An Absence of Faith

Inspired by real-world events, AN ABSENCE OF FAITH: A Tale of Afghanistan is a novel of the collapse of Afghanistan, seen through the eyes of two protagonists, Daniyal, an Afghan army private, and Colonel Trevanathan, a U.S. Army officer, assigned the Sisyphean task of ending Afghan government corruption.

Daniyal is a university student in Kabul, who is forced into the Afghan army by a military press gang. He is starved, beaten, and watches his friends die from incompetent leadership. When he is made the Headquarters clerk for the heartless Command Sergeant Major Mahmood, he learns his army's leaders are getting rich from selling their soldiers' food and medical supplies. Daniyal is torn between the privilege and safety his headquarters' job provides versus his complicity in the widespread corruption.

The second parallel story is the arrival in Kabul of U.S. Army Colonel William Trevanathan, who is to be the Counter Corruption Director for the NATO command in Afghanistan. It is November 2015. Trevanathan learns that multiple NATO countries plan to pull out of the war from their frustration with Afghan embezzlement of NATO military aid. The domino effect of departing Western allies will likely lose the war against the Taliban, as the Afghan military is incapable of fighting on its own. Trevanathan's job is to prevent that NATO pullout by ensuring the corrupt Afghan government players are prosecuted, despite no Afghan politician or senior military commander having been charged in the past fifteen years. The challenge is great enough, before Colonel Trevanathan learns his efforts are being undermined by The U.S. Embassy.

Both Daniyal and Trevanathan embark on a Kafka-esque adventure across the breadth of Afghanistan to save the Afghan people and themselves, as they fight to cling to their humanity and beliefs in a war where allies are enemies and yes almost always means no.

For anyone who has ever wanted clarity why the U.S. was unable to defeat the Taliban despite spending $2 trillion, investing twenty years into building the Afghan National Army, and suffering tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, this is the book you've been waiting for.

Craig Trebilcock is a writer on military and legal issues. His professional articles have appeared in ARMY magazine, PRISM (a publication of the National Defense University), The Journal of Homeland Security, and through the Strategic Studies Institute. He has written three novels regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.