Ahmad Shah Massoud was Afghanistan’s best hope

Ahmed Shah Massoud was described as ‘the Afghan who won the Cold War’. While famous in France (he was educated at the Kabul lycée, and the French saw him as the ultimate maquisard who drove a super-power out of his country), he is not a familiar figure in Britain. This book, a rich and detailed account of the travails and tragedy of Afghanistan between 1976 and Massoud’s murder in 2001, will correct that.

Sandy Gall’s knowledge of the jihad is encyclopaedic. He was the first well-known journalist to make the dangerous journey into occupied Afghanistan and bring the human cost of this terrible war to our TV screens. To produce such a book at the age of 93 deserves admiration.

Many warlords are also writers: Babur, T.E. Lawrence, Churchill and, as we now know, Massoud, who kept a diary throughout the jihad. In a tremendous scoop, Gall obtained access to some of these hand-written exercise books.