Told through the lives of three Afghans, the stunning tale of how the United States had triumph in sight in Afghanistan-and then brought the Taliban back from the dead In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in Americas war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent a US-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Though their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the US invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government.
