Along with the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Ghost Wars is the best record of U.S. Government policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in the years preceding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I put off reading Ghost Wars mainly due to the thoroughness of the 9/11 Commission Report; I was discouraged by the potential for repetition. I was also mistaken.
Coll's journalistic predilection toward description and aversion to editorializing makes his take on U.S. policy unique from that of the 9/11 Commission Report authors, whose ultimate goal is policy recommendation.
The most valuable account Coll provides is that of Pakistani political developments, which are indispensable to understanding events in Afghanistan. Only by identifying Pakistan's motives and actions can one explain the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, Najibullah's survival despite the Soviet departure, the civil war between Ahmed Shah Massoud and his mainly Pashtun opponents, and the rise of the Taliban. This drama is made all the more complex by Pakistan's fractured political landscape, in which executive power has perpetually alternated between senior military officers and civilians, and in which the all powerful ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has often acted independently of both.
Ghost Wars is also rich with information obtained from interviews with the CIA officers who were at all times on the front lines of executing U.S. policy in Afghanistan. (The subtitle of Ghost Wars is "A History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001"). These CIA officers were first the enablers of the mujahedin against the Soviets, then the only arm of the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy engaged in Afghanistan, and finally those charged with the impossible task of capturing Osama Bin Laden without spoiling the potential for U.S. relations with the Taliban.
The history expounded by Coll confirms my doubts about the conventional wisdom that the crucial U.S. error regarding Al Qaeda was the American "abandonment" of Afghanistan after the departure of Soviet troops in 1989. If the United States had not ignored Afghanistan, had brokered a political settlement and invested in the country, the logic runs, the rise of the Taliban would have been averted, denying Osama Bin Laden the territory he used to train Al Qaeda operatives for export around the globe.
These assumptions may very well be logically coherent, but their relevance depends on them being reasonable policy options at the time. If pursuing such alternatives would have required an implausible level of foresight, they aren't particularly useful policy lessons. Brokering a political settlement in Afghanistan during the early 1990's would have required the issue's elevation to among the top of U.S. foreign policy priorities. Had their been an easy political solution it surely would have been pursued, but the two viable political movements the United States had to choose from included an anti-American islamist faction and Ahmed Shah Massoud, who lacked popularity in the Pashtun-majority south. It is entirely unreasonable to expect decision makers to devote the resources necessary to resolve an intractable civil war to avert the rise of a political movement, the Taliban, that didn't even exist at the time.
The first time it was reasonable and could have decisive for the United States to take a new approach toward Afghanistan was during 2000, following the several foiled Al Qaeda millennium attacks. The millennium attacks, some of which were planned to occur on U.S. soil, should have eliminated any doubts about Al Qaeda's willingness and capability to strike the United States in a catastrophic manner.
Until 2000, the Clinton administration's unwillingness to authorize lethal action against Osama Bin Laden and take greater risks to capture him seems reasonable, given the apparent potential that remained for convincing Pakistan and the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over. As of January 1, 2000, however, a more aggressive approach, even if it precluded eventual U.S. diplomatic relations with the Taliban, would have been prudent, and would not have required any foresight. Whether the Clinton administration's aversion to a more aggressive approach was a result of the president's diminished political position in the wake of impeachment or an attempt to avoid upsetting the boat of vice president Gore's presidential campaign will continue to be a matter for conjecture; Coll finds no decisive evidence.
The more aggressive approach seems to be the policy toward which the Bush administration was moving by late summer of 2001, when the president famously said he was "tired of swatting at flies." This policy would have included an ultimatum to the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over, followed by aggressive action against him if the Taliban refused. The shift came too late of course, not least because the Bush administration ignored Richard Clarke's sense of urgency and focused instead on foreign policy priorities that could have waited.
These are but a few of the implications of Coll's history; they are too numerous to list here. Knowing how this story ultimately ends makes reading Ghost Wars an experience marked by feelings of helplessness. James Risen of the New York Times Book Review writes that the book "...makes the reader want to rip the page and and yell at the American counterterrorism officials...and tell them to watch out."
What was even more deeply unsettling to me, however, was the realization that without the knowledge we now have and given the competing foreign policy priorities regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union, reunification of Germany, and Pakistani nuclear tests, any one of us would likely have made the same mistakes.
Coll's journalistic predilection toward description and aversion to editorializing makes his take on U.S. policy unique from that of the 9/11 Commission Report authors, whose ultimate goal is policy recommendation.
The most valuable account Coll provides is that of Pakistani political developments, which are indispensable to understanding events in Afghanistan. Only by identifying Pakistan's motives and actions can one explain the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, Najibullah's survival despite the Soviet departure, the civil war between Ahmed Shah Massoud and his mainly Pashtun opponents, and the rise of the Taliban. This drama is made all the more complex by Pakistan's fractured political landscape, in which executive power has perpetually alternated between senior military officers and civilians, and in which the all powerful ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has often acted independently of both.
Ghost Wars is also rich with information obtained from interviews with the CIA officers who were at all times on the front lines of executing U.S. policy in Afghanistan. (The subtitle of Ghost Wars is "A History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001"). These CIA officers were first the enablers of the mujahedin against the Soviets, then the only arm of the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy engaged in Afghanistan, and finally those charged with the impossible task of capturing Osama Bin Laden without spoiling the potential for U.S. relations with the Taliban.
The history expounded by Coll confirms my doubts about the conventional wisdom that the crucial U.S. error regarding Al Qaeda was the American "abandonment" of Afghanistan after the departure of Soviet troops in 1989. If the United States had not ignored Afghanistan, had brokered a political settlement and invested in the country, the logic runs, the rise of the Taliban would have been averted, denying Osama Bin Laden the territory he used to train Al Qaeda operatives for export around the globe.
These assumptions may very well be logically coherent, but their relevance depends on them being reasonable policy options at the time. If pursuing such alternatives would have required an implausible level of foresight, they aren't particularly useful policy lessons. Brokering a political settlement in Afghanistan during the early 1990's would have required the issue's elevation to among the top of U.S. foreign policy priorities. Had their been an easy political solution it surely would have been pursued, but the two viable political movements the United States had to choose from included an anti-American islamist faction and Ahmed Shah Massoud, who lacked popularity in the Pashtun-majority south. It is entirely unreasonable to expect decision makers to devote the resources necessary to resolve an intractable civil war to avert the rise of a political movement, the Taliban, that didn't even exist at the time.
The first time it was reasonable and could have decisive for the United States to take a new approach toward Afghanistan was during 2000, following the several foiled Al Qaeda millennium attacks. The millennium attacks, some of which were planned to occur on U.S. soil, should have eliminated any doubts about Al Qaeda's willingness and capability to strike the United States in a catastrophic manner.
Until 2000, the Clinton administration's unwillingness to authorize lethal action against Osama Bin Laden and take greater risks to capture him seems reasonable, given the apparent potential that remained for convincing Pakistan and the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over. As of January 1, 2000, however, a more aggressive approach, even if it precluded eventual U.S. diplomatic relations with the Taliban, would have been prudent, and would not have required any foresight. Whether the Clinton administration's aversion to a more aggressive approach was a result of the president's diminished political position in the wake of impeachment or an attempt to avoid upsetting the boat of vice president Gore's presidential campaign will continue to be a matter for conjecture; Coll finds no decisive evidence.
The more aggressive approach seems to be the policy toward which the Bush administration was moving by late summer of 2001, when the president famously said he was "tired of swatting at flies." This policy would have included an ultimatum to the Taliban to turn Bin Laden over, followed by aggressive action against him if the Taliban refused. The shift came too late of course, not least because the Bush administration ignored Richard Clarke's sense of urgency and focused instead on foreign policy priorities that could have waited.
These are but a few of the implications of Coll's history; they are too numerous to list here. Knowing how this story ultimately ends makes reading Ghost Wars an experience marked by feelings of helplessness. James Risen of the New York Times Book Review writes that the book "...makes the reader want to rip the page and and yell at the American counterterrorism officials...and tell them to watch out."
What was even more deeply unsettling to me, however, was the realization that without the knowledge we now have and given the competing foreign policy priorities regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union, reunification of Germany, and Pakistani nuclear tests, any one of us would likely have made the same mistakes.
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