Descent Into Chaos

“Ahmed Rashid is a well-known writer on Afghanistan. His book about the Taliban came to prominence after 9/11. What Rashid manages to do is to show that this is a transnational problem…..Rashid also knows the Afghan side well, Karzai in particular. So his descriptions of the political factions there are also good and he can put them in a longer-term context. It gives a really good understanding of all the different problems which make it so difficult to bring peace to Afghanistan.” Read more...

The best books on Afghanistan

Thomas Barfield, Anthropologist

“This is a thorough analysis of how Western policy towards the region has made things worse since 2001. It is pretty bleak. Rashid joked to me while he was writing it that the working title was, What A Fucking Mess.” Read more...

The best books on The Afghanistan-Pakistan border

Gretchen Peters, Journalist

“Because it is the authoritative account of the current situation in the region. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to understand what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Read more...

The best books on The Khyber Pass

Paddy Docherty, Entrepreneurs & Business People

In this book, published in 2009, Ahmed Rashid explores the failure of the US and its allies to suppress militant Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of the terror attacks of 2001.  He had great contacts in the government of Pakistan and among politicians and warlords of all factions in Afghanistan. He is also well plugged in to policymaking circles in the West.  If the precipitate withdrawal of the US in 2021 was a policy error of epic proportions, this book shows that it was only the latest in a long line of miscalculations and mistakes in the West’s dealing with Afghanistan since 2001.

Books on the Taliban