started out as a routine mission changed when two 82nd Airborne Paratroopers tragically drowned in the Bala Murghab River while trying to retrieve vital supplies from an air drop that had gone terribly wrong.

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

The Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003, General Tommy Franks made history leading American and Coalition forces to victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, the decisive battles that launched the war on terrorism.

The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. In an eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre mercy of the Taliban.

In 2003, the Special Forces soldiers entered an area later called "the most dangerous place in Afghanistan". Here, where the line between civilians and armed zealots was indistinct, they illustrated the Afghan proverb "I destroy my enemy by making him my friend." Fry recounts how they were seen as welcome guests rather than invaders. Soon after their deployment ended, the Pech Valley reverted to turmoil. Their success was never replicated.

From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he'd long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.

Dispatched to fight the Taliban as part of the NATO forces, the soldiers of the Third Platoon arrive in a desert hell intent on testing their courage and endurance. Among them are the charismatic platoon leader Schrøder, a former games designer fascinated by the imaginative potential of war; Colonel Steffensen, whose negotiating tactics will have deadly consequences; Sidekick, the LifeLogger whose online “war memorial” will blur into horror; and the hardened but vulnerable Hannah, who must bury her womanhood - or sacrifice her soul.

An explosive, behind-the-scenes look into the workings of the U.S. war in Afghanistan that lifts the curtain of the world stage to reveal the devastating greed, waste, and failure surrounding this unwinnable war.

In 2007, the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade posted to northeastern Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Battle Company, the best within the Brigade, was assigned the toughest Area of Operations. It was called the Korengal Valley. During their fifteen-month tour, Battle Company saw more combat than any unit since Vietnam. Raw and unapologetic, To Quell the Korengal is a first-hand account of life on the front lines.

A decade ago, the soldiers of Bravo Company deployed to Afghanistan for a tour in Kandahar’s notorious Arghandab Valley. By the time they made it home, three soldiers had been killed in action, a dozen more had lost limbs, and an astonishing half of the company had Purple Hearts. In the decade since, two of the soldiers have died by suicide, more than a dozen have tried, and others admit they’ve considered it. Written with an insider’s eye and ear and drawing on extensive interviews and original reporting, Bravo Company follows the men from their initial enlistment on.

From Afghanistan's Hindu Kush peaks and sunbaked Helmand Valley to Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi in Iraq, American snipers have braved heart-pounding situations to hit their human targets dead-on. Few military feats stir the imagination like the image of a pair of riflemen waiting quietly in a building, a bomb crater, or a mountain pass for a Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter to walk into their crosshairs. Sniper presents real-life tales from the military's frontline snipers---their hits and their misses, the anguish of loss, and the anxiety of the first kill.

From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics and their influence is felt to this day.

In War Dogs, Rebecca Frankel offers a riveting mix of on-the-ground reporting, her own hands-on experiences in the military working dog world, and a look at the science of dogs' special abilities - from their amazing noses and powerful jaws to their enormous sensitivity to the emotions of their human companions. The history of dogs in the U.S. military is long and rich, from the spirit-lifting mascots of the Civil War to the dogs who lead patrols hunting for IEDs today.

Relive six decades of flying helicopters, including an extended tour in Vietnam and the mountains of Afghanistan, with a little Iraq, Kuwait, and National Guard thrown in. This is Minuteman: Two, Three…Go! recounts Wayne Chasson’s times, from the early, young, and dumb days to becoming a more seasoned pilot of Huey and other helicopters in three American wars and the National Guard here at home. Chasson relives it all for us in this gritty and honest memoir — with humility, humor, and gratitude — as he himself is still trying to figure out how he made it through alive.

As part of an elite special operations unit at the fighting edge of the Global War on Terrorism, Nicholas Moore spent over a decade with the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this compelling biography, a detailed narrative of grueling life on the ground combines with accounts of some of the most dramatic search and rescue operations of the period to tell the true story of life on the line in the War on Terror.

When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance, but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; and generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places.