In the Warlords' Shadow

In 2010, U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) in Afghanistan began a new and innovative program to fight the Taliban insurgency using the movement's structure and strategy against it. The Village Stability Operations/Afghan Local Police initiative consisted of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL Teams embedding in key villages and districts throughout rural Afghanistan where they partnered with villagers to fight the Taliban insurgency holistically. Instead of using a top-down approach where security was something often done to a village SOF inverted the strategy by using a bottom-up initiative that leveraged the population against the Taliban so that security was something that was done with the community. The Village Stability Operations program partnered with village elders to resist and defeat the Taliban and, as security improved, empowered communities by engaging in local governance efforts and small-scale development projects. By enlisting Afghans in their own defense, organizing villagers, and addressing their grievances with the Afghan Government, SOF was able to defeat the Taliban's military as well as its political arm. Rooted as much in the traditions of U.S. Army Special Forces as much as an outgrowth of the lessons learned in the broader SOF community from its years of counterinsurgency work in Iraq and Afghanistan, this new method of war fundamentally changed the terms of the conflict with the Taliban all across Afghanistan. However, little is known about the Village Stability Operations initiative outside of the Special Operations community even though it had a profound effect on the course of the war — until now. In this gripping, first-hand account of how the Village Stability Operations program functioned in practice, Daniel R. Green provides a long-term perspective of how Special Operations Forces stabilized the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. The province was the site of the southern Pashtun uprising against the Taliban in 2001 led by Hamid Karzai, the future President of Afghanistan, who partnered with U.S. Army Special Forces to launch an unconventional war against the Islamist movement. The Village War provides a comprehensive overview of how SOF adapted to the unique demands of the local insurgency and is a rare, inside look into how Special Operations confronted the Taliban by fighting a "better war" and in so doing fundamentally changed the course of the war in Afghanistan.