Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 113

MR BOOK REVIEWS
WAR COMES TO GARMSER:
Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier
Carter Malkasian, Oxford University Press, New
York, 2013, 321 pages, $27.95

F

FEATURED REVIEW

orty years ago,
Jeffrey Race
published a book
about the conflict in
Vietnam called War
Comes to Long An. Now
considered a classic, the
book offered a sophisticated microhistory of the
Vietnam War from the
perspective of a single district, one where Race had
served as a district advisor. The strength of the book
came from insights lost in the more macro and strategic
accounts of that complex war.
In his new book War Comes to Garmser, historian
Carter Malkasian seeks the same kind of local analysis
for one of the small places of the war in Afghanistan.
He focuses on Garmser District, a slice of Helmand
Province located close to the southern border with
Pakistan. Malkasian bases his work on his own experience serving in Garmser as the political officer for a
district reconstruction team from 2009 to 2011. What
results is one of the most important books written on
our long war in Afghanistan.
Malkasian uses the perspective of a historian to
seek the deep roots of conflict in Garmser and he finds
them, among other places, in the well-intentioned and
ambitious irrigation project launched by the United
States in Helmand Province in the 1950s. The project
opened large areas of land to agriculture and inspired
the Afghan government to encourage small, landless
tribes from outside the district to settle in Garmser.
The larger tribes with a longer history in the region
resented the newcomers and did what they could to
MILITARY REVIEW  September-October 2014

marginalize them, creating an enduring rift in the social
fabric of the district. In a classic example of unintended
consequences, when the Taliban originally emerged
in Garmser in the mid-90s, they found their earliest
adherents among the immigrant tribes.
The Taliban also worked hard to build support
among a class of notables who, until then, had limited political power: the mullahs. Between the mullahs
and the immigrant tribes, the Taliban built a base of
support that outlasted their original overthrow in 2001.
These same constituencies helped to restore Taliban
rule to Garmser in 2006.
In reviewing the 30 years of conflict in Garmser,
Malkasian seeks to answer the question of whether U.S.
efforts to build peace and effective governance in this
strange and remote land—“the graveyard of empires”—
were doomed from the start. He concludes they were
not, and the last half of his book considers the U.S. Army
surge in Afghanistan and the protracted campaign to
take Garmser back from the Taliban. It is the story of
missed opportunities and little victories that ultimately
resulted in a hard-won and fragile success. Malkasian
concludes with the key to success: “In war: resolution.”
One possible criticism of the book is that
Malkasian has largely written himself out of this
story. In this, he has been too modest. Others judged
him to be one of the most effective civilian advisors
to serve in Afghanistan. In his book, Little America,
Rajiv Chandrasekeran writes, “He won the trust of
skeptical residents through countless meetings and
roadside conversations, pressing them to reject the
insurgency and support their government.” By mastering the Pashto language and immersing himself in the
nuanced elements of tribal culture, Malkasian came
to be referred by the natives of Garmser as sahib, an
Urdu title of special respect. The local Marine Corps
commander believed winning the war against the
Taliban meant that every district needed someone
with Malkasian’s skills. Sadly, Chandrasekaran found
him to be the outlier among the U.S. civilians serving
in Afghanistan.
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