Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan To A More Dangerous World. Christina Lamb

Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015

      Copyright © Christina Lamb 2015

      Christina Lamb asserts the moral right to

      be identified as the author of this work

      Cover photograph: Justin Sutcliffe

      Maps by John Gilkes

      A catalogue record for this book is

      available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007256921

      Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008171278

      Version: 2016-03-18

Dedication

      In memory of all those who lost their lives to terrorism – or fighting it – from New York to London to Kandahar to Peshawar

Epigraph

      It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

       General Douglas MacArthur

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Maps

       The Leaving

       PART 1: GETTING IN

       1 Rule Number One

       2 Sixty Words

       3 Making – and Almost Killing – a President

       4 Ground Zero

       5 Losing bin Laden – the Not So Great Escape

       6 A Tale of Two Generals

       7 Taliban Central

       8 Merchants of Ruin – the Return of the Warlords

       9 Theatre of War

       10 A Tale of Two Wars

       11 Voting With Mullah Omar

       PART II: WAR

       12 Ambush

       13 Bringing Dolphins to Helmand

       14 Tethered Goats

       15 The President in His Bloody Palace

       16 Whose Side Are You On?

       17 The Snake Bites Back

       18 The Weathermen of Kandahar

       19 We’ll Always Have Kabul

       20 Death of a Poet

       21 Meeting Colonel Imam

       PART III: THE GOOD WAR

       22 The View From Washington

       23 All About the Politics

       24 The Butcher of Mumbai

       25 Losing the Moral High Ground in Margaritaville

       26 Chairman Mullen and the Cadillac of the Skies

       PART IV: GETTING OUT

       27 Killing bin Laden

       Postscript: War Never Leaves You

       Appendix: The Costs of War