title: Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare
author:  Hy S. Rothstein 
description: Hy S. Rothstein, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army with a Ph.D. in international relations, served as a Special Forces officer for more than 26 years, spending many years training and advising governments threatened by active insurgencies. He is now senior lecturer in the department of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
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  ## S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort
  
  
    
  
  
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  _( S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - 1 )_
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Balazs Pataki
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  To outsiders, the former USSR is always been a place where everything is
  strangely different. All the more so in the Exclusion Zone around the ill-
  fated Chernobyl power plant, where after a secret experiment went wrong in
  2006, the laws of physics are bent and mysterious phenomena manifest.
  
  
  In 2011, Al Qaeda detonates nuclear warheads in Kabul. In what was once the
  Afghan wilderness, apparently a New Zone is created.
  
  
  Three years later a scientific expedition tries to find out if the creation of
  the New Zone could be connected to the Chernobyl experiment. When the
  researchers disappear, a search and rescue operation is launched.
  
  
  For Major Mikhailo Tarasov, a veteran of the Exclusion Zone, this mission into
  post-apocalyptic Afghanistan is more than just another dangerous task: in the
  land where his father died, he must 