An Interesting Read

Jihad! The Secret War in Afghanistan.  I recently found myself with a bit of free time a few weeks ago and decided to dive into a book Joel loaned me.

This book sets a very bold tone from the book's cover images depicting military action in the Afghanistan region.  This one starts out a bit slow, tracking a British Military man working his way up to become a paratrooper.  During his adventures he starts to become interested in the Special Air Service, a sort of James Bond'ish type CIA division according to the author. 

As you track his progress the author makes his way into some special post military work assisting the Mujahideen with their holy war against the Russians.  With that said it became very difficult to put this book down once I was about half way into it. 

One thing I found very interesting was the level of detail the author depicted in his battles with the Russians as well as the day to day living conditions.  At some point I started to come to the conclusion that this book was definately a work of fiction, even though he claims it to be a "true story" about his life in Afghanistan.  Come to find out the author was ridiculed for his "false" claims in this book.  Setting that aside I still enjoyed this read once I took it as a fictional story based on facts at the time.

All in all I would recomend this book, especially given the current state of affairs within this region.  I have actually heard rumors the US may be using ex-Mujahideen leaders to assist with training the current military within the region.