front cover of Doomed in Afghanistan
Doomed in Afghanistan
A U.N. Officer's Memoir of the Fall of Kabul and Najibullah's Failed Escape, 1992
Corwin, Phillip
Rutgers University Press, 2002

To understand more deeply the tragic events of September 11, 2001, it is critical to know Afghanistan’s recent and turbulent past. Doomed inAfghanistan provides a first-hand account of how failed diplomacy led to an Islamic fundamentalist victory in a war-torn country, and subsequently, to a Taliban takeover and a home for Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.

In April of 1992, Phillip Corwin was part of a United Nations team in Afghanistan whose mission was to help ensure the transfer of power from the Soviet-installed communist regime of President Najibullah to an interim government (that would prepare for elections). Without the support of the Soviet Union, Najibullah’s regime crumbled, and he was convinced to resign in favor of a national unity government, with the understanding that he would be evacuated to a neutral country (India). Due to a series of miscalculations and machinations, the U.N.’s diplomatic mission failed. Kabul fell to groups of mujahiddin before Najibullah could be evacuated. The inability of the various mujahiddin factions to unite led to their eventual defeat by the Taliban, who four years later routed Najibullah from his safe haven at the U.N. compound, and executed him.

Corwin gives a vivid account of the seminal event of Najibullah’s failed evacuation and the frenzied negotiations that were unable to forestall the anarchy and chaos that followed.

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front cover of Dubious Mandate
Dubious Mandate
A Memoir of the UN in Bosnia, Summer 1995
Phillip Corwin
Duke University Press, 1999
A critical year in the history of peacekeeping, 1995 saw the dramatic transformation of the role of United Nations’ forces in Bosnia from a protective force to being an active combatant under NATO leadership. Phillip Corwin, the UN’s chief political officer in Sarajevo during the summer of that year, presents an insider’s account of the momentous events that led to that transformation. Dubious Mandate interweaves personal experiences of daily life in a war zone—supply shortages, human suffering, assassination attempts, corruption—with historical facts, as Corwin challenges commonly held views of the war with his own highly informed, discerning, and trenchant political commentary.
Sympathetic to the UN’s achievements, yet skeptical of its acquiescence to the use of military force, Corwin is critical both of the Bosnian government’s tactics for drawing NATO into the conflict and of NATO’s eagerness to make peace by waging war. He challenges the popular depiction of the Bosnian government as that of noble victim, arguing that the leaders of all three sides in the conflict were “gangsters wearing coats and ties.” Highly caustic about Western reportage, he examines the policies of various Western political and military leaders and gives a detailed account of a pivotal phase of the war in Bosnia, a period that culminated with NATO’s massive bombing of Bosnian Serb targets and ultimately led to the Dayton Peace Agreement. Without a proper understanding of this critical period, he argues, it is difficult to understand the greater scope of the conflict. Corwin also offers insightful portraits of some of the leading players in the Bosnian drama, including Yasushi Akashi, the UN’s top official in the former Yugoslavia in 1994–95; General Rupert Smith, the British commander in Sarajevo in 1995; and Hasan Muratovic, a future Bosnian prime minister.
Capturing the essence of a tense and difficult time, Dubious Mandate will interest diplomats, politicians, military personnel, scholars, and those still trying to fathom the continuing mission of the United Nations and the unfolding of events in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.


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