Doug Beattie returns to Helmand Province for one final tour - and it's the most bloody and brutal conflict yet.

Fighting an elusive and dangerous enemy far from home, the British army in Afghanistan has been involved in asymmetric warfare for the best part of a decade. The eight-year series of deployments jointly known as Operation Herrick, alongside US and other NATO contingents within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, have been the longest continuous combat commitment of the British Army since World War II. Together with Operation 'Telic' in Iraq, which immediately preceded and overlapped with it, this conflict has shaped the British Army for a generation. Enemy threats have diversified and evolved, with a consequent evolution of British doctrine, tactics and equipment. This book provides a detailed analysis of those specifics within a clear, connected account of the course of the war in Helmand, operation by operation.

Includes more than 100 maps, plans and illustrations. “This monograph is more than the story of Marine expeditionary operations in Afghanistan. It describes who our nation’s enemies are; how America became involved in the Global War on Terrorism; and how the Marine Corps struggled to acquire a major role in Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as the actions of Marines and sailors who helped prosecute the air and ground campaigns against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.”— Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer, Director of Marine Corps History

A Wall Street Journal national security reporter takes readers into the lives of frontline U.S. special operations troops fighting to keep the Taliban and Islamic State from overthrowing the U.S.-backed government in the final years of the war in Afghanistan. A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Powerful, important, and searing." —General David Petraeus, U.S. Army (ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command, former CIA director In 2015, the White House claimed triumphantly that “the longest war in American history” was over. But for some, it was just the beginning of a new war, fought by Special Operations Forces, with limited resources, little governmental oversight, and contradictory orders. With big picture insight and on-the-ground grit, Jessica Donati shares the stories of the impossible choices these soldiers must make. After the fall of a major city to the Taliban that year, Hutch, a battle-worn Green Beret on his fifth combat tour was ordered on a secret mission to recapture it and inadvertently called in an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing dozens. Caleb stepped on a bomb during a mission in notorious Sangin. Andy was trapped with his team during a raid with a crashed Black Hawk and no air support. Through successive policy directives under the Obama and Trump administrations, America came to rely almost entirely on US Special Forces, and without a long-term plan, failed to stabilize Afghanistan, undermining US interests both at home and abroad. Eagle Down is a riveting account of the heroism, sacrifice, and tragedy experienced by those that fought America’s longest war.

Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the field. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with senior officials from around the world, David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman find that domestic constraints in presidential and single-party parliamentary systems--in countries such as the United States and Britain respectively--differ from those in countries with coalition governments, such as Germany and the Netherlands. As a result, different countries craft different guidelines for their forces overseas, most notably in the form of military caveats, the often-controversial limits placed on deployed troops. Providing critical insights into the realities of alliance and coalition warfare, NATO in Afghanistan also looks at non-NATO partners such as Australia, and assesses NATO's performance in the 2011 Libyan campaign to show how these domestic political dynamics are by no means unique to Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan War achieved many firsts. It was the first trillion dollar war and Britain's longest war in a century. At its height it sucked in some fifty allied nations into a central Asian country of no strategic significance. It was undeniably a war, yet the civilians outnumbered the combined military manpower of all contributing nations, bar the United States. It began as a necessary response to the outrage of the September 11 attacks, but ended in a divisive and ruinous exercise in armed nation-building. More aid was thrown at Afghanistan than was distributed to the war-broken nations of Europe under the Marshall Plan, yet the country was left in a parlous state. Billions of dollars of Western ordnance was expended against an enemy equipped with AK-47s and little more. The phenomenal imbalance between the combatants did not result in clear victory but rather intractable stalemate. Nobody won. Ultimately, the Afghanistan War is difficult to ignore, or sweep under carpets. It is British government policy not to commission official war histories until a lengthy period has elapsed, typically a quarter of a century or longer. This policy clearly benefits protagonists whose reputations are thus preserved (at least while they are still alive), but it does little for those at the bottom of the pile, some of whom are now lying under gravestones. This book is written for those officers and soldiers. It addresses the broader strategic aspects of the war, both the military and civilian missions, but also seeks to tell the story from the perspective of the men and women who served in Task Force Helmand. With candour it seeks to answer the question: what exactly did happen in Britain's war in Afghanistan? Any proceeds from the book will be donated to the Army Benevolent Fund.