Just before Christmas 1989, a small group of armed fighters crossed a narrow river marking the frontier with Sierra Leone, and entered the West African state of Liberia. The civil war which followed plunged the African continent's oldest republic into a long and agonising nightmare, during which the country was torn apart and its people brutalised by terror, violence and bloodshed. The war promised to liberate Liberians after almost ten years of vicious dictatorship under President Samuel Doe; instead, as the first shots were fired, the seeds of Liberia's devastation were sown.
Mark Huband's account of the conflict, which begins a few days after the original incursion, is a moving and dramatic portrayal of the war as it unfolded. His extensive research and access to key figures in the conflict, together with a wealth of poignant and disturbing eye-witness detail, provide a fascinating portrait of Doe, his US-backed rule, and the enemies he made. Vivid and often harrowing, the book draws upon the author's experience of living among the fighters, the leaders and the terrorised population as they witnessed the growing horror of the conflict in which they had become trapped.

Just before Christmas 1989, a small group of armed fighters crossed a narrow river marking the frontier with Sierra Leone, and entered the West African state of Liberia. The civil war which followed plunged the African continent's oldest republic into a long and agonising nightmare, during which the country was torn apart and its people brutalised by terror, violence and bloodshed. The war promised to liberate Liberians after almost ten years of vicious dictatorship under President Samuel Doe; instead, as the first shots were fired, the seeds of Liberia's devastation were sown.
Mark Huband's account of the conflict, which begins a few days after the original incursion, is a moving and dramatic portrayal of the war as it unfolded. His extensive research and access to key figures in the conflict, together with a wealth of poignant and disturbing eye-witness detail, provide a fascinating portrait of Doe, his US-backed rule, and the enemies he made. Vivid and often harrowing, the book draws upon the author's experience of living among the fighters, the leaders and the terrorised population as they witnessed the growing horror of the conflict in which they had become trapped.

In The Skull Beneath the Skin: Africa After the Cold War award-winning journalist Mark Huband argues that foreign involvement in Africa - whether by colonialists, financial donors, armies, political reformers, or Cold War protagonists - has been the single most destructive element in the continent's history. He argues that the catastrophes that hav

In The Skull Beneath the Skin: Africa After the Cold War award-winning journalist Mark Huband argues that foreign involvement in Africa - whether by colonialists, financial donors, armies, political reformers, or Cold War protagonists - has been the single most destructive element in the continent's history. He argues that the catastrophes that have erupted since the end of the Cold War are a legacy of that long foreign involvement, and that stability will be achieved on the continent only if African countries are left to find their own solutions to the problems they face. The end of the Cold War may now offer the opportunity for Africa to achieve the independence it never really achieved when the European powers departed from their former colonies.

Based on eyewitness accounts and original interviews, this bold new work provides a vivid portrayal of the evolving political and cultural role played by Islamic fundamentalist movements. Drawing on his firsthand experiences, Mark Huband moves deep inside the contemporary Islamic movements of countries as diverse as Morocco and Afghanistan.Huband reveals how Western powers have contributed to the rise of Islamic movements by their earlier support of the Afghan Islamic resistance and gives detailed accounts of his discussions with militant groups, Muslim scholars, and political opponents of the Islamic movements.Enriching these discussions, the author contextualizes the movements by exploring their historical and intellectual framework. The book uniquely illustrates the variety found within the movements, as well as the range of relationships the Islamic movements have to the various countries in which they are active."Warriors of the Prophet" details the current crisis in Algeria; the disappointments of Arab nationalism and socialist experiments in Egypt; the social breakdown of Somalia in relation to the ideal of an Islamic way of life; the disaffected youth in the Islamic movements of Morocco, Egypt, and elsewhere; and the Islamic experiment and its relationship with the non-Islamic world as revealed in Sudan's experience since 1989. Through these insightful accounts, Huband gives us a penetrating exploration of one of the major issues of the late twentieth century.

Today's intelligence community faces challenges that would have been inconceivable only a dozen years ago. Just as al-Qaeda's destruction of the Twin Towers heralded a revolution in global diplomacy, the events of 9/11 also threw two centuries of spy-craft into turmoil - because this new enemy could not be bought. Gone were the sleepers and moles whose trade in secrets had sustained intelligence agencies in both peacetime and war. A new method of intelligence had been born. The award-winning former Financial Times security correspondent Mark Huband here takes us deep inside this new unseen world of spies and intelligence. With privileged access to intelligence officers from Rome to Kabul and from Khartoum to Guantanamo Bay, he reveals how spies created secret channels to the IRA, deceived Iran's terrorist allies, frequently attempted to infiltrate al-Qaeda, and forced Libya to abandon its nuclear weapons. Using accounts from ex-KGB officers, Huband vividly describes the devastation caused by the West's misreading of Soviet intentions in Africa, and explains how ill-prepared western intelligence agencies were when the Cold War was replaced by the perception of a new terrorist threat. Benefiting from privileged access to intelligence sources across the world, Trading Secrets provides a unique and controversial assessment of the catastrophic failure of spies to grasp the realities of the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan, and draws upon exclusive interviews with serving officers in assessing the ability of the major intelligence agencies to combat the threat of twenty-first century terrorism.