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“A riveting account of a warlord’s rise to power that has all the drama, intrigue, and warfare of The Kite Runner, only this Afghan story is real.” —Scott C. Levi, associate professor of Central Asian history, Ohio State University In The Last Warlord, scholar Brian Glyn Williams takes Westerners inside the world of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the most powerful of the Afghan warlords who have dominated the country since the Soviet invasion. Based on lengthy interviews with Dostum and his family and subcommanders, as well as local chieftains, mullahs, elders, Taliban enemies and prisoners of war, and women’s rights activists, The Last Warlord tells the story of Dostum’s rise to power from peasant villager to the man who fought a long and bitter war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fanatics who sought to repress his people. The book details how, after 9/11, the CIA contacted the mysterious Mongol warrior to help US Special Forces wage a covert, horse-mounted war in the mountains of Afghanistan that ended in a stunning victory; how Dostum and the US Green Berets liberated the ancient shrine of Mazar i Sharif, Afghanistan's holiest mosque; and how sensational media accounts have made him the object of rampant mythologizing. With the United States drawing down troops in 2014 and Dostum poised to re-enter the world stage to fight a resurgent Taliban, The Last Warlord provides important historical context to the controversy swirling around Afghanistan’s warlord culture and is an essential contribution to the debate on Afghanistan’s future. Brian Glyn Williams is a professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts—Dartmouth and the author of Afghanistan Declassified: A Guide to America’s Longest War. He has worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency tracking suicide bombers in Afghanistan.