How we won & lost the war in Afghanistan : two years in the Pashtun homeland

How we won & lost the war in Afghanistan Two years in the Pashtun homeland

Douglas Grindle

Book - 2017

"Douglas Grindle provides a firsthand account of how the war in Afghanistan was won in a rural district south of Kandahar City and how the newly created peace slipped away when vital resources failed to materialize and the United States headed for the exit. By placing the reader at the heart of the American counterinsurgency effort, Grindle reveals little-known incidents, including the failure of expensive aid programs to target local needs, the slow throttling of local government as official funds failed to reach the districts, and the United States' inexplicable failure to empower the Afghan local officials even after they succeeded in bringing the people onto their side. Grindle presents the side of the hard-working Afghans who... won the war and expresses what they really thought of the U.S. military and its decisions. Written by a former field officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, this story of dashed hopes and missed opportunities details how America's desire to leave the war behind ultimately overshadowed its desire to sustain victory."--Goodreads.com.

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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Grindle, Douglas.
Afghan War, 2001- > Personal narratives, American.
Afghan War, 2001- > Journalists.
Published
[Lincoln] : Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Douglas Grindle (author)
Physical Description
xx, 250 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781612349541
  • Part one. Into Afghanistan
  • The train-up
  • KAF world
  • Part two. Into Dand
  • Settling in
  • Ousting the Taliban
  • Nazak's grand bargain
  • Priming the economy
  • Waiting to work
  • Kick-starting the staff
  • Outpost life
  • Security holds
  • Women's work
  • Part three. Dand in the balance
  • Stealing from women
  • Still starved of money
  • Corruption of many kinds
  • Holding back the Taliban
  • The economy misses
  • Solutions made in Washington
  • Dand in the balance
  • Part four. On to Maiwand
  • Two districts
  • Security failing in Maiwand
  • Drugs, not jobs
  • Epilogue.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this gritty record of nation building in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, Grindle relates his two-year experience as a USAID worker at the Afghan government district level. This is no rousing adventure tale. Rather, Grindle relates the daily efforts of midlevel USAID officers, military officers, and Afghan government workers trying to make governance in Afghanistan function. Grindle details the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracy in a devastated country at the end of the U.S.-foreign-policy chain. He posits that there is too much that needs to be done and that there are too few resources and too many administrative obstacles to flexibility and effectiveness. For example, only 30 cents of every development dollar actually goes to development projects. All is not negative in Grindle's account: Hamdullah Nazak, the governor of Dand District, is shown to be effective, largely incorruptible, and brave; the midlevel USAID officers and military personnel that Grindle works with are likewise focused and competent. As the title suggests, this work describes both the positive and negative, but Grindle concludes that "from the perspective of the average Afghan, the occupation since 2001 has failed." This is a well-told story and a must-read for those who want to understand the obstacles to success in Afghanistan. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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