Afghan morass

The recent news out of Afghanistan has not been good: victories by the Taliban, a mistaken U.S. air strike against a Doctors Without Borders hospital, and reports of sexual abuse by Afghan military figures on U.S. military bases. For those with even limited experience in the country, such news is not surprising. Afghanistan is a country that has always defied attempts by outsiders to manage or control it, and outsiders seem nearly always to have acted unwisely.

Anand Gopal knows this history well, and his reporting will stand out when historians recount “what went wrong” in Afghanistan. Gopal’s contribution is to see recent events through the eyes of Afghans themselves. In No Good Men Among the Living, recently released in paperback, the journalist does not spare Afghans responsibility for what has happened in the past 14 years. But he shows how Americans made a bad situation even worse.

Afghanistan has probably never been a “normal country,” Gopal argues. But since 9/11 and the arrival of American forces, Afghans have had reason to believe that what they have worked for could “vanish in a moment.” Gopal suggests that much of what has happened in Afghanistan might have been prevented with more foresight and pragmatism.