“We lost the war in southern Afghanistan and it broke my heart.” The first sentence of The Dogs Are Eating Them Now announces that Graeme Smith, a foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail who covered the war in detail on the ground, has written more than a simple recounting of his reportage.

To be sure, the book (which is nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction) contains the requisite behind-the-scenes details about doing journalism in a dangerous time and place, including an examination of the detainee abuse scandal and material gleaned from Smith’s Emmy-winning video series, Talking to the Taliban. Revisiting these stories provides the book with its greatest energy, though Smith clearly enjoys being unrestrained by word count or deadline. His contention is that, despite the best intentions of everyone involved, Canada’s war in Afghanistan was “tragic,” “a farce,” and “a debacle.”    

If this debacle is at the heart of The Dogs Are Eating Them Now, the book’s soul is in its illustration of how the war affected a young reporter destined to visit Afghanistan 17 times over the course of four violent, heartrending years. And yet, for all Smith’s frustration, the book is far from a tirade. It is a slow chronicle of horror stacked on absurdity. The author acts as an observer, but is interested neither in passing judgment nor offering solutions, a situation that creates an emotional distance.

Smith’s was an early voice pointing out the elephant in the room: 10 years of war achieved very little of lasting worth for the people of Afghanistan. This observation will generate the greatest debate about the book. Its importance, though, lies in Smith’s willingness to tell what he perceives as the unalloyed truth. Whether one agrees with him or not, the book is an important contribution to our attempt to understand Canada’s experience in Afghanistan.