The Afghan Solution
The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan

Explosive inside account of why the West has failed to build peace in Afghanistan.

Published in time for the tenth anniversary of the Afghan war, this explosive book exposes how the West lost its chance to rout the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan. In late 2001, a group of Afghan tribal leaders met to plan how to topple the Taliban. Within weeks the plan was in tatters, thwarted by the West, and the group's leader, Abdul Haq, assassinated by the Taliban. Lucy Morgan Edwards's investigation into Haq's tragic mission led her to Taliban ministers, warlords, spies and two American Republican brothers who financed Haq's venture. Based on the author's own experience of the war in Afghanistan, this book reveals how a solution to the war was lost and why it matters today.

CONTENTS
Author's Note
Acknowledgements
Maps
Dramatis Personae
Principal characters of the narrative and their positions in 2001
Chronology
Introduction
Chapter One
The 'Peace versus Justice' Strategy Kabul, June 2002
Chapter Two
Re-igniting Fundamentalism Kabul, July - October 2002
Chapter Three The Poetess of Jalalabad Jalalabad,
October 2002
Chapter Four
'I'd Rather be a Lion for a Day, than a Jackal all my Life' Jalalabad, October 2002
Chapter Five
A 'Cataclysmic Event for the West' Peshawar, October 2002
Chapter Six The 'Lion of Kabul'
Afghanistan, 1980s
Chapter Seven 'These Days, We Don't know who the Enemy is'.
Jalalabad, 2002
Chapter Eight
'Afghanistan will be the World's Largest Poppy Field' Jalalabad, Shinwar and Kabul, May 2003
Chapter Nine
'First you call us Freedom Fighters, now Warlords' Herat and Jalalabad, May 2003
Chapter Ten Playing the al-Qaeda Card Jalalabad, Goste and Fatemena, August 2003
Chapter Eleven'No-one Could Hold a Candle to him' - the Hurdles Faced by a Private US Effort to Support Abdul Haq (Part I) Jalalabad, August 2003
Chapter Twelve
A Perspective on British Post-September 11
Strategy and Intelligence - The UK Haq Effort (Part I)
London, September 2003
Chapter Thirteen 'He Would have Begun a Revolution, That's Why
They Killed him so Fast' - A Taliban Interior Minister Speaks
Kabul, January 2004
Chapter Fourteen 'Camp Followers' in Kabul
Kabul and Jalalabad, January 2004 - January 2005
Chapter Fifteen The King's Group and 'Rome' Kabul, December 2004
Chapter Sixteen
From Jihadi Commanders to Taliban
Kabul, Faizabad and Jalalabad, 2004. Chapter Seventeen
Return to Kandahar
Kandahar, 2005
Chapter Eighteen
Governance and Traditional Structures
Jalalabad, 2004. Chapter Nineteen
A Further Perspective on British Post-September
11 Intelligence - The UK Haq Effort (Part II)
London and Geneva, 2009
Chapter Twenty

When did the US Really Choose Karzai? - A Private US effort to Support Abdul Haq (Part II) Geneva, July 2009
Chapter Twenty-One
Abdul Haq and CIA Strategy in Afghanistan

Chapter Twenty-TwoConclusions and Ways Forward
Appendices
Endnotes
Accronyms
Glossary
Bibliography