VQR Spring 2010: “The Path to Yaghestan”
The Spring 2010 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review came out on April 1. The story and photos that resulted from my October 2009 trip to Wardak Province, Afghanistan, are finally in print, alongside a portfolio of work from writers including Neil Shea, J. Malcolm Garcia, and Jason Motlagh, and photographer Louie Palu.
My story is called “The Path to Yaghestan.” I went to Afghanistan after reading General Stanley McChrystal’s summer 2009 commander’s assessment of the war effort. I wanted to see where the rubber was hitting the road on his counterinsurgency plan, which seemed like it promised a significant departure from the previous eight years’ failed counterterrorism strategy, which was as poorly conceived as it was undermanned and under-resourced.
Read the story to see what it’s like to try to put counterinsurgency into action in an essentially medieval place.
