The Valley's Edge: A Year with the Pashtuns in the Heartland of the Taliban

In this gripping, first-hand account, Dan Green tells the story of U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban insurgency from the desolate southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. Nestled between the Hindu Kush Mountains and the sprawling wasteland of the Margow and Khash Deserts, Uruzgan is a microcosm of U.S. efforts to prevent Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism. Green, who served in Uruzgan in 2005-2006 as a U.S. Department of State political adviser to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), reveals how unrealistic expectations, a superficial understanding of the Afghans, and a lack of resources contributed to the Taliban's resurgence in the area. He discusses the PRT's good governance efforts, its reconstruction and development projects, the violence of the insurgency, and the PRT's attempts to manage its complex relationship with the local warlord cum governor of the province. Upon returning to Afghanistan in 2009-2010 with the U.S. military, and while working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, he discovered that although many improvements had been made since he had last served in Afghanistan, the enduring problems he experienced in Uruzgan continued despite the transition in Washington, D.C., from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.