Afghanistan: The Resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda from the Battle of Tora Bora in the Winter of 2001 to Today

Four books about the U.S. war against the Taliban in Afghanistan detail how that war was initially prosecuted:

• Bernsten, Gary. Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. (New York: Crown, 2005). CIA officer recounts the fall of Taliban and the battle of Tora Bora.
• Naylor, Sean. Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda. (New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 2005). Army Times reporter gives a deeply reported account of Operation Anaconda.
• Schroen, Gary. First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan. (New York: Ballantine, 2005).
• Fury, Dalton. Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008).

Other Key Books

• Barker, Kim. The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (New York: Doubleday, 2011) FP review by Joshua Foust -- "Barker, a former Chicago Tribune correspondent now with ProPublica, recounts nearly a decade of soul-wrenching zaniness, perpetrated in equal parts by the Afghans, Pakistanis, and the white people moving amongst them both, with a good sense of humor."
• Cowper-Coles, Sherard. Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign.  (New York: Harper Collins, 2011). AfPak Channel review by Gerard Russell -- "the equivalent of a guided tour around the inner workings of the international community in Afghanistan. It is a warts-and-all tour, with institutional failings laid bare."
• Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. (New York: Penguin, 2006). A journalist-turned-aid worker based in Kandahar for four years after the fall of the Taliban provides an interesting and important account of mistakes made by all the players in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
• Dobbins, James. After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan (Dulles, VA: Potomac Press, 2008).
• Johnson, Chris and Leslie, Jolyon. Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace. (London: Zed Books, 2004). Two long time aid workers paint a bleak picture of Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban.
• Jones, Ann. Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).  Jones writes evocatively to illuminate a little-known world, that of poor, marginalized women in Kabul and issues a devastating critique of American aid to Afghanistan, which is consumed all too often by foreigners, evident in the fleets of Land Rovers and Toyota Land Cruisers that choke Kabul's smog-filled streets.
• Jones, Seth. In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. (New York: Norton, 2009).
• Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Maley, William. Rescuing Afghanistan. (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007). A concise book that examines the problems and possible solutions in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban government.
• Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. (New York: Penguin, 2008).
• Rhode, David and Kristen Mulhivill. A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides. (New York: Penguin Group, 2010).
• Semple, Michael. Reconciliation in Afghanistan. (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 2009).
• West, Bing. The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. (New York: Random House, 2011). AfPak Channel review by Gerard Russell -- "It has genuine Afghan voices, which is all too rare in Western books about Afghanistan. Speaking from the perspective of the infantryman, it reminds us of the powerful virtues of the military, and I recommend it without hesitation."
• Woodward, Bob. Obama's Wars. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010). Peter Bergen's review here.
• Zakheim, Dov S. 2011. A Vulcan's Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan. Brookings Institution Press.

Articles

• Anderson, John Lee. "The Taliban's Opium War." New Yorker, July 9, 2006.
• Barno, David. "Fighting 'the other war': Counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, 2003-2005." Military Review. September/October 2007.
• Bergen, Peter. "Winning the Good War," Washington Monthly, July 2009.
• Bergen, Peter. Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, February 15, 2007.
• Broschk, Florian. 2011. "Inciting the Believers to Fight: A closer look at the rhetoric of the Afghan jihad," Afghanistan Analysts Network.
• Byman, Daniel. "Talking with Insurgents," The Washington Quarterly, April 2009.
• Clark, Kate. 2011. "The Layha: Calling the Taleban to Account," Afghanistan Analysts Network.
• Dobbins, James. "Ending's Afghanistan's Civil War." Testimony presented before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 8, 2007.
• Dorronsoro, Gilles. "The Taliban's Winning Strategy in Afghanistan," Carnegie Endowment, June 2009.
• Fair, C. Christine. "Under the Shrinking U.S. Security Umbrella: India's End Game in Afghanistan?" The Washington Quarterly. Spring 2011.
• Giustozzi, Antonio. Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field. (New York: Columbia/Hurst, 2009).
• Glasser, Susan B. "The Battle of Tora Bora: Secrets, Money, Mistrust." Washington Post. February 10, 2002.
• Hastert, Paul. "Operation Anaconda: Perception Meets Reality in the Hills of Afghanistan." Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. 28: 1, January/February 2005, 11-20 is useful.
• International Crisis Group. "Afghanistan: Exit vs Engagement." November 2010.
• International Crisis Group. "The Insurgency in Afghanistan's Heartland." June 2011.
• Johnson, Thomas and Mason, M. Chris. "All counterinsurgency is local," The Atlantic, October 2008.
• Johnson, Thomas and Mason, M. Chris. "No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier," International Security 32:4, spring 2008.
• Johnson, Thomas and Mason, M. Chris. "On the edge of the big muddy: the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan," China and Eurasia Form Quarterly, 5:2, 2007.
• Mufti, Shahan. "Spoils of War: Excavating the underground trade in Buddhist antiquities." Harper's. April 2011.
• Neumann, Ronald. "Borderline insanity: thinking big about Afghanistan." The American Interest 3 (2), November/December 2007.
• O'Hanlon, Michael. 2010. "Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 5.
• O'Hanlon, Michael and Bruce Riedel. 2010. "Plan A-Minus for Afghanistan," The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1.
• Rashid, Ahmed. "Afghanistan: On the Brink." New York Review of Books. June 22, 2006.
• Rohde, David and David Sanger. "How the ‘Good War' in Afghanistan went bad." New York Times. August 12, 2007.
• Rubin, Elizabeth. "In the land of the Taliban." New York Times. October 22, 2006.
• Rubin, Elizabeth. "Karzai in his Labyrinth," New York Times Magazine, August 4, 2009.
• Rubin, Barnett. "Saving Afghanistan." Foreign Affairs. 86.1, January/February 2007.
• United States Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. "Suicide attacks in Afghanistan." September 1, 2007.
• Van Bijlert, Martine. 2010. "Who Controls the Vote? Afghanistan's Evolving Elections," Afghanistan Analysts Network.
• Van Ham, Peter and Jorrit Kamminga. "Poppies for peace: reforming Afghanistan's opium industry." Washington Quarterly, 30 (1): 69-81, winter 2006-2007.
• Yousafzai, Sami and Ron Moreau. "How the Taliban Lost its Swagger." Newsweek. February 27, 2011.

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