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The Blurb On The Back:
In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the CIA scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associated. The CIA had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden’s successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO’s mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire, which has now lasted many years.
At the heart of the problem lay ‘Directorate S’, a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state, which had been covertly arming and training the Taliban for years as part of a wider competition for global influence, and which assumed that the USA and its allies would soon be leaving.
This remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Steve Coll is a staff writer on The New Yorker who has previously written about Al Qaeda and the CIA’s activities in Afghanistan and in this insightful, gripping and horrifying read (a companion book to the earlier GHOST WARS), he aims to give a history of the relationship between the CIA, ISI and Afghan intelligence agencies and their respective governmental foreign policy and how their collective failures led to the rise of jihadi terrorism.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the CIA scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associated. The CIA had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden’s successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO’s mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire, which has now lasted many years.
At the heart of the problem lay ‘Directorate S’, a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state, which had been covertly arming and training the Taliban for years as part of a wider competition for global influence, and which assumed that the USA and its allies would soon be leaving.
This remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Steve Coll is a staff writer on The New Yorker who has previously written about Al Qaeda and the CIA’s activities in Afghanistan and in this insightful, gripping and horrifying read (a companion book to the earlier GHOST WARS), he aims to give a history of the relationship between the CIA, ISI and Afghan intelligence agencies and their respective governmental foreign policy and how their collective failures led to the rise of jihadi terrorism.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
