here is a book review from the globe and mail, might be worth picking up, (still reading a book on Scurvey).
thanks
selkirk
Ghost Wars:The Secret History of the CIA,Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion toSeptember 10, 2001By Steve CollPenguin Press, 695 pages $45
For 10 long years, the Central Intelligence Agency played the Great Game in Afghanistan. They helped fund and arm the mujahedin, who fought off the Soviet occupation in a brutal war in one of the world's most impoverished countries. Afghanistan was the last covert operation of the Cold War, and though the CIA waged it from the safe distance of its station in Islamabad, Pakistan, it was personal. For many CIA operatives, the Afghan operation was payback time for Vietnam. They would make the Soviets bleed, just as the Soviets, through aid and encouragement, had helped the North Vietnamese make America bleed.On Feb. 15, 1989, the last Soviet tank left Afghanistan. A bouquet of carnations awaited the Soviet army commander, General Boris Grimov, as he led his defeated army back onto Soviet soil. That same day, the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Milton Bearden, cabled the triumphant words, We won. Both carnations and crowing were wildly inappropriate. The Soviet Union was two years away from dissolution. U.S. problems in Afghanistan were only just beginning.
Steve Coll's Ghost Wars is a remarkable account of the Afghan covert operation and all the evils that subsequently blighted that unhappy country. Coll's research is extensive; his access to senior officials of all the principal countries involved in Afghanistan is nothing short of astounding. He can paint a vivid picture, helped by the fact that he was on the ground as The Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992, just as the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad wound down and the country was catapulted into civil war. With this book, Coll establishes a reputation as large as that of his Post colleague, Bob Woodward.
What spilled out of the guts of Afghanistan was the Taliban regime, Osama bin Laden and, ultimately, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. NATO forces, including a large Canadian contingent, warily patrol Kabul today, while in the countryside, the U.S. army hunts bin Laden, his Afghan warlord ally, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Taliban remnants, in a desperate effort to finish what was left unfinished in 1989. That unfinished business is the hard, un-Kiplingesque task of putting a failed state back on its feet and ridding the region of its Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers.In the tangled story of international intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. role is but one dark thread. As Coll makes clear, U.S. action lacked a broad strategic vision and remained unconcerned about where its covert action might ultimately lead. The only significant policy shift occurred in the mid-1980s, when William Casey was director of Central Intelligence and the agency scented the prospect not just of making the Sovs bleed but of forcing them out of Afghanistan altogether.
It was a classic proxy war and probably will stand in history, ironically, as the best case, this side of Cuba, against engaging in covert operations. Covert operations never have a successful end game for the simple reason that they set in motion dynamic political and economic changes that can be neither controlled nor foreseen.But there were other threads, other players. These included Pakistan and its shadowy intelligence service, the ISI, who were the principal conduits for U.S. aid to the mujahedin.The Afghan war in fact made the ISI into a powerful force in Pakistani politics. Pakistan's strategy for Afghanistan was only opportunistically aligned with that of the United States.
The Pakistanis wanted the Soviets out, but they also wanted to control the future Afghan regime and to use the resources of the mujahedin to pursue their own guerrilla war in Kashmir. Pakistan may have had no choice but to thrust its hand into the fire of Afghanistan, but it too got burned. It emerged with a radicalized and too-powerful intelligence service, with a virulent strain of Islamic fundamentalism coursing through its society, with border regions flooded with weapons, out-of-work soldiers and more lawlessness than ever before, with no Afghan regime in its pocket and with no victory in sight in Kashmir.Then there was Saudi Arabia, and its powerful spy chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal. The Saudis were even greater benefactors of the mujahedin than were the Americans. They poured more money into the Afghan war than did the United States, and worried even less than the Americans about where it went. The conservative Saudi regime was as anti-Soviet as the U.S. and Pakistan governments.
They shared the collective, and overwrought, fear of Afghanistan as the beginnings of a major Soviet imperial drive into Central Asia and the Gulf. But the Saudis also viewed themselves as the protectors of Islam, and saw a religious duty to use their prodigious oil wealth to assist their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan. Poor Afghanistan was to be the safety valve to control religious and societal pressures within their own country. And so they exported money, religious preaching, fundamentalist teaching, radicalized youth, bulldozers and, in the stream, a wealthy young sheikh by the name of Osama bin Laden, who found in Afghanistan his crusade. He was to be the Saudis' burned hand.
The Soviets began it all, and for them Afghanistan was a covert operation with a farcical beginning and a tragic end. Believing, quite wrongly, that their Afghan puppet leader, Hafizullah Amin, was turning before their eyes into a CIA stooge, Soviet Spetnaz forces assaulted his palace and gunned him down in December, 1979. But as the end loomed for the Soviets in Afghanistan, they felt some accurate forebodings. Gorbachev tried to warn the Reagan administration about the shared threat from Islamic fundamentalism. The message was ignored as no more than a tactical ploy to cover the Soviet defeat.The post-1989 history of Afghanistan was a story of terrible missed opportunities. Coll recounts them in fascinating detail, including missed opportunities to combat the Taliban and to capture or assassinate Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan will stain the reputation of a series of U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior and, especially, Bill Clinton, whose foreign policy record was dismal. But watch this story for its future impact.
Ghost Wars is an election-year book. It's a powerful indictment of strategic short-sightedness and intelligence weakness on the part of the United States. John Kerry should read it and ponder; so too should George W. Bush. The book, and its lessons, could come crashing through the window of both politician's houses in the 2004 election.
Wesley K. Wark teaches on intelligence, terrorism and international security at the University of Toronto. He is the author of the forthcoming collection of essays, The Future of Intelligence.
thanks
selkirk
Ghost Wars:The Secret History of the CIA,Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion toSeptember 10, 2001By Steve CollPenguin Press, 695 pages $45
For 10 long years, the Central Intelligence Agency played the Great Game in Afghanistan. They helped fund and arm the mujahedin, who fought off the Soviet occupation in a brutal war in one of the world's most impoverished countries. Afghanistan was the last covert operation of the Cold War, and though the CIA waged it from the safe distance of its station in Islamabad, Pakistan, it was personal. For many CIA operatives, the Afghan operation was payback time for Vietnam. They would make the Soviets bleed, just as the Soviets, through aid and encouragement, had helped the North Vietnamese make America bleed.On Feb. 15, 1989, the last Soviet tank left Afghanistan. A bouquet of carnations awaited the Soviet army commander, General Boris Grimov, as he led his defeated army back onto Soviet soil. That same day, the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Milton Bearden, cabled the triumphant words, We won. Both carnations and crowing were wildly inappropriate. The Soviet Union was two years away from dissolution. U.S. problems in Afghanistan were only just beginning.
Steve Coll's Ghost Wars is a remarkable account of the Afghan covert operation and all the evils that subsequently blighted that unhappy country. Coll's research is extensive; his access to senior officials of all the principal countries involved in Afghanistan is nothing short of astounding. He can paint a vivid picture, helped by the fact that he was on the ground as The Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992, just as the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad wound down and the country was catapulted into civil war. With this book, Coll establishes a reputation as large as that of his Post colleague, Bob Woodward.
What spilled out of the guts of Afghanistan was the Taliban regime, Osama bin Laden and, ultimately, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. NATO forces, including a large Canadian contingent, warily patrol Kabul today, while in the countryside, the U.S. army hunts bin Laden, his Afghan warlord ally, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Taliban remnants, in a desperate effort to finish what was left unfinished in 1989. That unfinished business is the hard, un-Kiplingesque task of putting a failed state back on its feet and ridding the region of its Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers.In the tangled story of international intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. role is but one dark thread. As Coll makes clear, U.S. action lacked a broad strategic vision and remained unconcerned about where its covert action might ultimately lead. The only significant policy shift occurred in the mid-1980s, when William Casey was director of Central Intelligence and the agency scented the prospect not just of making the Sovs bleed but of forcing them out of Afghanistan altogether.
It was a classic proxy war and probably will stand in history, ironically, as the best case, this side of Cuba, against engaging in covert operations. Covert operations never have a successful end game for the simple reason that they set in motion dynamic political and economic changes that can be neither controlled nor foreseen.But there were other threads, other players. These included Pakistan and its shadowy intelligence service, the ISI, who were the principal conduits for U.S. aid to the mujahedin.The Afghan war in fact made the ISI into a powerful force in Pakistani politics. Pakistan's strategy for Afghanistan was only opportunistically aligned with that of the United States.
The Pakistanis wanted the Soviets out, but they also wanted to control the future Afghan regime and to use the resources of the mujahedin to pursue their own guerrilla war in Kashmir. Pakistan may have had no choice but to thrust its hand into the fire of Afghanistan, but it too got burned. It emerged with a radicalized and too-powerful intelligence service, with a virulent strain of Islamic fundamentalism coursing through its society, with border regions flooded with weapons, out-of-work soldiers and more lawlessness than ever before, with no Afghan regime in its pocket and with no victory in sight in Kashmir.Then there was Saudi Arabia, and its powerful spy chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal. The Saudis were even greater benefactors of the mujahedin than were the Americans. They poured more money into the Afghan war than did the United States, and worried even less than the Americans about where it went. The conservative Saudi regime was as anti-Soviet as the U.S. and Pakistan governments.
They shared the collective, and overwrought, fear of Afghanistan as the beginnings of a major Soviet imperial drive into Central Asia and the Gulf. But the Saudis also viewed themselves as the protectors of Islam, and saw a religious duty to use their prodigious oil wealth to assist their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan. Poor Afghanistan was to be the safety valve to control religious and societal pressures within their own country. And so they exported money, religious preaching, fundamentalist teaching, radicalized youth, bulldozers and, in the stream, a wealthy young sheikh by the name of Osama bin Laden, who found in Afghanistan his crusade. He was to be the Saudis' burned hand.
The Soviets began it all, and for them Afghanistan was a covert operation with a farcical beginning and a tragic end. Believing, quite wrongly, that their Afghan puppet leader, Hafizullah Amin, was turning before their eyes into a CIA stooge, Soviet Spetnaz forces assaulted his palace and gunned him down in December, 1979. But as the end loomed for the Soviets in Afghanistan, they felt some accurate forebodings. Gorbachev tried to warn the Reagan administration about the shared threat from Islamic fundamentalism. The message was ignored as no more than a tactical ploy to cover the Soviet defeat.The post-1989 history of Afghanistan was a story of terrible missed opportunities. Coll recounts them in fascinating detail, including missed opportunities to combat the Taliban and to capture or assassinate Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan will stain the reputation of a series of U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior and, especially, Bill Clinton, whose foreign policy record was dismal. But watch this story for its future impact.
Ghost Wars is an election-year book. It's a powerful indictment of strategic short-sightedness and intelligence weakness on the part of the United States. John Kerry should read it and ponder; so too should George W. Bush. The book, and its lessons, could come crashing through the window of both politician's houses in the 2004 election.
Wesley K. Wark teaches on intelligence, terrorism and international security at the University of Toronto. He is the author of the forthcoming collection of essays, The Future of Intelligence.