The Hardest Place

May 1, 2020

A military affairs reporter at Politico, Morgan first went to Afghanistan in 2010 as a college-age freelancer, visiting the craggy and treacherous Pech valley, where terrorists hid and American soldiers fought most. With missions forever skewing wrong and soldiers uncertain about why they are there, Pech encapsulates the war.

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Starred review from August 10, 2020
Journalist Morgan debuts with an exhaustive and deeply reported history of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan’s Pech river valley and its tributary valleys, Korengal and Waygal. Since the start of the war against the Taliban in 2001, Morgan writes, resistance in this northeastern corner of the country has been relentless. American troops built bridges, roads, and networks of translators and informants, and navigated local rivalries over control of the logging and gemstone trades, but persistent “friendly fire” incidents and the mistreatment and even murder of detainees poisoned local relations. Morgan details the counterinsurgency theories driving U.S. strategy under top commanders such as Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus, and reveals how frequent rotations and redeployments undermined the institutional knowledge of frontline troops. He chronicles firefights and drone strikes against Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda operatives, tracks troop surges and withdrawals, profiles U.S. special forces soldiers who have deployed to the region multiple times, documents the emergence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, and describes the mixed reactions of Pech valley veterans who are now seeing American forces coordinate with the Taliban in their fight against ISIS. Morgan enriches his impressive research and insightful analysis with vivid writing and deft character sketches. The result is a definitive portrait of the epicenter of America’s longest war.

September 1, 2020
A searching history of the U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in a remote district of Afghanistan. The Pech Valley, writes journalist Morgan in his impressive debut, is a mountainous region that drew the attention of the U.S. military shortly after 9/11, with soldiers "on the trail of Osama bin Laden." Establishing a series of forward operating bases, American troops attempted to bring something like order to the region. However, with villages isolated by steep mountains and almost no passable roads, movement was difficult--it could take an entire day for a small unit to move a couple of miles, even without opposition. Insurgents who learned their tactics from the fight against the Soviet army in the 1980s now turned against the U.S. forces, using improvised explosive devices and well-coordinated ambushes. The locals who seemed to be cooperative to U.S. soldiers were clearly working with the insurgents--their family members and neighbors--when the Americans inevitably went away. While large assaults into the narrow side valleys and high mountain clearings could lead to significant enemy casualties, they too often led to unacceptable civilian deaths, further alienating the population. Furthermore, as Morgan vividly shows, the enemy proved skillful in overcoming the Americans' apparent technological superiority, downing helicopters and overrunning small bases on several occasions. Ultimately, the U.S. turned over its outposts to the Afghan military, providing a few advisers who rarely accompanied the locals into combat. By 2015, the U.S. was conducting operations with drones and the occasional crewed aircraft. The author, who spent a good deal of time in the region, interviewed many of the soldiers who served in the Pech as well as a number of Afghan locals. The result is a sobering look at how the same mistakes were repeated by subsequent deployments, with predictable results. Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the war in Afghanistan.

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