Through the lives of three Afghans, Gopal creates a vivid history of the U.S. occupation and exposes the lies and misunderstandings the war is based on.
Journalist Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living, has reported from Afghanistan since 2001.
[No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal (2014: Metropolitan Books); Hardcover; 320 pp; $27.]
The war and occupation of Afghanistan by U.S.-led forces has gone on for almost 13 years. The current war was preceded by another 23 or so years of war; first between the Soviets and U.S.-funded mujahedin and then between the various mujahedin factions, with the final result of that episode of war being the triumph of the Taliban.
That brings us up to October 2001 when U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan for harboring Osama bin Laden. The Taliban were vanquished, with many being killed, many captured, and most of the rest going back to their previous lives while Washington put its chosen people in power in Kabul and made deals with those warlords and Afghan factions it had hired to defeat the Taliban.
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