In the summer of 2007, English journalist Nick Allen quit a secure job in Pakistan as a news agency writer to experience the daily life of foreign troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Over several years he journeyed as an embedded reporter with more than a dozen armies, working his way through placid backwaters to remote, savage hotspots where daily clashes with insurgent forces are the norm.
Driven by a desire to himself live and then convey some of the drama, tragedy, farce and sheer frustration experienced by soldiers from California to Copenhagen, Allen returned again and again for ‘embeds’ with different contingents to explore a multinational effort that will inevitably define NATO’s future and events in South Asia and the world for many years to come.
No other writer has managed to gain such broad access to the 42-country Coalition deployed in Afghanistan, or produce an account that carries so much of the essence of soldiering in this inhospitable environment, where extremes of climate, treachery and enemy cunning have always defeated nations that dared to wage war in what became known over the centuries as the ‘graveyard of empires’.
Embed explores the fragile calm of Bamyan and its ancient sites and other so-called ‘backwaters’ – usually ignored but a vital part of the overall picture – together with the ferocious clashes of Helmand, Kandahar, Kunar and other provinces. The author found that even the most sophisticated armed forces are discovering this is a fight they were not prepared for and cannot be assured of winning.