Review: Confronting the Chaos A Rogue Historian Returns to Afghanistan

Abstract

CONFRONTING THE CHAOS A Rogue Historian Returns to Afghanistan Sean M. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009. 256 pp, US$34.95 cloth. ISBN 978-1-59114-508-0The first time I met Sean we were both hunkered down behind a plywood and sandbag abutment at the US aviation shack on Kandahar airfield trying to reap what shade we could find from the pitiless Afghan sun. We were waiting for a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter to take us north where, as it turned out, we were both attending a shura at the newly opened Canadian forward operating base the Sha WaIi Kot district. I learned first hand listening to Maloney s musings that he was a historian of a different stripe and this was far from the first of his helicopter sojourns over this antique land. His new book, Confronting the Chaos, is vintage that it is infused with unvarnished opinion and insight based on handson research and time in country. This book is the second of what will be a trilogy bundling Maloney1 s many visits to the Afghan theatre. It focuses on the events of 2003 through 2005, ending with the international security assistance force's expansion into Afghanistan's troubled southern region. The final instalment will open with the commencement of Canadian combat operations this region March 2006. And what a rich repository of recollection and nuance the completed trilogy will comprise.This latest effort contains much that military historians and veterans will want to harvest: clipped conversations with players what describes as the chess game of contemporary Afghanistan; insight into the thoughts and opinions of the key players inside the NATO force; and impressions felt and experienced and impossible to glean from secondary sources and remote study. Consider this reflection on the Tobyhanna army depot forward repair faculty at Bagram, a veritable bone yard of replacement war machines of the contemporary battlefield:It was totally surreal. Warfare the information age was impossible without photocopiers, printers, hard drives, and modems.... The environment gave a beating to the delicate equipment originally designed and built for an insurance company Ohio or a lawyer's office Maine. These machines were war-weary, their silicon hearts pushed to the limits by the war Afghanistan (64).In his examination of the period from 2003 to 2005, has ventured where few scholars and writers have dared. In informed detail, he explores the early history of both operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO missions Afghanistan. His sense of chronology and attention to nuance the creation of combined forces command-Afghanistan, for example, and the description of Major General Andy Leslie and Ambassador Chris Alexander's steerage Kabul are intriguing. His writing has an edge and literary swagger.Before becoming an academic, attended the Royal Military College of Canada and logged time as an army subaltern. …