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Fighting For Afghanistan: A Rogue Historian at War
Author(s): Sean Maloney (Author)
- Publisher: Naval Institute Press
- Publication Date: 31 Aug. 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 352 pages
- ISBN-10: 1591145090
- ISBN-13: 9781591145097
Book Description
Fighting For Afghanistan is the third book in the Rogue Historian trilogy, taking Maloneys story into the conflict in 2006, when the Taliban-led insurgency threatened to overwhelm the U.S.-led coalition in southern Afghanistan. This shift to near-conventional warfare, as opposed to the small-scale guerilla attacks and urban terrorism in Kandahar, caught everybody by surprise and forced a small, under-equipped Canadian battle group, supported by a Canadian-led multinational brigade consisting of American, British and Dutch forces, into a desperate series of battles to protect the city and to prevent the collapse of British forces in neighbouring Helmand province. Sean Maloney arrived on the ground just as the situation spun out of control and he was able to capture, at all levels from infantry company to battle group to brigade headquarters, exactly what happened. This book explains the difficulties in balancing security and development, the challenges of operating in an austere, alien environment, and the human cost of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan. Fighting For Afghanistan takes the reader through all of the moving parts and planning and then depicts how it played out on the field of battle. During the course of the action, the author became the first Canadian military historian to go into combat since the Korean War. The battles around Kandahar City in 2006 were the turning point in the Afghanistan war and this book is the first to explain events in detail from all three levels. This is the only account that shows the scope of the fighting in the south in this time period. Because of his close proximity to the action, the author was nearly killed on several occasions that summer during the fighting and he brings the intensity of this experience to his writing.
Editorial Reviews
Review
A book by a specialist that will be best appreciated by other specialists, but Maloney also provides general readers with a bird’s-eye view of how the war in Afghanistan has been fought. –Kirkus Reviews, August 2011
About the Author
Sean Maloney is a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada and served as the historical advisor to the Chief of the Land Staff during the war in Afghanistan. He previously served as the historian for 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade, the Canadian Army’s primary Cold War NATO commitment after the reunification of Germany and at the start of the Balkan conflicts. From 2001 Dr. Maloney focused nearly exclusively on the war against the Al Qaeda movement and its allies. After returning to Royal Military College, Dr. Maloney refocused on the Cold War. His latest book, Emergency War Plan, received the Air Force Historical Foundation’s Air Power Book Prize in 2024.
