The Valley's Edge: A Year with the Pashtuns in the Heartland of the Taliban

In this gripping, firsthand account, Daniel Green tells the story of U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban insurgency from the desolate southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. Nestled between the Hindu Kush mountains and the sprawling wasteland of the Margow and Khash Deserts, Uruzgan is a microcosm of U.S. efforts to prevent Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism. Green, who served in Uruzgan from 2005 to 2006 as a U.S. Department of State political adviser to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), reveals how unrealistic expectations, a superficial understanding of the Afghans, and a lack of resources contributed to the Taliban's resurgence in the area. He discusses the PRT's good-governance efforts, its reconstruction and development projects, the violence of the insurgency, and the PRT's attempts to manage its complex relationship with the local warlord cum governor of the province. Upon returning to Afghanistan in 2009 with the U.S. military and while working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul until 2010, Green discovered that although many improvements had been made since he had last served in the country, the problems he had experienced in Uruzgan continued despite the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.

About the Author :
Daniel R. Green is a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is pursuing a PhD in political science at the George Washington University. For his work in Afghanistan in 2005–2006, he received the U.S. Department of State’s Superior Honor Award, the U.S. Army’s Superior Civilian Honor Award, and a personal letter of commendation from then–chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace. He has also received the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Award and in 2007 served with the U.S. military in Fallujah, Iraq. He lives in Washington, D.C. Ronald E. Neumann, now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, served previously as a deputy assistant secretary and three times as ambassador, to Algeria (1994–97), Bahrain (2001–4), and finally to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2005–7). Prior to his stint in Afghanistan, Neumann, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, served in Baghdad from February 2004 with the Coalition Provisional Authority and then as the embassy’s principal interlocutor with the Multinational Command. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.