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(More customer reviews)For the last 4 or so years I've been looking for a book about the Soviet Afghan war and I was absolutely shocked to find here in America that there is virtually nothing. I've checked major retailers, surfed Amazon, even asked Russian history professors what they could recommend. Each time I'd get partial answers, essays or books relating to how journalists covered the Mujahideen, or military tactics involved, or a quick 20 pg reference covering the whole conflict. There was never a book covering a holistic account of the entire conflict. Even wikipedia failed as a descent start for references.
When I finally came across this book a few days ago, I had low expectations. Instead the book turned out to be everything I'd been looking for and more. The conflict is shown from multiple perspectives, first from Russian intelligence, to PDPA, to foot soldiers involved in the battles, then onto the several factions that united the country against the Soviets. It dives into the tactics and intense guerilla conflicts and shows the emotional damage that caused both sides to lose their humanity. Ultimately, these tactics plunged the soldiers involved on both sides into some of the most atrocious acts committed by mankind. In the film "Charlie Wilson's War", there is a scene where Russian fighter pilots are casually talking about relationships while gunning down civilians. This book will show a much more complicated picture which created the same stress our soldiers faced in Vietnam. In addition, we see the seeds sown for the current state of affairs. If you are a reader that is familiar with Afghanistan, you'll find that Mr. Felfer introduces a lot of these players and gives us their background, including the fate of one charismatic leader Ahmed Moassad.
Several history books can suffer from two flaws. One, the author becomes so intimately connected to his work that the information becomes second hand and he forgets how laymen approach the subject when writing. Or two, so much detail is involved that the reader can miss the overall map of what's important and happening. This book suffers from neither. It's totally accessible and Mr. Felfer knows what readers need to understand about this topic.
The only thing that bothered me is that it is marketed as saying how similar our situation is with the Russians. I think the comparison is hugely over exaggerated and there are several massive flaws with it. I won't go into them because this is a review but I should mention that the author never includes a chapter comparing our conflict with the Soviets. This is purely about the Soviets and to buy this for any other reason is faulty.
I'll just conclude this review with two other books that really helped me understand the region and helped me support Pres. Obama's decision to send more troops. They are Steve Coll's The Ghost Wars, (it'll give a brief intro to the Soviet Afghan war but really focuses on America's involvement in the region up to Sept 10, 2001) and Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos. Mr. Rashid's book is the definitive book I've read on the conflict since Sep 11, 2001.
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