To Lose a War

Jon Lee Anderson first reported from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, covering the US-backed mujahideen’s insurrection against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. Within days of the 9/11 attacks, he was again on the ground as an early eyewitness to the new war launched by the US against the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. At the time, the American military had prevailed on the battlefield, and the newfound peace seemed to offer a precious space for Afghan society to restore itself and to forge a democratic future. But all was not well: Osama bin Laden was still in hiding, the Taliban were stealthily reorganizing for a comeback, and the United States was about to turn its attention to Iraq. To Lose a War collects Anderson’s writing from Afghanistan over a near-quarter-century span, offering a chronological account of a monumental tragedy as it unfolds. The colossal waste, missed signals, and wishful thinking that characterized the twenty-year arc of the US-led war in Afghanistan have consecrated it as one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the modern era, and a bellwether of a larger American imperial decline.

Author Biography

Jon Lee Anderson is an author and a staff writer for the New Yorker. As a longtime observer of political violence and revolutionary movements, he has reported from many war zones over the years, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Angola, Somalia, Mali and Liberia. He has reported frequently from Latin America and profiled political leaders such as Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Anderson also wrote a celebrated biography of the late Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and, in the course of his research, discovered the long-concealed whereabouts of Guevara’s secretly buried body in Bolivia.