When Charlie, an American Special Forces soldier, finds out the Taliban is trying to sell a Soviet suitcase nuke to Al-Qaeda, he enlists his former interpreter-turned-contractor Ahmed Wali to help recover it. But Wali--one of the "good" Afghans--has his own problems. The first is with the local warlord, Jan, who is trying to drive him out of business; the second is with his uncle, Razaq, whose ties to the Taliban jeopardize his ability to work with the Americans. As Charlie and Wali--with the help of Felix, a morally fluid but pragmatic CIA officer--work to get the suitcase nuke off the battlefield, Air Force Tech Sgt. Canterbury starts to investigate Wali's business. Canterbury is convinced Wali is a bad guy and arrests him for working with the Taliban. The arrest sends the whole operation awry and forces Charlie and Felix to work in the moral gray areas in order to achieve their objectives. The Good Afghan is an exploration of identity, politics, and the story of the Afghan war and America's nation-building experiment gone wrong.