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dansbooks's review
3.0
A great but depressing follow up to Coll's Ghost Wars. Rashid shows just how little the US under Bush learned from the CIA's previous support for the Afghan mujahideen and the resulting "blowback" that led directly to 9/11.
As before, much of the current disaster stems from the ways in which the Pakistani military and intelligence service (ISI) and this time President Musharraf (as opposed to Zia) used the US to enforce their own agendas in the region - but in ways that ultimately blew back on Pakistan, to say nothing of restoring the Taliban as a potent force again in Afghanistan.
The book could have benefited from another edit. Stressing different themes in different chapters, Rashid often goes over the same events at different times. In what is otherwise presented in a chronological narrative, this can cause confusion in what's already a story full of many different players, events, sub-plots, etc.
One other footnote: Rashid is clearly a friend and admirer of Hamid Karzai. And this seems - at least to me - to lead him to understate the endemic corruption that, if news accounts are accurate, plagues the current Afghan government and has undermined its authority at least as much as the Taliban.
As before, much of the current disaster stems from the ways in which the Pakistani military and intelligence service (ISI) and this time President Musharraf (as opposed to Zia) used the US to enforce their own agendas in the region - but in ways that ultimately blew back on Pakistan, to say nothing of restoring the Taliban as a potent force again in Afghanistan.
The book could have benefited from another edit. Stressing different themes in different chapters, Rashid often goes over the same events at different times. In what is otherwise presented in a chronological narrative, this can cause confusion in what's already a story full of many different players, events, sub-plots, etc.
One other footnote: Rashid is clearly a friend and admirer of Hamid Karzai. And this seems - at least to me - to lead him to understate the endemic corruption that, if news accounts are accurate, plagues the current Afghan government and has undermined its authority at least as much as the Taliban.
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