FIGHTING FOR AFGHANISTAN A Rogue Historian at War Sean M. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011. 326 pp, US$42.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-59114-509-7Fighting for Afghanistan is the final installment of Sean Malone/s trilogy, A Rogue Historian at War. The series provides one embedded military historian's view of three distinct phases of the international intervention in Afghanistan. An associate professor at Canada's Royal Military College and a former officer in the Canadian Army Reserve, has produced a unique body of work that is a blend of embedded journalism and informed operational and historical analysis. It is a well informed first draft of history.Fighting for Afghanistan covers the deployment and battles of the first Canadian-led brigade headquarters and the first Canadian battle group in Kandahar Province between January and August 2006. Maloney s personal credibility and experience, combined with the support of the Commander of the Canadian Army, gave him a level of access to the inner workings of both headquarters that no journalist could hope to attain. As a result, he was able to take an excellent snapshot of Canada's soldiers in action in one of the most difficult phases of a difficult war in the most difficult region of Afghanistan.In the interest of transparency, I should note that I was in Kabul during the period in question, and I know both and the principal Canadian commanders and staff officers who appear in this book. is at his best when describing the operational planning process at the regional command and battle group levels, including the thought process of Brigadier-General Dave Fraser and Lieutenant- Colonel Ian Hope, the respective commanders. He offers remarkable insight into the pressures that were imposed on two fine officers by a convoluted chain of command and risk-averse political staffs in Ottawa.Much of the book concerns itself with the subsidiary operations of a larger American-led called Thrust, commanded by Dave Fraser's superior headquarters of the US 10th mountain division based at Bagram. Mountain Thrust aimed to clear specific areas of southern Afghanistan of Taliban forces; however, it suffered from a number of serious flaws. It failed to recognize the situation on the ground in Kandahar province. It gave insufficient support to the Dutch and British in neighbouring areas. It overestimated the presence of the Afghan national army in Kandahar. And it ignored the fact that the Canadian combat unit in the province was simply too small to hold any ground that it took because it had to keep moving to deal with threats elsewhere.As a result, the Canadian battle group spent its time just cutting the grass. Its infantry combat teams were constantly moving from one threatened area to another. They had no opportunity to reinforce their numerous successes, which made it exceedingly difficult to either extend the reach of Afghan government control or start essential development projects. This situation persisted until the Obama surge of 2010.British politicians touted the deployment as a peace support operation that would focus on development. In practice, things in Helmand turned out quite differently, with tragic results. offers excellent descriptions of Canadian operations to rescue a besieged company of British paratroopers in the town of Sangin and to recapture the district centres of Garmsir and Nawa from the Taliban. …