Joshua Sinai at the
Washington Times offers a review of Steve Coll’s Directorate S: The C.I.A. and
America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With the appointments of John
Bolton as the National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as the secretary of
State, the Trump administration is likely to embark on a major review of the
policies and programs guiding the 16-year U.S. political and military involvement
in Afghanistan.
They will also examine the
extent to which the Pakistani government is cooperating with the U.S. in
countering these insurgents, or whether it is playing a double game by
shielding the Pakistani Taliban, as well as providing a safe haven to the
remnants of al Qaeda, especially to Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s
successor, somewhere in Pakistan.
How these strategic and
military challenges will likely play out and the historical background that has
shaped them since the beginning of the American intervention in Afghanistan in
October 2001, are central to Steve Coll’s important book, “Directorate S: The
C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
This book is the second
volume and update of the author’s best-selling “Ghost Wars: The Secret History
of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September
10, 2001,” published in 2004.
This book, according to Mr.
Coll, seeks to provide a “history of how the C.I.A., I.S.I. [the Pakistani
intelligence service], and the Afghan intelligence agencies influenced the rise
of a new war in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban [in late 2001], and
how that war fostered a revival of al Qaeda, allied terrorist networks, and,
eventually branches of the Islamic State. The book also seeks to connect
American, Afghan, Pakistani, and international policy failures to the worldwide
persistence of jihadi terrorism.”
What is remarkable about this
book is Mr. Coll’s recounting of numerous behind-the-scenes meetings and memos
by high level Bush and Obama administration officials and their Pakistani and
Afghanistan government counterparts, as each side attempted to press its case
to manage and, if possible, resolve, the difficult and problematic political
and military situation in Afghanistan.
You can read the rest of the
review via the below link:
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