Manhattan to Baghdad
Despatches from the Frontline In the War On Terror
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Beschreibung des Verlags
On September 11, Paul McGeough stood transfixed on the streets of downtown Manhattan. Only a month earlier he had been in Afghanistan, reporting on the humanitarian crisis gripping the country under Taliban rule. Now he was forced to run for his life as the World Trade Center's second tower collapsed in a cloud of smoke and debris.Foreign correspondents are forever on the road, but few find themselves in the right place at the right time as often as Paul McGeough. Within weeks of George W. Bush's declaration of the War on Terror, he was back in Afghanistan, reporting from the trenches on the US-led war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. What followed was twelve months hurtling around the globe, from shattered New York to the frontlines of war-torn Central Asia and the mess of the Middle East. He returned to New York for the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and then it was back to Baghdad.During that year he saw three colleagues killed in a Taliban ambush. He visited poverty-stricken villages and the lavish offices of Iraqi politicians. He interviewed Northern Alliance commanders, families of suicide bombers and families of September 11 victims. He was the house guest of an Afghan warlord and an unwelcome visitor to the Jenin refugee camp, destroyed by Israeli forces.Dramatic, poignant and powerful, Manhattan to Baghdad provides an eyewitness account of the first year of the first major war in the new millennium. It is essential reading for a better understanding of the seismic changes taking place in the world we thought we knew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McGeough, veteran war correspondent and a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, offers a sobering look at the disparate battlefields of America's war on terrorism in his new collection of musings from the front. An eyewitness to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, he travels on assignment through Central Asia and the Middle East, ending up in Baghdad in October 2002 to report on the impending U.S.-led military action against Iraq. The book is presented as a collection of journal entries in which the author reflects on a world defined, for better or for worse, by its relationship with the U.S. According to McGeough, the road to Baghdad runs through Israel, and he devotes a good share of the book to the events of the second intifada, interviewing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and surveying the destruction done by Israeli troops in the Jenin refugee camp. His most compelling analysis comes from Afghanistan, where he profiled the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masoud in the days before his assassination, and offers his reader an insider's view on the culture and leadership of the alliance. He is quick to point out the irony of the allied "bombs and bread" campaign and remains skeptical of Western resolve to rectify the mounting humanitarian crisis in the region. McGeough is an adept reporter but he lacks the sweeping historical knowledge and intellectual firepower that a journalist like Thoomas Friedman can bring to frontline dispatches.Nevertheless, his book provides valuable insight on the responsibilities of America and the repercussions of its expanding international footprint.
