COIN Academy Reading List

Small Wars Journal and Abu Muqawama recently commented on the formation of the new U.S. Army Counterinsurgency (COIN) Academy in Afghanistan. We were particularly interested in the Academy’s pursuit of building a first-class COIN library.

So… SWJ and AM have decided to aid in building the library with a little help from our friends. We e-mailed the COIN Academy requesting their reading list. They responded with titles of books and movies that once in hand would go a long way in establishing a world-class COIN library.

To streamline our effort we have set up the Afghanistan COIN Library page on Amazon.

The books and movies you purchase there and send on to Afghanistan will seed the COIN Academy’s library with a few titles that will allow the staff to better appreciate history, culture, and insurgency in Afghanistan. Eventually the titles will make their way to the library of the Afghan Defense University of which the COIN Academy will become a part. The shipping address (while hidden at Amazon) is direct to the Academy and we will track to ensure your book or movie makes it way to Afghanistan.

A tip of the hat to Small Wars Council member Carl (currently a private sector pilot in Iraq and blogger at Because We're Here Boy, No One Else; But Us) who started the ball rolling by e-mailing us an offer to send multiple copies of FM 3-24 to the Academy.

Thanks much for helping us out on this project. What do we get out of this? A pretty darn good COIN reading list!