Peace Corps veteran reflects on Afghanistan

Toby Marion’s memoir, ‘Afghanistan: Crossroads and Kingdoms,’ explores his time and observations as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s and analysis of what’s happened in Afghanistan since he left. (Francisco Martinez / The Ark)

Tiburon resident Toby Marion motivated himself to finish his memoir about his time serving in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan by telling himself, “These things need to be said.”

“It had boiled up,” he says. “I need to say these things in this book — that what we’ve done in Afghanistan is tragic.”

Marion is set to discuss “Afghanistan: Crossroads and Kingdoms — My 1970s Peace Corps Service and Recent Afghan History,” released in January, at an Aug. 25 event at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

A retired oil-industry professional who also had a wine-importing business in Hong Kong, Marion, now 74, served as a Peace Corps member from 1972 to 1975 in Afghanistan, first training high-school science teachers in rural parts of the Kapisa province, just outside of capital city Kabul, and later teaching engineering at Kabul University.

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