The Leaving
1. US Commission on Terrorist Attacks estimate
2. King Abdullah on CNN, March 2015
3. UNDP report for Afghanistan, 2013
4. Interview with author, London 2014
Chapter 1: Rule Number One
1. Lady Florentia Sale’s diary
2. Lieutenant James Rattray, 1837
3. Interview with Jonathan Powell, London 2009
4. Interview with Dr Abdullah Abdullah, Washington DC
5. No Higher Honor by Condoleezza Rice, p.62
Chapter 2: Sixty Words
1. Air Power Against Terror – America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, Rand National Defense Institute, pp.78–80
Chapter 3: Making – and Almost Killing – a President
1. Interviews with Jason Amerine, Washington DC
2. Interviews with Hamid Karzai, Kabul, October 2004
3. Interview with James Dobbins, Washington DC
4. Interview with Francesc Vendrell, London 2014
5. Interview with Asadullah and Izzatullah Wasifi, Kabul July 2009
6. Interview with Dr Abdullah Abdullah
7. Brahimi article in Washington Post, 7 December 2008
8. Bush at War by Bob Woodward, p.310
9. Decision Points by George W. Bush, p.207
10. Lieutenant James Rattray, 1837
Chapter 5: Losing bin Laden – the Not So Great Escape
1. Bin Laden video aired on al Jazeera 3 November 2001
2. Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World by Najwa and Omar bin Laden and Jean Sasson, St Martin’s Press 2009
3. First In by Gary Schroen
4. Interview with Anas, London 2003
5. Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile, p.262
6. Interview with Dr Umar Farooq, Islamabad 2001
7. Interview with Richard Armitage, Virginia 2010
8. Growing Up Bin Laden by Najwa and Omar bin Laden and Jean Sasson
9. Interview with Gary Berntsen, New York
10. Interview with Hayatullah, Dubai 2004
11. Special forces history
12. Dalton Fury, testimony to Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
13. Frontier Crimes Regulation, 1901
14. Interview with General Ali Aurakzai, London December 2004
15. Interview with Haji Zahir, Jalalabad 2004
16. Interviews with Mike Scheuer, Washington DC 2007 and 2009
17. Interview with Gul Agha Sherzai, Governor’s Palace, Jalalabad, October 2006
Chapter 6: A Tale of Two Generals
1. In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf
2. Interview with Richard Armitage, Washington DC
3. Interview with Wendy Chamberlin, Washington DC
4. Interview with Chaudhry Nisar Ali, London February 2015
5. Interview with Sir David Manning, London 2009
6. Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
7. Interview with General Zia-ul-Haq, Army House, Rawalpindi, August 1988
8. First Family, Pakistani Television Corporation, 2006
9. My Life with the Taliban by Mullah Zaeef
10. Interview with Husain Haqqani
11. Interview with Bob Grenier, London 2009
12. Interview with General Moinuddin Haider
Chapter 7: Taliban Central
1. Muttawakil was later released to live in a government guesthouse in Kabul as part of a reconciliation programme to try to win over so-called ‘moderate Taliban’
2. Later FBI vein-matching established that the actual killer was Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or ‘KSM’
Chapter 8: Merchants of Ruin – the Return of the Warlords
1. ‘Killing You is Very Easy for Us: Human Rights Abuses in Southeastern Afghanistan’, Human Rights Watch, July 2003
Chapter 9: Theatre of War
1. Syed Shahid Hussein would rise to number two in the World Bank, the highest position possible for a non-American, as well as serving as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s chief economic adviser
2. See 2002 interview by Dr Bina D’Costa with Australian doctor Geoffrey Davis who helped many rape victims through abortions
3. Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military by Husain Haqqani, p.220
4. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami later merged with Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin to become Harkat ul Ansar
5. Daughter of The East by Benazir Bhutto, 2007
6. Told to the author by Benazir Bhutto. See also Deception by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, p.208 and p.224
7. Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir by Arif Jamal, pp.108–13
Chapter 10: A Tale of Two Wars
1. See for example his message broadcast on al Jazeera on 3 November 2001
Chapter 11: Voting With Mullah Omar
1. An account of this meeting is given by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11, in his memoir My Life with the Taliban, p.65
2. A UK government statement on 17 November 2004 said that the ‘government does not accept its central conclusion’, pointing out that Iraqi Ministry of Health figures were 8,853 civilians killed and 15,517 wounded
3. Interview with the author, Washington 2009
4. In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf
Chapter 12: Ambush
1. Danger Close by Stuart Tootal, p.24
Chapter 13: Bringing Dolphins to Helmand
1. Interview with Brigadier Ed Butler, London 2008
2. Field Notes Afghanistan, General Staff India, 2nd edition, 1915
3. An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict by Mike Martin is excellent on Helmand’s tribal rivalries and how the US and British forces failed to understand them
4. Richard Williams writing in The Times, 27 October 2014
5. See Parliamentary Report on Opium Production 2001–07
6. Interview with Mohammad Daud, Kabul 24 October 2014
7. UK officials discuss transition, cable, 24 March 2006 (on WikiLeaks)
8. Interview with Lt Col Tootal, London 20 July 2008
Chapter 14: Tethered Goats
1. Inquest, Oxford, 15 February 2008
2. Danger Close by Stuart Tootal, p.72
3. Taking Command by Gen David Richards, p.208 (diary entry for 10 June 2006)
4. Oral evidence to House of Commons Defence Committee, 29 March 2011
5. Like An Intimate War by Mike Martin, War Comes to Garmser by Carter Malkasian is excellent on the tribal dynamics of Helmand
6. Taking Command by Gen David Richards, p.204
Chapter 15: The President in His Bloody Palace
1. ‘Afghanistan at a Crossroads: Challenges, Opportunities and a Way Ahead’, report by Marin Strmecki, 17 August 2006
2. Duty by Robert Gates, p.202
3. Interview with Gen David Richards, September 2014
4. Duty by Robert Gates, p.201
5. Interview with Franz-Michael Melbin, Kabul April 2014
Chapter 16: Whose Side Are You On?
1. Interview with Hamid Mir, Marriott Hotel, Islamabad, November 2006
2. Interview with Richard Codrington, London
3. Decision Points by George W. Bush, p.214
4. See The Taliban I Know by Sami-ul-Haq
5. Cables from Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles, p.69
6. ‘Info About Situation in Lowgar & Kabul’, ISAF report, 21 May 2007; published by WikiLeaks 2010
7. Interview with Christine Fair, 18 December 2014
8. Fair says she had already told the UN she would only serve four months of a six-month contract, and that she was not fired
9. From 2005 to 2006, suicide attacks increased from twenty-seven to 139, roadside bombings from 783 to 1,677
10. Duty by Robert Gates, p.199
11. Ibid., p.200
12. Interview with Wesley Bauguess, 24 February 2015
Chapter 17: The Snake Bites Back
1. Rising Tides by Liam Fox, p.61
Chapter 18: The Weathermen of Kandahar
1. Robert Gates, 7 October 2008
2. Interview with Gen Richards, London September 2014
3. ‘The Madrassa Menace’, Friday Times, 21 January 2011
4. McNeill interview on PBS, 21 May 2009
5. Interview with Colonel Charles Mayo, 6 January 2015
6. ‘America’s Afghan Victims’, The Nation, 20 September 2013
Chapter 19: We’ll Always Have Kabul
1. Arrested in 2004 and imprisoned in Pul-i-Charkhi, ‘Tora Bora Jack’ was pardoned by President Karzai in 2007, and died in Mexico in 2012
2. Gen Daniel Menard, commander of Canadian troops in Kandahar 2009–10, was sent home in disgrace in May 2010 after he was caught having sex with a subordinate
3. National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) report, 2009, which describes Kabul as one of the most polluted cities in the world
Chapter 21: Meeting Colonel Imam
1. The Wars of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen, p.535
2. My Life with the Taliban by Abdul Salam Zaeef
Chapter 22: The View From Washington
1. Duty by Robert Gates, p.298
2. Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward, p.301
3. Cables from Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles, p.148
4. Ibid., p.239
5. Interview with Hamid Karzai, Kabul 19 July 2009
6. By the time RAF Lyneham closed in 2011 the coffins of 345 men and women had passed through it
7. Face the Nation, 30 March 2009
8. Duty by Robert Gates, p.353
9. Washington Post, 21 September 2009
10. Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward
Chapter 23: All About the Politics
1. Interview with Umer Daudzai, Islamabad 10 May 2011
Chapter 25: Losing the Moral High Ground in Margaritaville
1. Murder at Camp Delta by Joseph Hickman, Simon & Schuster 2015
2. Shaker Aamer blog post, related in a letter to his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, 14 February 2014
3. My Life with the Taliban by Mullah Zaeef
4. Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Slahi
Chapter 26: Chairman Mullen and the Cadillac of the Skies
1. This Week, ABC, 15 August 2010
2. Thieves of State by Sarah Chayes, p.154
3. Senate Armed Services Committee, 15 March 2011
4. Duty by Robert Gates
5. Time magazine, 24 October 2011
Chapter 27: Killing bin Laden
1. ‘Dead Osama was Brought Into Abbottabad and Killed’, Pakistan Observer, 12 May 2011
2. Mohamed al Qahtani, WikiLeaks, The Guantánamo Files, www.wikileaks.org/wikileaksgitmo/prisoner/63.html
3. Musharraf on Good Morning America, 23 September 2009
4. Interview with al Jazeera, January 2015. Head to Head, recorded 10 February 2015 to air April 2015. Interview with Sarah Montague on BBC Hardtalk, 11 February 2015
5. ‘The Shooter’, Esquire magazine, March 2013
Postscript: War Never Leaves You
1. The figure was given by Atheel ak Nujaifi, regional Governor of Nineveh
2. ‘From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State’ by Cole Bunzel, Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, 2015
3. Ayman al Zawahiri wrote a letter to Zarqawi in 2005
4. According to figures collated by Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London, more than 20,000 travelled to Syria and Iraq
5. EU Election Assessment Team report on elections. 16.7 per cent was contributed by the UK
6. David Cameron at Camp Bastion, 3 October 2014