Kandak by Patrick Hennessey: review As Western forces prepare to depart Afghanistan, the Afghan National Army (ANA) is assuming the burden of the vital security work needed to stop the country sliding back into failed-state chaos. ANA soldiers have been fighting alongside Nato armies for years, yet on the rare occasions that they are mentioned in the media, they are usually painted as a dope-smoking, kohl-eyed and untrustworthy rabble. When Patrick Hennessey, the ex-Grenadier Guards author of the well-received Junior Officers" Reading Club, first meets the ANA group he is to mentor in Helmand, dressed in a shabby assortment of cast-off uniforms, pyjamas and flip flops, he understands why "the former Sandhurst instructors in the group practically fainted as we stepped in the room." But he grows to respect their bravery and ability in combat, honed by vastly greater fighting experience than many of their British "mentors." Hennessey became so attached to his former Afghan comrades that he returned twice to Afghanistan after leaving the Army in order to tell their overlooked story. By the end of the book it is clear that the ANA is forming up into a reasonable fighting force - although the book is focused mostly on Helmand and does not bring out starkly enough that under-recruitment of majority Pashtuns, who also form the backbone of the Taliban, is its major Achilles" heel. Unexpectedly for a former British officer, Hennessey takes a liberal view of some of the ANA's foibles, including its well-documented use of cannabis, which is much maligned by the same British soldiers who "wore their paralytic drunkenness back home as a badge of pride." Disapprovingly contrasting the MoD's "woefully ill-conceived" zero tolerance to drugs, he witnesses in the UK "naive young men back off leave booted out for an error of judgment by functioning alcoholic officers who were still cadging lifts from everyone else in the mess while they served out their drunk-driving bans." The widespread hand holding and wearing of eye-liner - and occasional keeping of "tea boy" catamites - by the Afghan soldiers leads a representative Para to conclude that "they were all bender boys." However, Hennessey describes the powerful feelings of brotherhood engendered by training and fighting together in any army. So far this year 45 Nato soldiers have been killed by Afghan forces in well-publicised "insider" attacks. These arise as much from cultural misunderstandings as the deliberate infiltration boasted of by the Taliban, and this topical book, beautifully written with a mix of cantonment vernacular and Oxford-educated erudition, gives important insights at a crucial time in Afghanistan's transition. Kandak: Fighting With Afghans Patrick Hennessey Allen Lane, £16.99, 400pp