Looking for the Enemy

'Bette Dam was one of the very few Western journalists to gain real access to the Taliban movement' - The Guardian

'Bette Dam's biography/hunt for the truth behind the figure of Mullah Omar will change everything you thought you know about Afghanistan.' - Victor Blue, fellow at the New America Foundation, photographer for The New York Times

'Bette Dam is the most knowledgeable scholar on Mullah Omar.' - Carter Malkasian, former adviser to American military commanders in Afghanistan

'Dam's richly detailed study, based on years spent tracking the Taliban as an investigative journalist, exposes many of the inner workings of the group and highlights how little the West truly understands about how the movement functions.' - Foreign Affairs

'Bette Dam is one of the most talented researchers I know.' - Anand Gopal, author of Pulitzer-nominated No Good Men Among the Living

For twenty years, the Taliban was the number one enemy of Western forces in Afghanistan. But it was an enemy that they knew little about, and about whose founder and leader, Mullah Omar, they knew even less.

Armed with only a fuzzy black-and-white photo of the man, investigative journalist Bette Dam decided to track down the reclusive Taliban chief a decade back. But in the course of what had seemed an almost impossible job, she got to know the Taliban inside out, realized how dangerously misinformed the global forces fighting it were, and made a startling discovery about the elusive Omar's whereabouts.

The outcome of a five-year-long pursuit, Looking for the Enemy is a woman journalist's epic story that takes the reader deep into the dangerous mountains and war-ravaged valleys of Afghanistan as it throws up several unknowns about an organization that is now once again at the helm in one of the world's most fragile states.