Politics & Government
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The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley
"One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war."-Foreign Policy
"A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak."-Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming
Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area's rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America's two-decade-long Afghan war.
Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps-some kept secret from even the troops fighting there-that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century's most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.
"A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak."-Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming
Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area's rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America's two-decade-long Afghan war.
Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps-some kept secret from even the troops fighting there-that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century's most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.
Editorial Reviews
"Demands your attention, even when you would rather look away."-The Washington Post
"Unique in its completeness. Arguably, it is the closest any book about the American war in Afghanistan has come to capturing what transpired in a slice of territory occupied by U.S. forces . . . Especially relevant now."-The New York Times
"Wesley Morgan has written the definitive account of America's heroic but ultimately doomed effort in one of Afghanistan's most rugged regions. His research is stunningly thorough, and his writing style absolutely irresistible."-Sebastian Junger, author of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
"Vivid, balanced, and comprehensive, The Hardest Place illuminates the endless American war in Afghanistan as few other battle narratives have. Wesley Morgan has written a saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak."-Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy
"America's war in Afghanistan is dangerous, complicated, and now in its second decade. Few books have told the real story of this lengthy conflict, but Wesley Morgan has pulled off this feat. The Hardest Place is one of the best books telling the story of America's longest war."-Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad
"The Hardest Place captures the heroism, fear, and exultation of combat while laying out a damning portrait of military leaders who rushed into battle against an enemy they didn't understand and ultimately couldn't beat."-Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill
"Readers who want to understand the war in Afghanistan and the experiences of those who fight in their name should read Wesley Morgan's impeccably researched and well-told story."-Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H. R. McMaster, former national security adviser and author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
"A superb piece of writing."-Emma Sky, director of Yale World Fellows and author of The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq
"This is the story of how America, with the best of intentions, great bravery, and a lot of firepower, got itself into a long and thankless struggle in a very hard place. Wes Morgan spent ten years reporting this story, and his digging and search for the truth have produced a compelling and timeless tale of men at war."-Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O'Connor
"Deeply reported, vividly told, The Hardest Place is not only the definitive account of America's longest battle in its longest war but also a cautionary tale for an...
"Unique in its completeness. Arguably, it is the closest any book about the American war in Afghanistan has come to capturing what transpired in a slice of territory occupied by U.S. forces . . . Especially relevant now."-The New York Times
"Wesley Morgan has written the definitive account of America's heroic but ultimately doomed effort in one of Afghanistan's most rugged regions. His research is stunningly thorough, and his writing style absolutely irresistible."-Sebastian Junger, author of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
"Vivid, balanced, and comprehensive, The Hardest Place illuminates the endless American war in Afghanistan as few other battle narratives have. Wesley Morgan has written a saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak."-Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy
"America's war in Afghanistan is dangerous, complicated, and now in its second decade. Few books have told the real story of this lengthy conflict, but Wesley Morgan has pulled off this feat. The Hardest Place is one of the best books telling the story of America's longest war."-Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad
"The Hardest Place captures the heroism, fear, and exultation of combat while laying out a damning portrait of military leaders who rushed into battle against an enemy they didn't understand and ultimately couldn't beat."-Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill
"Readers who want to understand the war in Afghanistan and the experiences of those who fight in their name should read Wesley Morgan's impeccably researched and well-told story."-Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H. R. McMaster, former national security adviser and author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
"A superb piece of writing."-Emma Sky, director of Yale World Fellows and author of The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq
"This is the story of how America, with the best of intentions, great bravery, and a lot of firepower, got itself into a long and thankless struggle in a very hard place. Wes Morgan spent ten years reporting this story, and his digging and search for the truth have produced a compelling and timeless tale of men at war."-Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O'Connor
"Deeply reported, vividly told, The Hardest Place is not only the definitive account of America's longest battle in its longest war but also a cautionary tale for an...
Readers Top Reviews
H. MelvilleKindle
This book is an astonishing achievement and should be required reading for every officer in the, CIA, Army, Marine Corps and special warfare community. Wesley Morgan has never served (as I did) but I consider him a patriot of the highest order. For all the clueless wonders the Ivy League churns out here is a guy that wasn’t ruined by a Princeton education. Superb writing, research and insight.
Joshua GlaudeH. M
This book covers the pech valley, where I deployed in 08-09. It also covers it's tributaries. It goes into greater detail about the history of the valley in more detail than I ever knew about it. The interviews with past american and afghan .ilitary commanders and local population make the book even better. It's a good read if you want to know more about the war in this god foresaken area of afghanistan. Well written.
David G. Fivecoat
Wesley Morgan's The Hardest Place covers the American experience conducting counterinsurgency in the Pech Valley. The US military's twenty years in the Valley demonstrates all of promise, frustration, exhilaration, and raw combat Afghanistan had to offer. Incredibly well researched, I found myself checking the notes in every chapter trying to figure out where Wes got his information. Even if you didn't serve in the Pech, any Afghanistan veteran will find the book captivating.
OEF VetDavid G. F
I was not sure if I could read this book. As an OEF VET that served in kunar from 2006 to 2007, the memories are still fresh. The details and facts were spot on. There is a section in Arlington that is final resting place for my brothers from the 3rd Bct 10th mountain. This book honors them. RIP.
05/11A05/11AOEF V
Having served in Afghanistan 2003-4 in the provinces of Paktia & Khost, the book is an outstanding historical review with deep back stories of the mission, the men and the actions in Kunar and surrounding provinces..perhaps the most difficult terrain on this planet to operate as a Soldier. The book does more than just review what many other historical accounts present, but better...the deep depth of the back story as to who, what, when and how (yes, the mission statement, para 2). As a civilian writer, the author takes a great effort to define the issues and challenges with a proof source, then provides a moment to moment take of the Soldier's efforts to complete the mission...sometimes a very daunting challenge. The historical perspective in this book is frankly better than earlier reads as the author reviews the metrics of COP's in trouble..Ranch House, Wanat, Restrepo, Blessing and others. Having read the offical DOD AAR on Wanat, the following is noted: After an aerial strike that killed a number of children and the Wanat doctor (the only one)...how could higher not factor in the revenge factor in the "payback" for those civilian killings. The hubris on the moment may of overtaken command, but in retrospect, the damage done to the civilian support was nil after the killings. The book is an excellent read and especially for those who served in the units who braved the terrain in the mountains separating Afghanistan from Pakistan. And, to all those who did not return to their loved one...we will never forget those sacrifices....of so many
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
America Comes to Kunar
2002–2003
In Search of the Sheikh
American troops set up their first base in Kunar Province as the snow melted in the mountains in early 2002, the spring after the September 11 attacks and the ensuing autumn air war. They came trying to pick up a trail that had gone cold the previous December at the battle of Tora Bora, in another Afghan mountain range fifty miles to Kunar's south-the trail of Osama bin Laden.
I interviewed more than two hundred American veterans of Kunar before I found someone who knew firsthand how, why, and when U.S. troops entered the mountainous, nineteen-hundred-square-mile province and established the first of what would become a network of over a dozen remote outposts there. Tom Greer was a wiry former member of the Army's premier counterterrorist unit, Delta Force. In the spring of 2002, after leading the Delta team that came tantalizingly close to bin Laden at Tora Bora, he had been a major overseeing three small reconnaissance teams that paired some of the most highly trained commandos in the U.S. military with CIA officers and specialists in electronic eavesdropping. Wearing beards and local clothes and driving around in the Toyota Hilux pickup trucks that are ubiquitous in Afghanistan, the operators of these Advanced Force Operations teams were fanning out across the country's east, picking sites for little encampments. No one meant for these sites to become permanent, as most of them eventually did; they were just meant to be lily pads, places to set up radio relay points and get a good night's sleep in between reconnaissance forays into the mountains in Hiluxes or on all-terrain vehicles.
The team that Tom Greer sent bouncing up Kunar's rocky, gravel-surfaced main road in a couple of pickup trucks sometime in the spring of 2002 was "SEAL heavy," he told me more than a decade later-made up mostly of operators from Delta Force's Navy equivalent, SEAL Team 6. The SEALs and other personnel who accompanied them were entering a province of some 500,000 people "and an equal number of goats," as the author of a U.S. diplomatic cable a few years later would joke, where ribbons of green between the brown mountains housed fields of corn and wheat and groves of walnut trees, whose fruit the province is famous for. Kunar was a conservative, rural place, where women were seldom seen outside except when working in the fields by their villages. The qualities that made it different from other eastern conservative, rural provinces-its historically complex relationship with the central government, the role of the timber trade in its economy, the Saudi-inspired brand of Islam that had become popular there during the war against the Soviets-were not obvious to special operators just starting to get the feel of the country many of them would come back to over and over again.
A couple of Delta Force operators had already visited Kunar during the fall air campaign, working in conjunction with the CIA, but they hadn't stayed. This time the reconnaissance team stopped when it reached a dusty, rectangular compound a mile south of Asadabad, the provincial seat where the Pech River empties into the larger Kunar River, the province's spine. A site where there was already a fort of sorts was ideal, so that was where the SEALs made camp. Greer went up to visit the team once it was settled in. A Delta Force operator on a different recon team had recently named another new outpost Camelot. The SEALs had the honor of picking a nickname for the Asadabad camp, and they chose a less high-minded one: Puchi Ghar, because they were under the mistaken impression that puchi ghar meant "dog-shit mountain" in Pashto, and that was the vibe they got from the place. (In fact, the phrase meant something like "crass mountain" and sounded nonsensical to Afghan ears.)
The compound didn't look like much, it was true-some broken-down mud-brick walls and buildings centered on a courtyard about five hundred feet long and five hundred feet wide, separated from the wide Kunar River by a road and some stands of trees. Locals called the compound Topchi Base because topchi was the Pashto word for "artillery," and the Soviets had based howitzers there. More recently, Taliban fighters had used the site as a barracks, although their government had held little sway in Kunar outside Asadabad. No one imagined at the time that U.S. troops and CIA officers would occupy this base-eventually renamed Forward Operating Base Asadabad and then FOB Wright, after a Green Beret killed nearby in 2005, but often just called A-Bad-for twelve and a half years and continue to visit it even after that.
Of the seven thousand troops the United States had on the ground in Afghanistan that sprin...
America Comes to Kunar
2002–2003
In Search of the Sheikh
American troops set up their first base in Kunar Province as the snow melted in the mountains in early 2002, the spring after the September 11 attacks and the ensuing autumn air war. They came trying to pick up a trail that had gone cold the previous December at the battle of Tora Bora, in another Afghan mountain range fifty miles to Kunar's south-the trail of Osama bin Laden.
I interviewed more than two hundred American veterans of Kunar before I found someone who knew firsthand how, why, and when U.S. troops entered the mountainous, nineteen-hundred-square-mile province and established the first of what would become a network of over a dozen remote outposts there. Tom Greer was a wiry former member of the Army's premier counterterrorist unit, Delta Force. In the spring of 2002, after leading the Delta team that came tantalizingly close to bin Laden at Tora Bora, he had been a major overseeing three small reconnaissance teams that paired some of the most highly trained commandos in the U.S. military with CIA officers and specialists in electronic eavesdropping. Wearing beards and local clothes and driving around in the Toyota Hilux pickup trucks that are ubiquitous in Afghanistan, the operators of these Advanced Force Operations teams were fanning out across the country's east, picking sites for little encampments. No one meant for these sites to become permanent, as most of them eventually did; they were just meant to be lily pads, places to set up radio relay points and get a good night's sleep in between reconnaissance forays into the mountains in Hiluxes or on all-terrain vehicles.
The team that Tom Greer sent bouncing up Kunar's rocky, gravel-surfaced main road in a couple of pickup trucks sometime in the spring of 2002 was "SEAL heavy," he told me more than a decade later-made up mostly of operators from Delta Force's Navy equivalent, SEAL Team 6. The SEALs and other personnel who accompanied them were entering a province of some 500,000 people "and an equal number of goats," as the author of a U.S. diplomatic cable a few years later would joke, where ribbons of green between the brown mountains housed fields of corn and wheat and groves of walnut trees, whose fruit the province is famous for. Kunar was a conservative, rural place, where women were seldom seen outside except when working in the fields by their villages. The qualities that made it different from other eastern conservative, rural provinces-its historically complex relationship with the central government, the role of the timber trade in its economy, the Saudi-inspired brand of Islam that had become popular there during the war against the Soviets-were not obvious to special operators just starting to get the feel of the country many of them would come back to over and over again.
A couple of Delta Force operators had already visited Kunar during the fall air campaign, working in conjunction with the CIA, but they hadn't stayed. This time the reconnaissance team stopped when it reached a dusty, rectangular compound a mile south of Asadabad, the provincial seat where the Pech River empties into the larger Kunar River, the province's spine. A site where there was already a fort of sorts was ideal, so that was where the SEALs made camp. Greer went up to visit the team once it was settled in. A Delta Force operator on a different recon team had recently named another new outpost Camelot. The SEALs had the honor of picking a nickname for the Asadabad camp, and they chose a less high-minded one: Puchi Ghar, because they were under the mistaken impression that puchi ghar meant "dog-shit mountain" in Pashto, and that was the vibe they got from the place. (In fact, the phrase meant something like "crass mountain" and sounded nonsensical to Afghan ears.)
The compound didn't look like much, it was true-some broken-down mud-brick walls and buildings centered on a courtyard about five hundred feet long and five hundred feet wide, separated from the wide Kunar River by a road and some stands of trees. Locals called the compound Topchi Base because topchi was the Pashto word for "artillery," and the Soviets had based howitzers there. More recently, Taliban fighters had used the site as a barracks, although their government had held little sway in Kunar outside Asadabad. No one imagined at the time that U.S. troops and CIA officers would occupy this base-eventually renamed Forward Operating Base Asadabad and then FOB Wright, after a Green Beret killed nearby in 2005, but often just called A-Bad-for twelve and a half years and continue to visit it even after that.
Of the seven thousand troops the United States had on the ground in Afghanistan that sprin...
