War & Peace & War

Trapped in an Afghan jail in early 2022, veteran journalist Andrew North had several questions. Why had he been taken? Would he be released unharmed? And how had the West spent twenty years in Afghanistan replacing the Taliban ... with the Taliban?Andrew North has reported from Afghanistan for the past two decades, including many years based in the country for the BBC.

From the aftermath of the US invasion in 2001 to the Taliban's return to power in 2021, he witnessed both the country's transformation and the mistakes of leadership - both Western and Afghan - that eventually led to its collapse. Along the way he came to know many Afghans, some of whom he would later help to escape the country during the emergency evacuation in August 2021. This book brings together their stories, through them illuminating the recent history of Afghanistan.

From a man who was wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo as a teenager and went on to join the Taliban, to the many once-hopeful young women now living, for the first time, under an Islamist regime, North vividly evokes a country where foreign powers and internal forces have been on a collision course for more than two centuries. Written with great humanity and insight, this first-hand account is an unforgettable portrait of a region under extreme pressure.