{"id":3140,"date":"2009-06-23T04:55:18","date_gmt":"2009-06-23T04:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3140"},"modified":"2009-06-23T04:55:18","modified_gmt":"2009-06-23T04:55:18","slug":"robert-young-pelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3140","title":{"rendered":"Robert Young Pelton"},"content":{"rendered":"

The author of\u00a0 The World’s Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition<\/strong> <\/a>\u00a0and Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0was nice enough to drop by in the comment section <\/a>and discuss his firsthand view of special\u00a0operators in\u00a0Afghanistan. During the course of the discussion, in response to a question from Lexington Geen<\/a><\/strong>, RYP<\/a><\/strong> offered up a couple of links that I think readers will find worthwhile. Here is a quote from one of them:<\/p>\n

….The next morning, about 60 Afghan cavalry came thundering into the compound. Ten minutes later, another 40 riders galloped up. General Abdul Rashid Dostum had arrived.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Our mission was simple,” another soldier says. “Support Dostum. They told us, \u2018If Dostum wants to go to Kabul, you are going with him. If he wants to take over the whole country, do it. If he goes off the deep end and starts whacking people, advise higher up and maybe pull out.’ This was the most incredibly open mission we have ever done.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Dostum” is the mercurial, ex-Communist, Uzbek Afghan\u00a0warlord, \u00a0General Abdul Rashid Dostum<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here are the links:<\/p>\n

The Legend of Heavy D and the Boys: In the Field With an Afghan Warlord<\/a> <\/p>\n

Inside the Afghan War Machine<\/a><\/p>\n

Incidentally, I read The World’s Most Dangerous Places<\/strong> in an earlier edition, back when\u00a0Pelton’s uber-violence list was topped by Algeria, Colombia and several, broken down,\u00a0West African nations. It’s a great book and a fun read that I have lent out to many of my students who had an all\u00a0too idealistic and\u00a0 parochial view of the world. It cured a few of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author of\u00a0 The World’s Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition \u00a0and Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror\u00a0was nice enough to drop by in the comment section and discuss his firsthand view of special\u00a0operators in\u00a0Afghanistan. During the course of the discussion, in response to a question from Lexington Geen, RYP offered up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,310,262,527,420,133,132,574,521,199,372,520,582,10,312,557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-3-gen-gangs","category-4gw","category-afghanistan","category-authors","category-book","category-dystopia","category-failed-state","category-geography","category-insurgency","category-non-state-actors","category-osint","category-robert-young-pelton","category-state-failure","category-tribes","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}