[ONLINE] - The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley

Americans’ understanding of the war in Afghanistan is largely shaped by one small, remote corner of the country where American military action has been concentrated: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan provinces. The rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made the region a natural hiding spot for targets in the American war on terror, from Osama bin Laden to the Islamic State, and it has been the site of constant U.S. military activity for nearly two decades. Even as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan transitions to a drone war, the Pech has remained at the center of it, a testbed for a new method of remote warfare. In his new book The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, Wesley Morgan unravels the history of the area and the character of the war through both American and Afghan eyes.

Wesley Morgan is a military affairs reporter who most recently covered the Pentagon for two and a half years at Politico. He first visited the Pech in 2010, while he was still a college student embedding with military units as a freelancer. By then, the Pech and its infamous tributary the Korengal had become emblematic of the war. To discuss the book, New America also welcomes Emma Sky, director of Yale's World Fellows Program and a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She is the author of Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq and In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt. She served as political advisor to the commanding general of U.S. Forces in Iraq from 2007 to 2010, and as development advisor to the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2006.

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PARTICIPANTS

Wesley Morgan, @wesleysmorgan
Author, The Hardest Place

Emma Sky
Senior Fellow, Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
Author, In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt

MODERATOR

David Sterman, @DSterms
Senior Policy Analyst, New America International Security program

You can purchase a copy of The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley through our bookselling partner Solid State Books here.