Читать книгу Counterinsurgency In Eastern Afghanistan 2004-2008: A Civilian Perspective - Robert Kemp - Страница 5

While this book focuses on a four-year period of the war in Afghanistan, in the end it took much longer than that to write, and the author is indebted to many people as a result.

I would like to thank the soldiers, Marines, and Special Forces of the U.S. military for getting me “outside of the wire” on two year’s worth of patrols, battlefield circulations, and development trips. Afghanistan can be a difficult and, at times, dangerous place to move around in, but these professionals set high standards and kept to them. I also benefited from their views on COIN, civilian-military relations, and Afghanistan. Similarly, this book has benefited from conversations with many State Department, USAID, and USDA officers, along with the dedicated men and women of NGOs and the United Nations.

A special thanks to Robert “Turk” Maggi, twice Political Advisor at the headquarters in Bagram, for his unique brand of insight, strategic overview, and outrageous sense of humor. Dennis Hearne, also a Political Advisor, contributed with insights gained over several tours. Several outstanding military officers, including then Col. Patrick Donahue, LTC Mike Fenzel, Major (Reserve) Carl Hollister, and Col. Chip Preysler and his talented staff helped a civilian understand more about the military tribe.

Afghanistan is also a complex, and rapidly changing country. This book is a reflection of conversations with many Afghans–– civilian and military, both in and out of government––during my time in their country between 2003 and 2010. Theirs is a wonderful country, and I thank them for their efforts to explain it.

Parts of this book were initially published, in somewhat different versions, in various journals: Military Review, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the Small Wars Journal, the SAIS Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs, and the military journal Campaigning. I would like to acknowledge their permission to reprint these articles.

Many thanks to Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where parts of this book were written during a year as a Dean Rusk Fellow, funded by the U.S. State Department. Also at Georgetown, thanks to Alba Seoane, for her skills as a research assistant, and to the students in my spring 2012 class on Afghanistan, for bringing new perspectives and criticisms to a complex situation.

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training adopted my book in its series and shepherded it to publication. Special thanks to Margery Thompson, ADST’s publishing director and series editor, for skillfully and patiently transforming a draft manuscript into a book, and to ADST interns Brianna Guarino and Mary Edwards. Several anonymous reviewers looked at earlier drafts and thereby improved the final product.

Thanks to Jane Ann Kemp for reading and commenting on the many drafts of the articles that formed the basis for much of this book, as well as the draft manuscripts of the book.

And to Shiela, for holding down the home front during frequent absences in Afghanistan and Pakistan over a decade, and for giving me the space to write.

I appreciate the concurrence of my employer, the U.S. Department of State, in the publication of this book. However, the views expressed herein do not represent those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Department of State, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, or the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training; they are my views alone.