Peter Oborne

Tartan Taleban

What Sir Walter Scott’s Highland tales can teach us about Afghanistan

On a freezing January morning two years ago, I joined a US army assault in an al-Qa’eda-controlled village in northern Iraq. We were dropped by helicopter half a mile from the village not long after midnight and shivered till dawn, when the soldiers launched their assault. They met with no resistance and by late afternoon had completed their searches and were mostly asleep.

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