What the Taliban Told Me

By: Ian Fritz

Narrated by: Ian Fritz

An “essential” (Kevin Maurer, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir of a young Air Force linguist coming of age in a war that is lost.

When Ian Fritz joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so out of necessity. He hadn’t been accepted into colleges thanks to an indifferent high school career. He’d too often slept through his classes as he worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant to help pay the bills for his trailer-dwelling family in Lake City, Florida.

But the Air Force recognizes his potential and sends him to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Dari and Pashto, the main languages of Afghanistan. By 2011, Fritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist and one of only a tiny number of people in the world trained to do this job on low-flying gunships. He monitors communications on the ground and determines in real time which Afghans are Taliban and which are innocent civilians. This eavesdropping is critical to supporting Special Forces units on the ground, but there is no training to counter the emotional complexity that develops as you listen to people’s most intimate conversations over the course of two tours, Fritz listens to the Taliban for hundreds of hours, all over the country night and day, in moments of peace and in the middle of battle. What he hears teaches him about the people of Afghanistan—Taliban and otherwise—the war, and himself. Fritz’s fluency is his greatest asset to the military, yet it becomes the greatest liability to his own commitment to the cause.

Both proud of his service and in despair that he is instrumental in destroying the voices that he hears, What the Taliban Told Me is a “fraught, moving” (Kirkus Reviews) coming-of-age memoir and a reckoning with our twenty years of war in Afghanistan.

©2023 Ian Fritz (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

Meaningful Perspective

The familiar, conflicting balance of knowing and loving a people through their language and culture, then using said knowledge to support the war against those who belong to it. Thanks for writing —fellow DLI trained Pashto linguist

The raw honesty

As a person that also loves this country for odd reasons. I could relate to so much of the thoughts presented. And I found I cried, laughed and related more than once.

Spot on

The accuracy of the feelings of nostalgia from DLI, community of being on an air crew, being a”zipper suited sun god”, the purgatory feeling of passing through “The Deid”, and questioning the whole meaning of the conflict in Afghanistan… the book hit the nail on the head. Bravo.

Poignant and Provocative

A heartfelt and reflective accounting of the friction that is created when you are called on to kill. A glimpse behind the pomp and circumstance of military parade to view the seedy and dark underbelly of war. Few books I read these days cause me to stop and question my beliefs as a veteran, fewer still cause me to tear up and cry. Thank you for sharing your story, Dr. Fritz.