THE WRONG ENEMY: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2004 by Carlotta Gall

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2014

Mariner Books, April 2015

“A valuable contribution to a hefty body of work on the American war in Afghanistan that has become stale and somewhat hackneyed. It provides a raw, unvarnished and important look at one of the darkest and least understood parts of the Afghan war . . . Ms. Gall, a reporter for the New York Times in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than a decade, beginning shortly after September 11, is in an extraordinary position to write this important and long overdue book.” — New York Times

Combining harrowing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with searing portraits of the ordinary Afghans who endured a terrible war of more than a decade, veteran New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall reveals the full history of how the United States has been fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong country. Gall has reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American intervention, beginning shortly after 9/11. She knows just how much this war has cost the Afghan people, and American and NATO soldiers, and how much damage can be traced to Pakistan and its duplicitous military and intelligence forces. The Wrong Enemy is a sweeping account of a war brought by American leaders against an enemy they barely understood, and could not truly engage.

 

 

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