The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley

by Wesley Morgan

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.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Politics, Middle East

688 pages, Paperback

First published March 9, 2021

About the author

Wesley Morgan is a journalist who has covered the U.S. military and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2007, when he began embedding with combat units as a 19-year-old freelancer. From 2017 to 2020 he covered the Pentagon for Politico, and his reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and other outlets. He is a native of the Boston area and a graduate of Princeton University.

Reviews

[Book Clubbed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book, for better or worse, is a portrait of the Pech Valley and the decades we spent there, skirmishing our way to stalemate after stalemate. It is not a traditional narrative. Mark Wahlberg is not coming to blow up the enemy and then drag his fellow, wounded American soldier away. Morgan is an excellent journalist and is unquestionably committed.

Personally, I like my nonfiction with a central thrust, a few main characters to connect with, and a little creative liberty. However, is thoroughness is your fetish, you will love this book.

In fact, there are so many characters I started to glaze over their names and ranks. The chapters all follow the same pattern: a new commander is introduced, they have a slightly tweaked strategy in how they want to drive out the bad guys, and their plan is thwarted with minor successes sprinkled in. This frustration is palpable in the book as well--the lack of progress permeates the dialogue, interactions, and increasing violence enacted on the local population. While this is no doubt realistic, the reading of it had diminishing returns.

Morgan, I must say, is an expert at describing landscapes. My guy plants (get it?) us firmly in Korengal, a mountainous jungle with caves whittled into mountainsides and big cats looming in the branches. The trauma that the soldiers experience (and enact on the civilian population) is familiar but emotionally striking when presented with such fine details.

If you enjoy a deep dive about American ineptitude, the stress of war, and the human beings on the ground trying to do their best despite all this, you should check this out. Honestly, our politicians should read it so they understand the consequences the next time they start a war to distract from their own incompetency.

Listen to the full review here.

[Yigal Zur · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was the only Israeli journalist embedded with USA desert storm Iraq and combined with being an officer of Idf and soldier in Yom Kippur war and a writer all together i try to read much mainly on soldiers in other armys experiences. so i will top this book as one of the best due to its research, due to giving the voices to fighters on both sides, to the detailed descriptions.
what i was amazed is how the same mistakes are done over and over again with involvement in wars which get muddier.

[Eric Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having spent my Afghanistan tour in 2008-2009 I was anxious to read this book to see a different perspective on the war I fought there. It didn't disappoint either as it gave a glimpse of the war I fought at a different angle and how it affected not only me, but the overall aspect of the war during that time period. Wesley didn't go over it as much as I liked (there was a lot more to go than what was described, but it was enough) but that's just a hankering to relive the times I had there. Anyways the book is well written and goes over the whole conflict in the Pech area and shouldn't be glossed over. Due to space and time he glossed over the deployments there (to include mine of course) but kept it factual and was a good read on the subject of the war in the country, especially in the Pech area.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

First it's important to say that this is an astounding work of journalism. To cover this 2-decade conflict and to build relationships with hundreds of sources is an enormous task, and we are lucky to have a source that allows you to see one aspect of the Afghan War in such detail over time.

Second, I think it's actually an advantage that this book doesn't advance a detailed argument. There are themes, of course, but Morgan mostly leaves it up to the reader to decide the larger significance to the story to questions like whether we should stay in Afghanistan. This, along with the outstanding reporting, gives him a lot of credibility in a policy/political debate that can be heated.

This book focuses on the Pech Valley, home of the famous Korengal Valley from the documentary Restrepo, and the course of the war there from 01 to about 2019. This is really a book about mid-level commanders: colonels and captains who directed the war against the Taliban there. It provides a great sense of the place itself, its tribal cultures, and the shifting nature of the war itself. The original purpose of the US involvement there was to hunt down OBl and other AQ personnel hiding out there before they fled to Pakistan. It then gradually shifted to road-building and other development and infrastructure projects in the region coupled with counterinsurgency. Post Obama's surge, it shifted back to more of a counterterrorism mission that relied heavily on drone strikes. Then there was a gradual drawing down of the presence there in the mid-late 2010s.

WHat's interesting though is that the book feels repetitive, not because of anything MOrgan did wrong, but because so much of the conflict feels the same. A unit comes in for 12-15 months, the army struggles to pass on knowledge about the area, that unit struggles to balance relationship building in a totally alien culture while simultaneously fighting a largely homegrown (as in Pech-derived) insurgency. That was one aspect of the book that has real strategic relevance: who exactly were we fighting there? Our CT strategy focused on Taliban and AQ leaders, but most of the people we fought day to day weren't really Taliban: they were "accidental guerrillas" turned against us by civilian casualties, Taliban $, tribal politics, and disruption of normal economic activity (a big factor in the timber-driven Pech economy). By the 2010s, it wasn't clear that the guys we were killing there were really threats to the homeland or even to the centralized Afghan government; at best, they seemed to threaten to someday act as sanctuaries for the real baddies who want to hit the US and Europe. it's worth asking whether terrorism has changed enough (become more decentralized and homegrown) to make hunting down AQ guys in AF a strategic priority.

Overall, this book pushed me more toward military disengagement in Afghanistan not because of US imperialism or whatever but just because it seems several layers removed from our national security and essential grand strategy. I'm fine with leaving a small presence to train the Afghans and conduct CT against high level targets, but the time and need for major military investments is over.

I do have one critique of the book. I thought that Morgan could have done more to link the pech story to changes in Afghan strategy at the high level. There wasn't much on how the presidential administration changes, or changes in top military leadership, affected things on the ground. Maybe they didn't, but if they didn't that would be worth exploring more systematically. I know the purpose of the book is to focus on the Pech, but at times I found myself wanting the larger context.

This is one of the best Afghanistan books I have read, up there with Graveyard of Empires (more of a survey book) and Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos (probably the best source out there on the first five years or so of the book. This is a lengthy book, but well worth it for anyone wrestling with Afghanistan and the War on Terror.

[Seth Benzell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read on the War in Afghanistan.

The book gives a detailed, yet extremely clear and well organized, account of the US mission in Afghanistan through the lens of the battalion and company level actions in the Pech Valley. Rather than follow a timeline of the entire nation, this level of focus help you understand both what operations were like on a day-to-day level and also understand what US vs. Taliban vs. Daesh 'control' of an area looks like. The book also takes a refreshingly pragmatic stance on drone strike centered counter terrorism. The book explains very clearly how the US adopted it as what it saw as a 'best of bad options' solution to areas that the US could not fully control.

I like this book because while it spends the appropriate amount of time looking into civilian deaths and collateral damage from the conflict, this book is not ~about~ the hero-reporter's daring or hand-wringing. For example, we learn about how a shockingly obtuse international focus on preventing enviornmental damage played a huge role in souring natives on the anti-insurgency forces. While this specific example is only relevant to this region, it is by taking this level of resolution that one gets the closest thing to a fully clear strategic picture of the US failure in Afghanistan.

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We were proud of being Blue Spaders, but we were a different kind of organization from the 173rd, frankly. We weren’t as good.” They couldn’t have been.

The Hardest Place presents the war in the Pech Valley (and its subsidiary valleys) as a microcosm for America's schizophrenic military strategy in Afghanistan - counterterrorism vs counterinsurgency. There is also plenty of coverage of what exactly counterinsurgency means - did the greater American presence in the region drive conflict rather than granting protection?

Obviously focussing on the military campaigns in part of a single province excludes a lot from the narrative - having read Directorate S shortly before was useful for keying me into that. However, Morgan’s writing is compelling and detailed enough to justify this approach and, in doing so, The Hardest Place makes an argument for why the United States is the greatest country on earth.

The Willingness to Question Oneself

The most emphatic skeptic was the division commander, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, who had plenty of experience with surveillance footage, having spent several years as a senior official in the intelligence community. “That is incorrect. That just means that people don’t have a clue about how to fight, I mean, or haven’t fought, that’s all,” he stewed when Natonski suggested to him that a Predator might have thwarted the enemy attack.

The Hardest Place covers a decade and change worth of various American Battalions/Companies rotating through the Pech Valley area, with final handover to an Afghanistani unit (well, they needed two goes at that and I guess it didn't end well). Special Forces and supporting arms were also heavily engaged throughout, such as with Operation Red Wings and targeted assassinations.

Different units had different capabilities and their commanders had their own approaches. The rotation periods, varying between roughly six to sixteen months (and the passage of time changing technology) led to inconsistencies in dealing with the region, such as with offensive operations, infrastructure works, location of outposts, and even the kind of vehicles US forces travelled in. The general vibe from the book is that this was a bad thing. Civilian casualties, no matter who was there, also seem to have been to high, and Morgan notes the incremental building of distrust between "protectors" and "protected."

But here's the point - Morgan can detail all that because he talks to the commanders and their soldiers, who give pretty full and frank assessments, (politely) disagreeing with the views of others willing to engage in their own reflection and self-criticism. Morgan deserves significant credit for all those interviews and keeping the story interesting, but it also reflects American culture.

Some of that cultural element will be the concept of free speech (look up the court cases around Bravo Two Zero for comparison) but I also have the impression that, going back to at least World War Two, the American military is far more willing to learn its lessons and publicly debate how it fights a war. It’s easy to recite cliches such as “The US hasn’t won a war since World War II” or “They got beaten by a bunch of rice paddy farmers in pyjamas” but if you read The Hardest Place, you might come to realise that, for all of its mistakes, the US military is a very dangerous opponent. I personally believe that applies to how Americans conduct themselves generally, and that it is (mostly) a good thing.

This is not a defence of the less appealing aspects of US military conduct, such as dropping a HIMARS battery on a target with the full knowledge it would also kill his wife and children (...and not actually the target), but I do genuinely think the relative openness of the United States is praiseworthy versus the dissimulations of the Russians or “The most moral army in the world."

Morgan did have to take advantage of the willingness to talk, so The Hardest Place is a worthy reward for when you are willing to dig deep and collate the primary and secondary sources in a readable way. The Afghan view is relatively light but I am okay with this having regard to the stated perspective of the book. Without being too harsh, its also harder to safely find guerrillas willing (or alive) to discuss strategy!

Unfinished Business

For as long as the soldiers, intelligence officers, and contractors charged with America’s counterterrorism missions went looking for people to kill there, that is, they would keep on finding them.

The Hardest Place is also an example of the difference between an Epilogue and a Conclusion. The epilogue of The Hardest Place ties up some loose ends and gives a quick reflection on events.

And I think Morgan got it wrong with that.

The Hardest Place is an amazing collection of stories and worthy of being a five star book... ...but we are not short of books extolling the human aspects of the American soldier, nor those pointing out the counterterrorism vs counterinsurgency split. While I do credit him above for assessing performance of each unit and engaging in comparative analysis, there needed to be a conclusion tying it all together and summarising the approaches for a point of distinction. Ironically this is much like Morgan's criticism that the United States military made no overall assessment as to whether Operation Red Wings was worth it.

I suspect this didn't happen because it is risky for a journalist to play Monday morning quarterback on high and low strategy. It is generally more appropriate for them to let the soldiers speak for themselves, as they do in each chapter of The Hardest Place. However, Morgan should have laid out the perceived impact of each strategy side by side (or paragraph by paragraph) in one location - it re-centres the key arguments without having to trawl through the book.

A conclusion would also be useful opportunity for looking at other near simultaneous events. Did US forces apply those lessons against ISIS, ensuring Iraq's continued survival? There seems to have been a greater reliance on local troops, but I don't have the details of that campaign. Something here might have helped, especially as many of the commanding officers rotated regularly through different conflicts as they moved up the ranks.

A conclusion is not easy to do - I have read great and poor ones. But The Hardest Place did need just a little more to stand out and make it a five star book, even if the writing in the main is to the highest standard. It is a little bit of a shame – the information is definitely dolloped (not merely sprinkled) through the chapters, I just get nervous about carrying experiences from one unit to another and would have liked an overarching explanation of all – just a bit more hand holding.

The battle of the Ranch House, in the eyes of commanders from Myer and Ostlund up to division, was an alarming example of a piece of Army folk wisdom: when soldiers on the ground are put into positions where they commit acts of desperate heroism, something has gone wrong.

You will really enjoy The Hardest Place and how America chose to expend its limited resources occupying a country of little strategic value. It is just a question of whether you are comfortable working it all out yourself.

[Tomasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all-round excellent account of American attempts to subdue the Pech Valley, sober and sobering.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

While only focused on a small part of Afghanistan, this is still the best history of the war I've read. One of the only accounts that focuses on a specific region, as U.S. military units came and went, each leaving a different impact, for better or worse. The writing is superb, and the stories of the operations and missions are enthralling. Highly recommend to any interested in the War in Afghanistan or American military history of any period.

[KB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't decide if I next wanted to read a book I have on the history of China, or Wesley Morgan's The Hardest Place. But having just finished a book on the Vietnam War, I figured that would be a very interesting segue into Afghanistan. Morgan details the US presence in Afghanistan, in particular the Pech valley, from the beginnings of the war into about 2020.

My initial thoughts on The Hardest Place weren't exactly great, if I'm being honest. I found it choppy and hard to get into. I was thinking maybe I had made a mistake purchasing this. But once I settled in, I found myself loving it. I don't want to say the choppiness is deliberate, as if Morgan was leaving things out, but rather it almost mirrors how things went in the Pech valley. Units would be rotated out, to be replaced by fresh units with new commanders at various outposts - there wasn't really much of a continuation from one unit to the next, it was almost a start-from-scratch type thing every time.

The book is structured chronologically, so we can see the progress made by each unit, and get an overview of what they did while stationed at the various bases in the Pech. But already in the earliest stages of the war, it felt like US troops were "hacking heads off hydras." Killing Taliban leaders, whether through ground operations or later drone strikes, would buy some time as the Taliban sorted themselves out, but never got rid of the problem. And this embroiled the US in Afghanistan for two decades.

If we're going back to thinking about Vietnam, there are many similarities to be made with Afghanistan. Morgan even includes a few quotes about Vietnam to make the comparison himself. Winning 'hearts and minds' was very important to some US officers - wanting to get the local population on their side. But many saw these locals as 'fence sitters,' sort of going whichever way the wind was blowing. How did you know who you could trust? Once again the US found itself in a country, and with a culture, that it clearly did not understand. The American approach was often at odds with the way the Pech valley locals did things, rubbing them the wrong way. And there were intricate family and neighbour feuds and histories which played into things that the Americans weren't aware of.

It took a long time for the Americans to realize that their presence in the valley was largely the thing drawing the Taliban to it, something locals has realized very quickly: "When Ryan and Nazir discussed the day's events at a shura in Nangalam afterward, Ryan remembered some of the assembled elders looking at him as if he were a child finally grasping something he should have learned a long time ago: You didn't figure this out already, that you guys are the problem here?" And this also goes back to the hydra analogy: where does it end? One officer called the Pech the "ultimate cul-de-sac" - putting in time and resources but ultimately getting nowhere.

And like Vietnam, as the years passed the US gradually wanted to shift the war to the Afghan National Army. Relations between American and ANA soldiers were often frayed, to say the least. There's also a shift in procedure. Ground patrols and attacks were often coming at the cost of too many American lives, so things shifted to drone warfare which came with its own set of problems. Of course, civilian casualties were always an issue regardless of the method; this was yet another thing that turned locals against the Americans.

Morgan rounds out the book with the rise of Daesh, the Islamic State. Daesh and the Taliban were enemies - there was no united front as with the Taliban and al-Qaida. And although we obviously can't go as far as to say there was an alliance between the US and the Taliban in trying to fight against Daesh, there was a certain understanding, maybe. Very interesting, indeed.

In the end, I really came to love The Hardest Place. It took some time to get a feel for how the book was structured, but once I got past that I was completely engaged. America's war in Afghanistan lasted for two decades. Think of not only the time, effort and money spent, but the lives lost - both American and Afghan. And after twenty years, where did we end up?

[Joseph Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'm a war journalism boy now. This is a good one. 5 Stars

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The finest military history I've read in decades.

It's powerful and frustrating and heartbreaking and doesn't shy from the hard questions. It's a testimony to bravery and courage of soldiers that doesn't paper over their violence, mistakes, or flaws. It has something for every observer of war, whether you're a civilian at home just trying to understand what combat in Afghanistan was like or a policymaker trying to understand how political goals and objectives do (or do not) get translated to action at the ground level or a military planner trying to glean lessons at the tactical, operational, or strategic levels.

It's well-written enough to be understandable for the average reader, but deep enough to where even a twenty year Army veteran like myself doesn't find terminology used incorrectly or organizations and command relationships confused.

If there's anything I predict people would find fault with it's that it doesn't offer much of a sense of closure--what did it all mean? What comes next? Did we do harm or good, right or wrong in the Pech Valley (and, by extension, Afghanistan writ large)?

And to that I'd say, that at least from this veteran's perspective, that's exactly what the War felt like, and we won't know the answer to those questions until decades from now--if ever. That lack of closure is just real life.

Read this book.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book, and a remarkable complete (and therefore rare) look into a particular aspect of the war in Afghanistan. Tracking the activities of the United States in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2020 this book was exhaustively reported, and illuminates many of the things that the soldiers themselves found bewildering at the time. By the time of the sixth rotation into the valley by a US unit, the origins of the presence had been lost to time. It should also be noted that, as an avid reader of combat memoirs, I had read books by multiple soldiers and about multiple events that were formed into a coherent whole by this book. It was a really fascinating read for that reason. Unusual for a work of this kind it was also apolitical, but not in a way that comes across as intentional. He's not making a critique so much as an exposition of what America did there, what worked well, what didn't and how the military and political systems came to terms with the limits of power to alter human nature. It's a truly excellent work.

[Anthony Lesurf · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hardest Place provides a detailed and fascinating account of the US military’s decade-long misadventures in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley region of Kunar and Nuristan. The American effort comprised initially only small unit advisors (ODA) and other special forces hunting al Qaeda and Bin Laden, but soon escalated into a full-blown insurgency as troops became embroiled in local politics and feuds of a culture they didn’t really understand (the lucrative timber industry in the main) and continued to misunderstand again and again as each new (light infantry) unit deployed in and out on roulement, even to the point of eventually going full circle, pulling out combat troops and reverting to the use of just small unit advisors, local forces and drones.
The thing I found really interesting was that many of the issues highlighted are those exact same issues that the British Military struggled with in Iraq and Afghanistan as discussed in Simon Akam’s The Changing of the Guard.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Hardest Place, author and reporter Wesley Morgan delivers what must be the most complete and authoritative account of the United States' military involvement in Afghanistan's Pech Valley and the surrounding Kunar and Nuristani provinces. For anyone who has served in the military or taken an interest in modern military events, I cannot recommend this book more highly.

Delivered as a chronological story instead of a history, Morgan uses his background as a frontline reporter with many trips to the Pech to seamlessly tell the tale of over a dozen real life "characters," soldiers and their commanders living day-to-day in that inhospitable region, while weaving them into the overall narrative of how the Pech and its tributaries went from the a quiet, edge of the world valley to the center of the fighting against the Taliban, then back again, over and over for decades. By structuring the book in line with the major deployments of the soldiers and marines that fought there, the reader is able to viscerally see and feel the hard fought lessons that were learned, forgotten, and relearned over the 20 years the book's tale spans. Because of the emphasis on real human characters, you also have an opportunity to see how once junior leaders who fought (and survived) in the Pech continued to influence the US and Afghan strategy over the course of the war, including many of them intentionally finding their way right back into the valleys that they had barely survived in prior deployments. This lends such a human side to the book that it was almost impossible for me to put down over it's 22 1/2 hours of narration (far longer than I am usually able to tolerate from one book).

Another intentional narrative decision of Morgan's I would like to highlight is that, in true journalistic fashion, he ensures to tell stories of all who were affected by the war in the Pech, including many accounts from the villagers and elders caught in the crossfire of a war they had little to do with. The ability for Morgan to cover the tragedy of bad airstrikes, commando raids gone wrong, and Taliban reprisals with the humanity and respect they deserve without making the book an entire moral referendum on the US military is astonishing, especially in a journalistic world that seems to have generally forgotten the war in its entirety from 2003-2010 and then only covered it in harsh terms centered on the moral ambiguity of the Drone War (a topic covered extensively and expertly in The Hardest Place's later chapters).

Morgan also manages to properly highlight the Afghan National Army fighters and commanders who played an increasingly central role (and endured a significantly high amount of hardship) in the Pech over the course of the war. This is the first account I've seen of the US war in Afghanistan that gives the ANA its proper due while balancing the obvious structural and cultural challenges that many US service members experienced during their time in Afghanistan and would be catastrophic during the 2021 Taliban takeover of the country.

Overall, as a Soldier who spent 9 years in the culture of the US Army this book covers, but who never stepped foot in Afghanistan personally, The Hardest Place was incredibly eye-opening for me and managed to explain the backdrop of the world I personally lived within the Army while also informing and, truly, entertaining me. The author's editorial choices to cover the war as a narrative story and his masterful connections between the ground level soldiers fighting day-to-day and the overall strategy (or lack thereof) within that region of Afghanistan manages to paint a picture of the war I've never seen elsewhete.

Overall, The Hardest Place is a fantastic piece of writing for any military history buff or service member who served during the GWOT. Through an expertly crafted and well researched narrative, readers will finish this book with both a significantly better understanding of the War in Kunar, and the overall War in Afghanistan, as well as a deep respect for the valor, hardship, and honest to God desire to change things for the better experienced by the US and Afghani service members that fought there. I highly recommend The Hardest Place and believe it deserves a place alongside some of the greatest war accounts, such as The Longest Day and We Were Soldiers Once and Young, in telling the tale of war as only those who have experienced it on the ground can.

(Note: This is a review of the audio book version of The Hardest Place)

[Marshall Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers the U.S involvement in Afghanistan’s Pech valley from 2001 to 2020. After reading this book it is clear to me that our involvement in that country was doomed from the beginning. Battalion after battalion deployed into the valley, fighting over the same villages and mountains over and over again. There were never enough troops, never enough fire support, and little mission continuity. After 20 years, the Taliban is again in charge and Al-Qaida is still there as is a new threat, ISIS-K.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed look at how efforts in one region of Afghanistan (the Pech Valley) perfectly summarize what America was aiming to do, what role it played working with the afghan government, and why it all fell apart in the end. While a little too-heavy on detail, the book doesn’t shy away from the good, bad and ugly that happened during the never ending war.

[Adam McDade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long slow slog at times. This was a hard read, made much harder as I finished it while watching the Taliban roll into Kabul tonight. The fighting in the Korengal valley has seemed futile throughout the war in Afghanistan. Tonight it seems that much of it WAS futile.

[Medusa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book one finds an excellent study of US military involvement in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, important for its own sake and for the way in which it exemplifies larger themes of the war in Afghanistan - tactical successes with strategic incompetence. Highly recommended for the serious GWOT student and especially those exploring connections between the failures in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to peg where America ends up in this ongoing strife in a land far away. If the Biden administration does actually withdraw all military personnel from this theater of war will that, in the end, look like a mission has ended or a military comeuppance. As the ebb and flow of personnel who lived and died in the Pech area unfolds over the years one is struck by the wide variety of views that might be drawn from the observations of the participants - and Morgan seemingly had the stories from those on the Afghan "side" of the struggle. My sense is that "the great game" continues.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was extremely impressed by this book and it has stayed with me since I read it. It sets the standard for military journalism in Afghanistan and I hope that there are many more books like it coming down the pipeline. Fascinating account of how the US military lost its way in Afghanistan. My full review is here: https://www.wrath-bearingtree.com/202...

[Yong · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional military history of the US involvement in Afghanistan.

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best, most comprehensive and well written work on the American agenda in Afghanistan. If you only read one book on the conflict in Afghanistan, let it be this one. You will not be disappointed.

[James Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morgan's work on this book is incredibly thorough, and provides a very strong timeline of events in the Pech Valley, Kunar Province, throughout the US invasion/involvement in Afghanistan. People who have seen documentary films like Restrepo and Korengal will be familiar with some of the content and people here, also. Likewise, many people have probably seen Lone Survivor (despite its major ahistorical basis), and may be familiar with the general setting of this story.

As someone of the generation of the people depicted who was always anti-war even after 9/11, yet at the same time had a reverence for people in the military, I found Morgan's work both enlightening and confirmatory at the same time. If you pair this with Restrepo in particular, and focus on people like then-Capt. Dan Kearney, you can get a pretty immediate sense of why the US failed in Afghanistan. The military, no disrespect intended, is a blunt instrument. It is a massive hammer, and it has one job- to smash. You can see this attitude repeated throughout the conflict in Kunar. The aim of the military is to find the insurgents, kill the taliban, etc. But, what the book shows, and what people like Capt. Kearney come to realize, is that it is the mere presence of the US military in the area that becomes the problem in itself.

In essence, the mission was aimless. It is pretty clear that the battalion commanders in the area had the closest idea to some sort of strategy for the region- build a road, improve commerce, and in so doing draw out the enemy, but the backfire is that too many civilians are hit in the crossfire, and there are too many cultural clashes between the Americans and the local peoples. Nation building was never going to work here, at least not without a substantially different, non-military approach. But, that approach would simultaneously conflict with the apprehension of first, Bin Laden, and later, other insurgents (many created by the US presence to start with).

I actually agree with people who are more pro-military in these cases. If you're going to send soldiers in, then they should have limited restrictions on what they can do. They are an 'all or nothing' response, where they should only be sent if the situation really is that bad. Otherwise, diplomacy and non-military actions should be the option. Limited military action simply is impossible. As soon as the first soldier is wounded, killed, etc., then there is an immediate call for escalation (and likewise, if a civilian is wounded). Morgan's book is a valuable case study showing this to be the case.

Hopefully we learn from this, but I am not confident that we shall.

[Henry Jameson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, Wesley Morgan has written a 672 page account of the Sisyphean task that the US unwittingly set for itself in Afghanistan after 9/11. Bin Laden and other key Al Qaeda members had used Afghanistan as a base and were still there on 9/12. The U.S. quickly demolished the Taliban government, but bin Laden and the key al Qaeda figures escaped to (and remained in) Pakistan. Twenty years later, the Americans are finally withdrawing from the war against the Afghan Taliban that ensued.
In his prodigiously researched book, Morgan focuses on small unit infantry actions in the Pech and Waygal valleys over a ten year period. Due to the rotation schedules, a new U.S. unit was inserted every eight months or so, thus sacrificing the local knowledge that had been acquired by the departing unit. Each new unit effectively started anew, and each new commander had a slightly different strategy to try to end the Taliban presence in the region. None worked. Rinse and repeat every eight months.
Morgan details ten years of small unit battles and strategies in this one remote area of the country. He amply documents the bravery and tenacity of the soldiers involved. The trouble was that what began as an effort to capture the Al Qaeda leaders devolved into a war against the Taliban – Islamic fundamentalists, to be sure, and vicious ones, but not the ones who attacked us. What began as a military operation to capture the Al Qaeda brain trust degenerated into a twenty year war against the Taliban Islamists – us against the Afghans. Mission creep.
This book is a marvel of reportage and should be required reading for all those in position to commit our military forces to combat. It should also remind us as citizens that we should be very careful indeed to insure that our leaders only commit our armed forces to tasks that they can in fact accomplish.

[David S. Lato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for anyone who spent time in that area

Detailed history on US operations in the Pech River area from 2001 on. I only got to A-bad but the area fascinates me still. A very beautiful, very dangerous region. Beings back memories every day. Very detailed reading, excellent first book Wesley.

[Sergio · Rating 5 out of 5]

You could just feel the camaraderie oozing out in the events that left soldiers stagnant but optimistic on their missions in Afghanistan. I live in California and for much of the last decade I've seen rain become scarce. Reading that Afghanistan has luscious forests drenched in rain and snow, I get envious. It's amazing how many promises were broken between the two colliding cultures at war. Money flows in unusual ways into Afghanistan.

[Bill Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wesley Morgan is a beast! I am a Ranger qualified former Marine infantry officer. I have come across very few journalists/writers that have the sense of calling and passion that Morgan has. This plus massive cajones makes Morgan singularly qualified to write a book like this. There were times I could smell cordite reading this book. While he gets and can convey the life of a grunt he also has the intellect to convey the bigger picture. What a stud. I’d love to grab a beer with this dude.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incorporated in 1850, Punxsutawney is only a small borough of about 3.4 square miles in Jefferson County in west-central Pennsylvania, and home to Punxsutawney Phil, whose claim to fame is being the poster child of Groundhog Day celebrations every February 2. Immortalized by the Bill Murray film GROUNDHOG DAY set in the township, the festival is probably often erroneously associated with the same thing happening in a repetitive loop. The US Army had already been plying its trade for 82 years when Groundhog Day became a thing in 1857, but its institutional memory seems to have gotten stuck with the launch of the day of Marmota monax. Put into great practice, this hasn't been demonstrated better than in the Kunar province in Eastern Afghanistan's Pech Valley in the last 20 odd years of war.

Wesley Morgan's THE HARDEST PLACE is about the wild front line of what was America's retaliation for September 11, 2001, Kunar and FOB Asadabad. Encompassing that, it's a roundabout telling of life in the Pech Valley while touching on the history of US combat troops in Kunar/Nuristan provinces in general and the close-by Korengal valley in specific. All in all, the story of a violent and socially complex ecosystem with insurgents streaming out of the woodwork, literally. Evil doers, however, seem to not have been the biggest problem in Afghanistan--it was intelligence. As American military and intelligence personnel struggled to understand the confusing society and landscape, they found themselves in the middle of Kunar's wild beauty, intense gunfights, and edge-of-the-empire feel.

Twenty years of warfare naturally included a lot of materiels, ordnance, and personnel, all of which was painstakingly researched by Morgan and is retold in a relatable way. The roster of warriors and paper pushers come from far and wide and encompass all of Americana, sharing one uniting factor--the Korengal Valley, a violent and socially complex battle environment. With so many everyday Americans rotating in and out of moon dust central, plenty of US pop culture also colors the going-on. Rambo III, RETURN OF THE JEDI, THE GREEN BERETS, MAD MAX, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, TOP GUN, and APOCALYPSE NOW among others make an appearance. As the Nietzsche quote states, "if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you," THE HARDEST PLACE also chronicles the indigenous population in that difficult combat environment and the effect it had on the US forces absolving their duty there. As top-down policy changed over the years and administrations, and a Reaper's high-definition camera was not an all-seeing eye and a Hellfire warhead was not a scalpel, civilian casualties did happen and deeply affected those who fought there, beyond just being a Noncombatant Casualty Value (a classified number of civilian deaths acceptable for a strike mission).

The rinse and repeat attitude ushered in by constant troop and command rotations in and out of the province and respective valleys disruptive to smooth and continuous policy regarding civilians, PRT endeavors, and combat operations was beneficial to no one except the anti-coalition militia (ACM) and the dushman or mujahidin. Shining a bright light on the Pech and that corner of Afghanistan, Morgan struts his stuff and on the ground experience, interspersing policy discussion and warrior biographies with informative tidbits such as a memorable Chinook pinnacle landing, the timber ban, self-licking ice cream cone, the utility vs the futility, shake-and-bake missions, ink blots, FalconView, vortex ring state, Blue Eye, and Kunar syndrome. Not taking a solid stance either way, THE HARDEST PLACE is really the story of American involvement there [Kunar & Pech] and about the Army's inability to retain knowledge and came both at the right time (of US disengagement) and too late, as this book is absolutely engrossing and informative.

Further information and details about the war in Afghanistan may or may not trickle down to the population that financed it for years to come, but it's obvious that maybe with the exception of the drone campaign, the exploits of JSOC Task Force East, a White House sanctioned Kill List, and the Shigal-Watapur-Waygal ratline (similar to the Ho Chi Minh Trail?) remind of US efforts during the Vietnam War and suggest through US Armed Forces exploits in Kunar province that the equation has virtually not changed in the intervening forty-six years. Make sure to stay on the right side of the risk calculus, find a quiet place and venture to THE HARDEST PLACE. It's quite a journey.

[Steven Hull · Rating 5 out of 5]

The timing of the publishing of The Hardest Place with America’s ending of the War in Afghanistan is ironic. The author, journalist Wesley Morgan, spent a decade visiting and researching one small slice of that war that spanned an entire generation. His story describes resilience and persistence in the face of overwhelming obstacles for both the allies (primarily Americans) and the Taliban in one rugged and isolated part of the country. The irony is that the ultimate failure of the larger American effort is foretold in the tactical and strategic failures experienced in the Pech Valley and its environs long before 2021.
What is this book about and not about? It’s not about a lack of will, resources, or courage on the part of the Americans, particularly those in the military who fought on the frontlines in a very difficult and remote mountainous region against skilled and brave adversaries. The book is also not about an enemy that was evil and uncivilized. As the war progressed, the Pech Valley became less a war against al-Qaida. Instead, the enemy became the Taliban and locals alienated by the permanent presence of the Americans and their propensity to kill and injure innocent civilians. In all fairness, the nature of the terrain and fighting made it almost impossible at times not to cause civilian casualties.
The American military wasn’t under resourced for this fight, but it did lack strategic direction from both the American government and its own self. This led to constantly changing strategic directions and tactical methods. New changes in local U.S. commanders almost always caused a breakdown or breakup with some or all of the locals. In addition, how many troops was enough? How much money was needed to build a new Afghanistan? At its height, over 100,000 American military were in country and an equal number of civilian contractors. Billions were being spent on establishing an Afghanistan military and a new civilian infrastructure. Counter insurgency was added to the counter terrorism mission. A goal to build Afghanistan as a democracy took deep roots. Yet cultural relationships were never strong and it was clear the Americans would not sustain a high level of economic and military support forever. As that support declined, so did the condition of the newly built infrastructure, the military effectiveness of the Afghans, and American interest in pursuing the war.
Hindsight is perfect, but it is not needed for one to realize that mission creep and strategic incompetence early on doomed American military and civilian efforts. The American political leaders at the highest levels should have seen that the war lacked realistic direction and purpose, same for the high level military leaders. Both failed to garner the American public’s support. Instead, the public lost interest once casualty counts went down and really didn’t care what we were trying to do in Afghanistan. With an all-voluntary military and an army of mercenaries, the U.S. had no need to generate public support for the war. The real tragedy is the unneeded death and destruction levied on the country and borne by both sides, that as a result occurred.