Looking for the Enemy: Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban

'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.' --Review in Foreign Affairs

'Bette Dam is one of the most talented researchers I know.' --Anand Gopal, author 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.