Rating: 
Summary: An Immensely Detailed and Fascinating Book
Review: "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
Rating: 
Summary: The CIA had too much information, and so does this book.
Review: This book is selling very nicely and obviously has prompted Congressional hearing questions. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same weakness that kept the US government from preventing the September 11 attacks: It has too much information of varying quality, badly organized and poorly analyzed. You might learn more and more easily about US actions in Afghanistan by reading the reviews of this book. Three years in South Asia clearly gave Steve Coll some personal acquaintance with people, places and events. He combined that with voluminous documentary evidence, and the result is War and Peace Goes To Afghanistan. A reader who slogs through this book will read a lot about the topic, but won't come out with a clear conclusion, and won't gain the most reliable understanding. When I find errors in the discussion of topics that I know about, I suspect that the same sort of errors exist in areas where I'm less knowledgeable. More understanding of the military, CIA and State Department would have avoided the errors that lard the book's first hundred pages. Throughout the book, Coll misstates the name of the Counterterrorism (not "-ist") Center at the CIA. The 1980 Teheran embassy rescue helicopter crash happened not because the helicopters were "sand-blown" (pg. 55) but because a pilot undertook an exceedingly difficult hover in the high wind and blowing sand at night. Is a British Enfield rifle more powerful than a Russian AK-47 rifle (pg. 58, and no, it isn't) or vice-versa (pg. 66), or did Coll misunderstand when his source told him what was being said to the Afghanis at different times? Who thinks the Secretary of State actually writes a routine briefing memorandum (pg. 62) for the President? The Salang Highway is west, not east of the Panjshir Valley (pg. 115, right above the map). The writing is florid (safehouses were unmarked, what's a fusillade if not gunfire?, and the 1979 Soviet invasion was "hegemonic violence.") Why write that the President "scrawled" his name on a presidential finding that covert action is in the national interest? Occasionally, the adjectives clank ("Soviet bomber-jets", "brass-polish outsiders" and "eye-tearing rivalry"). None of this is very serious except that it all suggests a superficial understanding and a lack of editorial care. It's clear that Coll interviewed lots of CIA officers, but he swallowed and uncritically repeats self-justifications, allowed extraneous detail to distract him from important concerns, and missed an opportunity to write real history; Instead, this book is journalism (and I intend that to be derogatory.) CIA officers' back-biting comments sold Coll on a dichotomy in CIA between the Eastern snob establishment tennis players and working-class Midwestern bowlers, ignoring the agency's many years of heavy recruiting in America's heartland and the absence of bowling alleys in suburban Washington. The real culture war inside CIA has long been between the cowboys and those who are more careful and disciplined. When Coll mentions "the mundane details of shipping and finance" (pg. 65), one should imagine the private satisfaction of a CIA officer who has just led the journalist right past some sensitive methods and truly covert operations. There's always a tension between writing an interesting story and reaching for sensation. Without evidence or even an attributable allegation that CIA officers contacted Osama bin Laden, and despite Coll's description of CIA officers' repeated denials and the absence of documentary evidence of such contact, Coll probably ought to apologize for having written that "If the CIA did have contact with bin Laden during the 1980s and subsequently covered it up, it has so far done an excellent job." If the question referred to wife-beating, an individual might get really angry at reading that he had denied doing it, there was no proof that he had ever started doing it, much less stopped, but he might have been covering up anyway. Many authors acknowledge the assistance of expert readers who have looked over a manuscript and helped by pointing out errors. This book would have benefitted from such help, as well as the services of a good literary and copy editor. In addition to books recommended by other reviewers here, I'd recommend Milt Bearden's novel, The Black Tulip.
Rating:
Summary: endless words on terror
Review: haven't finished reading it yet.
what struck me immediately though is numerous claims of soviet atrocities and human rights abuses against civilians without properly citing documentation as to the origin of these claims. this occurs within the initial 50 pages or so.
not that i'm a apologist for the former soviet union in any respect. the 'evacuation executions' of the red army during barbarossa are well documented, esp. in richard rhodes' recent work: ' masters of death: the ss-einstatzgruppen and the invention of the holocaust.'
Rating:
Summary: An Immensely Detailed and Fascinating Book
Review: "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
Rating:
Summary: Complexity is the word
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: If you are a policy wonk .....
Review: ..then you'll love this book. Otherwise, this is a very dense book that you may have trouble getting through. It is extremely well researched and detailed (almost too much so). And it does demonstrate the political and social complexities within south Asia that our spy (and civilian)agencies must deal with. One thing that struck me is that, in spite of American's deep involvement with the powers in this area, we still could not prevent 9/11. An utter failure of our intelligence community, in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing insight into south asian policies for 20 years
Review: Wow, I could not put this book down, It was so interesting and enthraling. If you want to know how our intelligence agencies opererate, from our spies on the ground to the budgetary procudures, this is all you need. Steve Coll is an amazing unbiased reporter that lets the reader draw his own conclusions, in many ways he just provides the facts. It starts with the soviet-afghan war, and our clear agenda to help the afgans bleed the soviets. But with the collapse of the soviet union, they United States simply did not seem to care much about afghanistan, nor did it want to get involved in its politics, much to the behest of many career mid to lower level intelligence and diplomatic professionals. IT simply did not seem as important as defining what the post cold war world would look like, Inter agency rivalries, oil contracts, reluctance to use covert ops, mistrust of the CIA outright by clinton, and legal issues regarding killing OBL all got in the way. To make things worse during the 1990's the corporate "silicon valley" cluture somehow managed to find its way to the CIA, infecting it with a deadly mix of political correctness in everything from its operations to hiring, this in turn drove many of the CIA's longtime operatives to go into early retirement. At one point, the CIA was adding little more than 1 new operative in a span of a few months.
Coll spends the latter half of the book describing how the CIA and the CTSG tried in vain to kill Osama Bin Laden but were shot down by senior politicians and even the pentagon, who simply did not want to get involved. I overwhelmingly enjoyed this book, if you are remotely interested in the nuts and bolts of US foreign policy, this will provide a great look into its innner wheelings and dealings.
There are a few items that Coll does leave out. The biggest issue is pakistans nuclear weapons, he never really discusses them, It would have been great to see what Coll could have dug up if he put his journalistic powers to work on this issue, did pakistani nuclear weapons scientists in conjunction with the Pakistani ISI who were in bed with OBL and the Taliban give nuclear material to them? Second, it is not always clear when CIA agents were directly involved in operations in afghanistan. It always appears murky, and one could go as far to say they were on the ground constantly secretly helping massoud, it would be great for this matter to be cleared up. Go out and buy this book right away...
Rating:
Summary: ghost wars
Review: this book is terrific. it covers a 20 year period in a progressively unfolding and non-judgmental way. steve coll is not trying to push either a democratic or republican agenda, which is presently(spring '04) almost impossible to find. it is fabulously researched and well-written. if you think you are terrorism or bin-ladened out, read this book--it takes these topics to another level.
Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: For more great recommendations, please visit:
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Rating:
Summary: The destruction of a country and the birth of a terrorist
Review: One of the "ironies" cited by critics of American foreign policy is that America's support for the mujahedin during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union ultimately led to the emergence of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network who then turned against the United States. But the truth is more complicated than that; America's foreign policy towards Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s was always distant. In the 1980s, the policy was aimed at the attrition (and then expulsion) of the Soviet forces, by using the resources and cover of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After that, America's policy slipped into mere indifference, that is, until September 11, 2001. Tracing the evolution of America's engagement in Afghanistan from 1979 is the subject of Steven Coll's "Ghost Wars." Mr. Coll, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and managing editor of the Washington Post, has written a detailed and compelling narrative that weaves together decades' worth of interest in the region. The book is divided into three parts: first comes the period from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 until its withdrawal in 1989; second, the period after 1989 until January 1998, before the CIA first drafted plans to arrest and kill Osama bin Laden; and third, the period from January 1998 to September 10, 2001, which included al Qaeda attacks against the US in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen. The end product is elegant, well written, and very informative. Written, obviously, for people who care about details, "Ghost Wars" has thorough narratives of the various relationships that defined America's engagement in the region: its bizarre and often hostile relationship with Pakistan's ISI, its connection with Saudi Arabia, and its various agreements with different fighters of the post-Soviet war. From this story, it becomes evident how and when bin Laden started to emerge as a powerful figure, what America tried to do about it, and how its efforts were frustrated by politics at home and abroad. In all, "Ghost Wars" will fill many gaps by delving into more detail than other books on the topic. Written with a journalist's style, "Ghost Wars" refrains from grand analytical connections and broad themes that try to bring everything together. Still, Mr. Coll does insert some analysis at times, helping alleviate the burden of continuous story-telling. This sporadic analysis, combined with the excellent narrative, should place "Ghost Wars" on everyone's reading list on the war on terror.
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