Frankly, after reading this account, I became empathetic toward the CIA, Clinton and those in his administration, and the Pakistani and Saudi governments. Clearly their positions and actions lead to the rise of the Taliban. While lots of mistakes and maybe some shortsightedness existed among these players-they were all dealing with intricate and sensitive internal political issues that drove their decisions, or in the case of the United States, lack of action, in post-Soviet Afghanistan.

While Bin Laden would likely have existed without the safe haven he found in Afghanistan, his ability to train and draw followers so freely and with impunity is partially "blowback" from actions take by the CIA, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia during the Soviet-Afghan war as money and weapons poured into the country.

There is also a lot of information about Ahmed Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance. It's interesting to speculate how more assistance to Massoud might have thwarted or overthrown the Taliban and as a result push Bin Laden into less favorable circumstances. But given Massoud's failure as a political leader in his first opportunity, the brutality of his troops, and being an ethnic minority in his country, again one can empathize with why the United States was reluctant to pin their hopes on him.

If you are trying to decide which of the very large number of books about Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Bin Laden are worth reading-this is one of them.


An Immensely Detailed and Fascinating Book   April 3, 2004
 89 out of 94 found this review helpful

"Afghanistanism" used to be a derisive term in the newspaper world. It meant playing up news from obscure far-off places while neglecting what was going wrong on your own home turf.

No longer. Very few countries worldwide have been more important to the U.S. over the past quarter century than this remote, primitive, landlocked and little-understood area tucked in between Iran, Pakistan and the former U.S.S.R. In this weighty and immensely detailed book, Steve Coll, who reported from Afghanistan for the Washington Post (where he is now managing editor) between 1989 and 1992, sorts out for the patient reader one of the most complex diplomatic and military involvements the U.S. has experienced in this century.

The cast of characters is immense, rivaling for sheer size (and personal quirkiness) any novel by Dickens or Dostoyevsky. It ranges from four U.S. Presidents through a platoon of bemedaled generals from five or six countries and a regiment of scheming diplomats down to hard-pressed pilots, miserably ill-equipped guerilla fighters, steely-eyed assassins and suicide bombers. There are more political factions here than most readers will be able to keep track of --- not to mention the factions that spring up within factions. It is all quite dizzying, but also fascinating and important.

Coll is a conscientious reporter. He does his best to keep the reader informed and to make his more important players come alive as human beings. His book is not easy reading, but it rewards well anyone who buckles down and stays with it to the end.

A couple of general impressions: First, Coll demonstrates time and again how much of the really important things that government --- any government --- does in foreign relations is done in deep secrecy, far from the eyes and ears of the average consumer of "news." Secondly, he leaves the impression that disdain and hatred of non-Muslims is pretty much pervasive throughout the Muslim world, coloring the actions and judgments even of those Muslims whom westerners might not consider "extremists."

Another leitmotiv in this almost Wagnerian epic drama is a pervasive lack of interest on the part of American policymakers in the developing crisis in Afghanistan, followed by paralyzing intra-agency squabbles and turf battles once the threat of terrorism became unavoidable. One is reminded of Dickens's satirical governmental invention, the "Circumlocution Office" in Little Dorrit with its famous motto: How Not To Do It.

Coll covers in exhaustive detail the defeat and withdrawal of the Soviet Union; the factional warfare that ensued; the rise of the Taliban from a small cadre of student zealots to a force that ruled most of the country; the emergence of Osama bin Laden; the clumsy and ineffective efforts of the U.S. government to get meaningful cooperation from Saudi Arabia and/or Pakistan in stabilizing and democratizing the region; and the ominous events that led up to --- but did not precisely signal -- the attacks of Sept. 11th. He is especially good on the lack of interest and decisive action by the U.S. after the Russian withdrawal and on the paralyzing rivalries between competing governmental spook shops that caused this breakdown. Action plans would be developed, only to be derailed by fruitless internal debates and objections. "How Not To Do It" indeed!

An additional strength of the book is Coll's knack for thumbnail portraits of the participants. Most memorable are his word pictures of two CIA directors: the religiously driven cold warrior William Casey and the consummate organization man George Tenet. Also well done are his portraits of Afghan warriors like the unlucky Ahmed Shah Massoud (whose assassination closes the book) and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Osama bin Laden himself, though dutifully described, remains necessarily an offstage influence rather than a full-bodied presence. Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia come off in Coll's pages as unreliable allies, to the point of being deceitful in their dealings with the U.S.

GHOST WARS is not beach reading by any means, but those who have the patience to get through it will emerge well informed indeed. Of course, everything changed on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Can a second volume be far behind?

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn


Complexity is the word   March 2, 2004
 85 out of 136 found this review helpful

Ghost wars is an excellent reporting job by Steve Coll. More direct quotes would have been welcomed, but overall, the research and the reporting is enough to project an elightening view on the massively complex Afghan situation America got into after the Russian invasion up to this very day.

A number of things come to light not easily communicated to the American public by our media.

1. A policy to trail and kill bin Laden and his associates was undertaken by the Clinton administration. The "wag the dog" BS of the republican zealots after the missile strike of 1998 did not encourage the administration to push using troops of any kind.

2. Pakistan's position today is extrememly delicate. They did a massive amount to aid the Taliban over the Russian invasion and up to 9/11. There should be no surprise in the difficulty that remains in getting to get "full" support on destroying the jihadis crossing the Afghan/Pakistan border. Their intelligence service is about as troubled as our own.

3. Reagan policy of arming Afgans to the teeth then abandoning them completely is one of the biggest mistakes in American foreign policy in history.

4. Clinton policy on bin Laden was scattered and non productive. The C.I.A. did little to earn the full trust of the administration with spotty intel.

5. "Does America Need the C.I.A. ?" Good question, if anybody has a good answer, tell Bush - he is still looking for Iraq's weapons.

By the very nature of our country, the intelligence services are bureaucracies. Yet the trouble with trusing the C.I.A. goes way back. Kennedy doubted them, Nixon doubted them, Ford chaired the committee to question their existence.
Real reform of the C.I.A. doesn't look rosy. If we spent $87 billion on trying to build friends in the arab world instead of bombing their back yard, maybe we'd get somewhere and wouldn't have to ask the impossible from the C.I.A. and blame them when it all goes wrong.


Ponderous "inside the Beltway" yawn   March 12, 2004
 50 out of 129 found this review helpful

I fancy myself something of a foreign policy maven, who's waded few quite a few ponderous tomes that few ordinary readers would stomach. Yet even I found it difficult to stick with this overweight, almost agonizingly dull "treatise" on the history of the Afghan rebels and Bin Laden's subsequent anti-US vendetta.

Up front, the author doesn't bother to give many any sign posts about where he's headed; he just sort of launches into the story, expecting us to stay patiently along for the whole ride. He has lots of cute "inside the Beltway" details about which CIA station agent thought what about which mujehadin faction, but there are not a lot of revelations here, especially per pound. He's pretty kind to people like "Bill" Casey, former head of the CIA -- not spending much time on the fellow's "darker" side. He also doesn't provide much of a perspective on the broader strategic context, tunnelling right in from the start on Afghanistan, and largely leaving to one side the important "context" in countries like Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Without an editor, of course, that would have made it an even longer book. But perhaps because he IS an editor, Mr. Coll didn't need one. The book also adopts, in places, a kind of breezy idealization of certain Afghan rebels like Massoud, with barely disguised sneers at the bloody Soviet Army, evidently some of the "bad guys." These days, with the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan in a situation that bears some resemblance to that of the Soviets -- down to the attempted reform of Islamic values, the creation of new governments and a surrogate army -one wonders if a somewhat more balanced perspective might not be deserved. Finally, even the footnotes are a waste of time, many of them just referring to confidential interviews in general without even a time or a place.

In short -- unless you are required to read this book for some reason, or need a doorstop, just skim it in the bookstore.