Soldiers of God

Acknowledgments

John D. Panitza and Kenneth Tomlinson of Reader’s Digest encouraged me to go to Afghanistan the first time and showed an interest in my project throughout, as did Cullen Murphy and William Whitworth of The Atlantic. Editors at The New Republic and the Wall Street Journal were also helpful. The book was written with the help of a grant from the John M. Olin Foundation and the Institute for Educational Affairs; I am especially grateful to Kimberly Ohnemus and Tom Skladony of those two organizations. My agent, Carl D. Brandt, made the selling of this book to a top publisher seem easy, something I had never thought possible. My editor, Michael C. Janeway, helped me to progress technically as a writer for the first time in years. Thanks are also due to Julia Carmel and Larry Cooper at Houghton Mifflin, and to Eric Haas at The Atlantic.

In chapter 5, a short quote from Abdul Haq is taken from an interview he once gave John Fullerton, whose 1983 book, The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, is the best of the early primers on the war. In chapter 6, much of the information on Quetta is taken from an article I wrote for the March 1988 issue of The American Spectator. Other, smaller sections of the book previously appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Reader’s Digest.

In Greece, Alice Anne Demosthenos and Eleni Angelinos were great friends to my family during a difficult period, and their kind help allowed me many more hours of writing than I normally would have had.

In Peshawar, Anne Hurd and Kurt Lohbeck opened their home to me and arranged my first interviews with Abdul Haq and others. Massoud Akram, Dr. Mohammed Yaqub Barikzai, Wakhil Abdul Bedar, Mohammed Es Haq, Hassan Kakar, Farouk Adam Khan, and Mohammed Anwar Khan, among many others, helped me to understand the culture and politics of the Pathans. Azima Atmar and Isabelle Moussard tutored me on the subject of women in Afghan society, as did Anne Hurd.

Joe Gaal, Kathy Gannon, Steve Masty, and Tony O’Brien were the most delightful friends one could have in a place like Peshawar. Joe Gaal died in 1989. I will miss him. He was a talented, understated photographer whose willingness to risk his life provided the outside world with many telling photos of the Soviet occupation.

Helena Beattie, Tony Davis, Ed Girardet, Ed Gorman, John Gunston, Peter Jouvenal, Abdul Jabar Sabit, Rob Schultheis, Lisa Schiffren, Savik Shuster, Nancy deWolf Smith, and Brian Wilder are friends and colleagues whose help and good company I will cherish forever.