As noted in the epigraphic quote to this review, this had gone back at least as far as the British and the sabotage of Afghan society was executed by many opportunistic players during the Cold War. In an interview with Fitzgerald, China was cited, in addition to the U.S. and Pakistan, as a country that had provided training and/or arms by a former fighter for U.S.-backed Islamist terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
There are some things in the book that readers will have to decide for themselves the degree of importance and plausibility to assign to, such as certain connections made to rivalries among royal families and elite institutions from hundreds of years back. Another involves the man who is referenced in the subtitle of the book: Desmond FitzMaurice. He is described as a composite character and, interestingly, he is also the character that seems the most fantastical. It is these aspects that I imagine contribute to classifying this book as a novelized memoir. However, there are many other named people the authors discuss as providing important pieces to the Afghanistan puzzle that, along with the extensive research and contextual on the ground experience during the period in question, make for an interesting and informative read.
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