I Is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years Inside Afghanistan

by Kathy Gannon

In early 1986 Kathy Gannon sold pretty much everything she owned (which wasn't much) to pursue her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had the world to choose she chose Afghanistan. She went to witness the final humiliation of a superpower in terminal decline as the Soviet Union was defeated by the mujahedeen. What she didn't know then was that Afghanistan would remain her focus for the next eighteen years. Gannon, uniquely among Western journalists, witnessed Afghanistan's tragic the final collapse of communism followed by bitterly feuding warlords being driven from power by an Islamicist organization called the Taliban; the subsequent arrival of Arabs and exiles, among them Osama bin Laden; and the transformation of the country into the staging post for a global jihad. Gannon observed something else as the terrible, unforeseen consequences of Western intervention, the ongoing suffering of ordinary Afghans, and the ability of the most corrupt and depraved of the warlords to reinvent and reinsert themselves into successive governments. I is for Infidel is the story of a country told by a writer with a uniquely intimate knowledge of its people and recent history. It will transform readers' understanding of Afghanistan, and inspire awe at the resilience of its people in the face of the monstrous warmongers we have to some extent created there.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Middle East, Religion

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afghanistan is yet another buzzword country that means nothing to me. Before reading this book, I really didn't know much about it, save for one conversation with an Afghan immigrant in the US.

With clear prose, Gannon tells us the tale of Afghanistan, or more accurately, the downfall of Afghanistan. She describes the birth of the Taliban and their climb to power. As a journalist based in Afghanistan for 18 years, this book is filled with personal stories and quotes from various figures.
 
So what happened in Afghanistan? In the 1979, as part of the Cold War, the US backed the mujahideen who were fighting a Soviet invasion. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the international community essentially left Afghanistan alone. From South Sudan to Gaza, this is a prominent trend - international powers leaving areas without an existing power structure doesn't bring good results. 

So the mujahideen controlled the country. They were like small warlords and each one controlled parts of the country. They essentially behaved like bullies, abusing their powers and controlling the villagers. 

Here we meet Mohammed Omar. Omar invented the Taliban in the hopes of creating law and fighting the mujahideen anarchy. In Gannon's words, the Taliban's birth seems logical and positive. It's eye-opening to understand the roots of this, to see how complicated these events are.

The Taliban successfully fought the mujahideen and took over much land. That's when they were practically hijacked by Pakistani extremists, influenced by Saudi powers. They started to shift towards extreme policies and yet, Omar was too weak to stop them. From merely fighting the mujahideen, they became radical. This is where 9/11 comes in. 

Gannon digs deep into the international community's failures. By refusing to work with the Taliban, they alienated the moderates within the Taliban. They pushed them into cooperating more with Pakistan and other Muslim countries that didn't ignore them.

When US invasion arrived, it was apparently lacking in intelligence. They relied on the Northern Alliance, yet another mujahideen group. However, the Northern Alliance abused their power by attacking ethnic minorities. The US had no way of knowing who was a Taliban/ AlQueda terrorist and who was not as they were dependent on them.

The brutality of the US invasion led to even more defiance against it. Gannon describes how innocent people could find themselves in Guantanamo without ever having the chance to explain themselves. People who were entirely innocent suffered severe bombings and imprisonment. 

In many ways, while this book was published in 2005, not much has changed in Afghanistan nowadays. Fighting still continues, although Trump signed a deal to start taking troops out. How will Afghanistan rise up again, after 18 years of war? Will those US bases ever leave? Ahhh.

Anyways, I admit, at first I was wary to read a book about Afghanistan that wasn't written by an Afghan. I assumed this book would be filled up with anti-Muslim rhetoric. This turned out to be a false fear. Gannon's main criticism is towards the USA, UK and the UN. Interestingly, her reporting comes across as almost supportive of the Taliban. She clearly doesn't support violence but there's a lot of nuance in the way she guides us through this complicated situation. 

There's a lot to think about here- this book is like a peak into a massively complex world where there are no real villains, only desperation, fear, power and violence. It's hard not to feel frustrated by the extent of suffering Afghans have experienced for these imperialistic goals. Was it worth? Was the US meddling, the Soviet invasion, the UN interventions, what did all of this bring at the end?

Now, I would have liked to spend a proper 1,000 words discussing it all but ack, exam season is fast approaching. So I will wrap it up by saying that this is a great intro book to Afghanistan. Gannon is a skilled journalist and illuminates this geopolitical crisis. If you're looking for a straightforward explanation about Afghanistan, this was helpful to me.

What I'm Taking With Me
-If I've made any mistakes here, that's my Economics quiz's fault, I'm totally slacking off, review wise.
- Gannon stayed in the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, despite being a woman. That's wild.
-I have to connect everything to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and say that I'm starting to understand why this conflict matters so much to the world, why this isn't just a land dispute, this is Pakistan and the USA and Iran and the UN, this is much bigger than us and that is terrifying to me.
- I could never study international relations, this makes me want to cry

---------------
Well, I've been having a massive procrastination streak for the last few days but at least I didn't ruin Afghanistan so maybe life isn't so bad. Review to come, after I manage to convince myself to write this essay (ahhhh, maybe I'll quit uni and become a journalist instead)

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathy Gannon’s I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror, 18 Years Inside Afghanistan brings is a wide-ranging yet concise account of Afghanistan’s recent history. Alongside the larger political fabric, the clash of contending social forces, and behind the scenes insights, Gannon shows us snapshots of the Afghani people, their everyday life and sufferings in a land ravaged by decades of war.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book might as well be "A Short History of the Last 30 Years in Afghanistan and Pakistan," instead of the catchy memoir-ish cover and description. That's not to say the book isn't good, or isn't interesting- it's just not quite the witness-to-history memoir that any description I previously encountered had indicated. Gannon's position as a long-time AP correspondent does, however, lend her observations about the political situation in the region more authority, as she has simply seen things and talked to people that very few other Western journalists have.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow, all that Afghanistan has suffered is not quite enough, and, after all those bloody decades, Hollywood feels that it would be fun to drop Bill Murray in for a good laugh at their expense. Not that I blame the U.S. for everything that has happened there--surely the Russians and the Pakistanis have even more to answer for, not to mention their own ethnic and religious factions--but anyone who thinks our short attention span foreign policy is blameless need only flip to the part of Kathy Gannon's book where she writes of the American-funded educational books for Afghan refugees that taught the alphabet in this way: J for Jihad, K for Kalashnikov and I for Infidel. Gannon was stationed in Pakistan and Afghanistan for decades, and her account of the workings of the Taliban is the most nuanced I have read. She interviews participants in the rise of Mullah Omar, recounts the disagreements between him and Osama bin Laden. According to her witnesses, the assumption by Mullah Omar of the Prophet's mantle in Kandahar was not universally applauded within the movement, and he opposed the destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan shortly before they toppled, an act which she views as bin Laden's idea, achieving his goal of isolating Afghanistan from the world. Omar himself is viewed as growing more and more secretive, even paranoid, to the point, although this happened years after this book's publication, where he could die and two years would pass before even most Taliban members would know. Gannon's account of Pakistan's politics is clear and convincing: its fear of India, the scars of the wars with that country and abiding resentment over Kashmir, and its mistrust of the United States, which shows up with money and arms when an ally in the region is needed and disappears when one isn't. Among the Afghans, she is deeply critical of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Rashid Dostum, as are many others, but she finds Ahmed Shah Masood, whose assassination was the prelude to 9/11, far from blameless in the fratricidal violence that followed the Russian withdrawal. She was actually in Afghanistan when the United States attack began and claims to be the only Western journalist there. She faults the Bush administration for relying on the Afghans to fight--she argues that they were saving troops for the invasion of Iraq--but also for allowing the locals to use the bombing campaign to eliminate rivals who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the Taliban and is particularly critical of the first American post-war ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. This is an angry book, a portrait of ineptitude, a catalog of mistakes. With the Taliban resurgent and ISIL moving in, one wonders whether we have now reached zugzwang, a position in chess where there are no good moves left.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Appalling

I came away from reading this book more dismayed with the Bush administration's response to 9/11 than ever. If Kathy Gannon has got it right, and she certainly has the credentials: AP correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1986 to 2005; recipient of the International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism award; and an Edward R. Murrow fellowship--if Gannon has got it right, the US basically fired enough rockets and dropped enough bombs in Afghanistan to chase the Taliban into the hills; and then instead of relying on US Special Forces to get the job done, the Bush administration let the warlords take over.

Actually it was worse that than. Gannon reports on several incidents where the US military allowed the Northern Alliance warlords to direct US rockets and bombs at personal enemies or people allied with rival warlords. They told the Americans these people were Taliban, and got them mowed down.

Well, war is hell, you say. What Gannon argues is that the US only made a half-hearted effort to get Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, leaving most of the work to the Northern Alliance of murderous warlords (Reagan's old Cold War "freedom fighters") whose main desire was to retake their territory from the Taliban and return to business as usual. Which they have.

From Gannon's tone and from the evidence she presents, the warlords are in some ways worse than the Taliban. Be that as it may, and both are pretty horrible, the fact remains that we killed a lot of people in Afghanistan but really did not do anything substantial in ending the terrorist threat. The main reason for that, according to my reading of Gannon, is that the Bush administration found no way to get to the real source of Al Qaeda terrorism which just moved inside Pakistan. Bush talked to Pervez Musharraf, the head of Pakistan's military government and got his assurance that he would support the US in its war on terrorism. That was it.

The problem for Bush was he had no plan to force the military government in Pakistan to hand over bin Laden and no plan to make Musharraf close down the madrassas religious schools that flourish to teach young men how to be terrorists and indoctrinate them into hating the West. Toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan was only one step in the war against terrorism, the easy part. The hard part remains: how to persuade Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some other states from supporting terrorism. Bush had--and apparently still has--no idea how to do that. He couldn't invade Pakistan. Regime change there was too dangerous considering Pakistan's nukes and other considerations. He didn't dare go after the Saudi princes who are the source of the wealth of many of his top supporters. Instead he did a non-sequitur: he invaded Iraq.

What is most enlightening about this book is how it reveals the dismal failure of the Bush administration to meet the challenge of terrorism. But the book is also a vivid and fascinating reportage on personalities of the warlords and the Taliban in Afghanistan and the extremist Muslims in Pakistan, some of whom Gannon personally interviewed at great personal risk. She is one gutsy reporter and does the profession proud. She could easily have ended up on Al Jeerza television begging for her life. She was also lucky not to have been bombed or rocketed by the US military since she was in Kabul when the strikes began.

I have only one small fault with this book. She writes that the West ought "to take a critical look at itself and examine the apparent double standards at work that allow it to attack Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction but not North Korea, whose leader shares Saddam Hussein's megalomaniacal qualities; that permit it to rail against Iran about nuclear weapons but be silent about Israel's arsenal..." (p. 172)

Actually, if anything North Korea's Kim Jong Il is even worst that Saddam Hussein in what he has done to his people. However, it is one thing to attack a second-rate conventional force in the Middle East and quite another to attack a nation with nuclear weapons and a million-man army that has Seoul in virtual hostage. And as for the difference between Iran's incipient nuclear program and Israeli's established (although illegal) program, it is essential to understand that Iran is run by radical Islamic clerics who have expressed their hatred for the West and their desire to wipe Israel off the map. Israel is a democratic country with checks and balances whose leadership is interested in self-defense first and foremost--not to mention that as a practical matter there is nothing the West can do about Israel's arsenal.

Gannon believes the primary reason the Bush administration failed to put enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan and relied almost exclusively on the warlords to get Al Qaeda was because George W. and the neocons wanted to save the troops for the big splash in Iraq. In other words, Al Qaeda kills 3,000 Americans and in response you topple a dictator in another country. However that doesn't explain why it took the Bush administration so long to act. They knew immediately who had attacked America. Bush's response to the attacks on America amounts to a kind of bait and switch. Here are the murders, but we can't really get them, so we switch to a "shock and awe" demonstration of our military strength and our will to use it. That ought to work, or at least keep us in office.

If you want the appalling reality about Afghanistan and the war on terror not seen on the sanguine six o'clock news, I recommend that you read this book.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

[Emilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, it is important that I acknowledge Kathy Gannon as an incredibly talented writer. This book just floored me. Gannon's approach to writing about politics strikes the perfect balance - she acknowledges the vantage point from which she witnessed events unfolding, her interviews with Afghans are fascinating and poignant, and her narrative is clear to follow with relevant context. Oh, and she doesn't hold back in her descriptions of the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies and government officials that wreaked havoc on Afghanistan.

Gannon seamlessly told the story of the last few decades of Afghanistan's history while making damn sure that readers know who is to blame, who paid the price and how the world failed Afghan people.

[Walter Weary · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional, first-hand account of the diplomatic and military failure of American foreign policy in Afghanistan. Well organized and imminently readable it portrays a personal or humanitarian evaluation of the fiasco in Afghanistan. America cannot right the world's ills by force. It is time we realize that.

[Abhay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read, An easy one. Very well narrates the origin lf Taliban and tries to put a sympathetic image of Taliban by putting the whole blame on Al-Qaida
Its like Osama was a Bad Egg who spoiled one fine egg which was Mullah Omar .. and hence Taliban went astray

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It made me realize the mess everyone is in!

[Malik Afridi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremism in several warlords pushed pure afghan land into ever going war, their misogynistic and conservative policies brought anarchy to this scenic empire.
These warlords were kept pampered by different states, their agenda was appreciated and they were called Holy mujahedeen when everything was going according to their own will who had heartily wish to destroy the Soviet Union, they funded them and gave free hands to different influential people for their benefits and thus this holy land turned into the state of uncertainty where it not only displaced its people from their lands but sow seeds of extremism for eternity.

It would precisely be fairer to call 'I for infidel' one of the best books based on Afghanistan because the Kathy Ganon, foreign correspondent who wrote it had closely examined the thicks and thins of the Afghan War.
She met several warlords unfold their agenda, presented American views, and blamed them on certain occasions for killing and dishonoring Afghan women.
The paranoid afghans who wanted to live like other people with dignity and liberty had ruined to the dust their thrived businesses had demolished and their dream of breathing in a free state changed to hopelessness.

Atrocities of every regime to the different strategy used for holding power of different parts not only made people paranoid but peace and prosperity is no longer to be seen.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty amazing, and graphic, short telling of the founding years of the Taliban and the history of Afghanistan and Pakistan during that time. The author was, amazingly, a western female in Afghanistan. She met and interacted with a lot of big players.

Although this book is nearly 20 years old, I still learned a lot and have a lot of respect for the author.

My one criticism is that her second to last chapter is a history of Pakistan, and even though that is important to tell how it relates to Afghanistan, it seems out of place. She could have woven those details into other chapters, or put the whole chapter earlier.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written account from a journalist covering Afghanistan. Well laid out account of who is who in the holy wars and the terror struck in various countries involved. Good questions regarding USA backing of various factions for its own political reasons hidden in the "we are the good guys" cloak. Interesting.

[Sues57 Schroeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would add this to my list of "most recommened books on Afghanistan." Kathy Gannon managed to discern critical issues, before they were receiving serious consideration. Several recent books that have gotten attention; like Graeme Smith's "The Dogs are Eating Them Now," Carter Malkasian's "War Comes to Garmser," and Anand Gopal's "No Good Men Among the Living," seem to continue with Gannon's straighforward and strikingly clear analysis. It was also nice to read a book written by a journalist, rather than a "scholar" who studies Afghanistan, since Gannon is a master of succinct prose. Her greatest strength though is, she *really* knew and understood the conditions she was describing, and avoided almost all the overused, and meaningless hyperbole, that seems to curse so much writing on Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

[Alita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journalist Kathy Gannon was the first Western reporter inside Kabul after the U.S. started bombing following 9/11. This account provides a glimpse of her 18 years reporting for the AP on Pakistan and Afghanistan, and she has a detailed account of the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Normally I avoid contemporary political non-fiction. I picked this one up because the author's stepdaughter is a former roommate and close friend of mine. Once I started, however, the book captured me in entirely on its own. I am nearly done and highly recommend it to anyone who seeks a bit more understanding as to what is going on in Afghanistan and by extension, the "War on Terror." It is short, compelling, highly readable, and it leaves you sick to realize how much history can repeat itself.

[Toria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book having little to no understanding or knowledge of the events in Afghanistan outside of a reading of Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner'. Gannon laid out her material clearly in a manner that was enjoyable to read, and I feel that I have learnt a lot from it. As someone who doesn't ordinarily read non-fiction, I was surprised to find this an enjoyable and informative read. I would highly reccomend it!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so eye opening. It really delves into the relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. It's easy to read and helps you to understand the complex nature of the problems that are enveloping the middle east.

[Mehreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am fan of Kathy Ganon. A Canadian reporter who spent nearly two decades in Afghanistan reporting on the state's political affairs. This book is a excellent piece of factual record of the history of Taliban in Afghanistan to present date.
Highly recommended.

[Fahd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first hand account of the Taliban regime and US invasion of Afghanistan, and the terror wrought by both, will put any best-selling thriller novel to shame.

[Bybecks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really well written, well researched and thought provoking book!

[Donna Kubiak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and clear reporting of what happened in Afganistan to create such a raw country. She is a brave observer of a contradictory land and its people.

[Anjum Rahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have ever read on the Afghan situation.

[Mian Waheed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short history of pre-911 Talibans' and post-911 Northern Alliance's rules in Afghanistan.

[Nick B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent