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Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
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Manufacturer: Viking Adult
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.053
EAN: 9780670019700
ISBN: 0670019704
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: 2008-06-03
Publisher: Viking Adult
Studio: Viking Adult
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Editorial Reviews:
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.
Ahmed Rashid is “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” (Christopher Hitchens). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate.
His book Taliban first introduced American readers to the brutal regime that hijacked Afghanistan and harbored the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Now, Rashid examines the region and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe to see how the promised nation building in these countries has pro-gressed. His conclusions are devastating: An unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan, a renewed al’ Qaeda profiting from a booming opium trade, and a Taliban resurgence and reconquest. While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East.
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the crisis in Pakistan are only the beginning. Rashid assesses what her death means for the region and the future. Rashid has unparalleled access to the figures in this global drama, and provides up-to-the-minute analysis better than anyone else. Descent Into Chaos will do for Central Asia what Thomas Rick’s Fiasco did for Iraq — offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and an impassioned call to correct our failed strategy in the region.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great coverage of Historical events, but still a bit fragmented.
Comment: I enjoyed this book from one of my favorite authors. The book covers a lot of historical events. The author has high credibility, and I couldn't put the book down. Some of the material is fragmented, but it was still very interesting.
I'd highly recommend this one.
sb
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Summary: Chilling and Riveting
Comment: Great read. Keeps you thinking, and realizing how much we the people do not know.
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Summary: A deeply troubling book
Comment: Ahmed Rashid has long been a leading expert on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Muslim states of Central Asia that were once part of the Soviet Union. In 2000, the year before 9/11, he published 'Taliban', a book which politicians rushed to read after the attack on the Twin Towers; and if Central Asia catches fire, they will doubtlessly rush to his following book, 'Jihad', first published in 2002, which is an equally authoritative account of the dangers lurking in that area.
After a brilliant introduction of 21 pages, the first three chapters of the present book give the story of American involvement in Afghanistan before 9/11. The characteristic unreliability of American policy is brought out: help given to the Islamic forces and to Pakistan while the Soviets were in Afghanistan; then a total lack of interest in the period after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when Afghanistan was first torn apart by competing war-lords and was then overrun by the Taliban.
No longer in need of Pakistan, the USA then imposed sanctions on that country because it, like India, had carried out tests of nuclear weapons.
The next 15 chapters are essentially a sequel to the author's Taliban, and chronicles in great and sometimes in dense detail, right up to early 2008, the story of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the expulsion of the Taliban at the end of 2001 and the installation of Hamid Karzai as interim President. The victory had been not only been swift (it took two months), but had also been cheap for the Americans. They had fought the campaign from the air, leaving the land fighting to the war-lords of the Northern Alliance. The Americans lost just one man killed. Karzai was installed as interim president. This easy victory led the Americans to believe that it could be copied in Iraq, an attack on which the neo-cons had planned even before the Afghan war. Once the Iraq war began, the Americans concentrated on that and paid much less attention to Afghanistan, on which they wanted to spend as little money as possible. Rumsfeld was explicitly not interested in `nation building': helping Afghanistan to develop a healthy infrastructure..
From this all sorts of mistakes arose:
1. It seemed easier to use the armies of the war-lords than to build and train an Afghan National Army.
2. Karzai, a Pashtun, had no control over the Tajik and Uzbek war-lords. They refused to disarm or to let their men be integrated into a national army. Occasionally they fought each other; they collected tolls which they refused to hand over to the government; and they alienated the Pashtun majority. For a long time Karzai dared not confront them. When eventually he managed to form a new government without them in 2004, he proved indecisive in implementing a programme of reform.
3. He was unwilling to stamp out the cultivation of opium and the drug-lords, one of whom was his own brother. Drug dealing corrupted the entire administration and the police. The Allies did not provide money for planting alternative crops and would not allow their armies to interdict the drug trade for fear of alienating the tens of thousands of farmers who depended on it.
4. The worst problem is Pakistan. Osama bin Laden and the Al-Queda forces, as well as the fleeing Taliban found sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan. These were already home to what would become the Pakistani Taliban, who helped them to rebuild their forces and joined them in incursions back into Afghanistan.
For a long time the Americans were not interested in the Taliban and did not take it seriously; but they did want Al-Qaeda people handed over, and for this they needed Musharraf's help. Musharraf did this (if he could find them!), and in return sanctions on Pakistan were lifted. For a long time the Americans did not realize the close connections that had been built up between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But Musharraf, the Pakistani Army and the ISI (the intelligence service) protected the Taliban and gave it much covert help and even direction. This was largely because they saw Karzai as a potential ally of India. Karzai pleaded with the Americans and the British to pressurize Pakistan to give up supporting the Taliban; but these found the alliance with Pakistan too important, and pretended to believe Musharraf's denials, aided, as these were, by the ISI very occasionally giving them information about the whereabouts of Taliban leaders.
But while this was just enough to appease the Allies, it was also enough to enrage the more extreme sections of the Taliban, who in any case were egged on by their al-Qaeda allies to attack Musharraf and his police as American lackeys. Musharraf emerges from this book as being as devious as he is foolish.
5. When the Americans focussed on Iraq, NATO took over as the Western instrument in Afghanistan. But each of the 37 countries which provided troops drew up its own rules about what these troops could - or more importantly: could not - do. Some confined them to reconstruction and humanitarian work; some were specifically prohibited for fighting the Taliban; some were not to interfere with poppy growing; those stationed in the more peaceful north were prevented from helping the hard-pressed - and always insufficiently numerous - troops in the south. Of the 45,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan in 2006, only 15,000 were available for fighting. In the absence of a unified command, it is not surprising that the Taliban began to reestablish itself in large areas of the East and South from 2003 onwards and have been gaining in strength ever since.
There is much more in this troubling book - for example a comparatively brief account of the danger of al-Qaeda and other Islamic organizations establishing themselves in the Uzbekistan and the other secular Central Asian republics, where tyrannical and corrupt governments are propped up by the Americans simply because these, too, suppress Islamic (along with all other) groups.
Customer Rating:
Summary: How could they get it so Wrong!
Comment: A very good read on how the Bush, Cheney et al continue to support a two faced and corrupt Pakistani miiltary and government to the determent of America and its citizens. Read it and weep. Thank you Ahmed Rashid.
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Summary: Failure to Nation-Build Undermining Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Comment: Rashid tells us that in the first few years after the U.S. went into Afghanistan, 905 of the population welcomed foreign troops and aid workers. We failed to take advantage of it, however. Meanwhile, in Pakistan a major political crisis has arisen along with a spread of Islamic fundamentalism, dictatorships rule the five independent states of Central Asia (the "stans") since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, and an Islamic extremism thrives underground in those nations. Anti-Americanism (created by our 2007 support of Musharraf) is undermining Pakistani's reaction to democracy, modernization, and the struggle against extremism, and the U.S. attack on Iraq helped convince Musharraf that the U.S. was not serious about stabilizing the area - hence it was safer for Pakistan to clandestinely give refuge to the Taliban.
Rashid asserts that the U.S. made the same mistakes in Iraq that it had in Afghanistan - not enough troops, no postwar planning to resuscitate the areas, and no coherent strategy (reviving the warlords in Afghanistan, dismantling the army and bureaucracy in Iraq). Most experts believed rebuilding Afghanistan would cost $4-5 billion/year for ten years - cheap, compared to Iraq.
Part of the U.S. problem is that we don't work well with others. We have never taken part in U.N. peacekeeping operations (though have funded and otherwise supported many) - out of 15 in 2007 involving over 100,000, only ten U.S. soldiers were involved. (Pakistan provided 10,000.) Another part is that we're spread too thin - over 250,000 troops on 725 bases in 38 countries BEFORE 9/11.
General Franks refused to put any U.S. troops on the ground in an attempt to accept a major Taliban surrender, leading to the deaths of thousands at the hands of the Northern Alliance and the escape of their top leaders; several weeks later similar reticence allowed Osama to escape at Tora Bora. (The U.S. actually flew every Pakistani and many Taliban leaders out of Afghanistan in the first instance.)
The real factor in the U.S. victory in Afghanistan was $100 million in bribes given to local warlords. Conversely, at Tora Bora, 600-800 Arabs were escorted into Pakistan for an average bribe of $1,200.
After installing Karzai the U.S. continued to pay off the warlords as an easy means of keeping the peace; this also undermined central government authority and recreated conditions for another Taliban resurgence. Warlord power was further boosted by giving them contracts for providing U.S. operations with fuel and rebuilding materials, allowing them to grow heroin, and their collection of about $500 billion in customs fees - of which only about $80 million went to Kabul. Pakastani elections put Islamic extremists in charge of the NWFP. U.S. presence in the "stans" to support Afghanistan operations made both Russia and China nervous regarding the threat of permanent bases on their borders.
Afghanistan had been devastated primarily by internal strife. International aid provided oafter the Taliban rout was largely humanitarian relief, not reconstruction. Successes included launching a new currency, restarting education and opening it to girls (Afghanistan has a 54% illiteracy rate, and the U.S.' $100 million spread over 5 years was unable to counteract the 12,000 madrassas), and reopening and expanding media. U.S. projects were very heavy in overhead, and lacked knowledge of the Afghan situation. In any case, U.S. funding was cut back again after the '04 Presidential election.
The Pakistani army repeatedly supported border-crossing Taliban and their training, as well as their training. Meanwhile, the U.S. angered locals with prisoner abuses - just as in Iraq. Putting a higher priority on torturing prisoners and keeping access to a new base drove Uzbekistan back into Russia's arms.
NATO, originally riled by Rumsfeld's arrogant ignoring their offers of help in Afghanistan, and further angered by U.S. withdrawing troops in Afghanistan to add in Iraq and failure to address Pakistan's duplicitous Taliban support, became increasingly reluctant to help in Afghanistan - both in numbers of troops and in the restrictions placed upon the use of those troops (eg. no fighting, after-dark activities, involvement in disputes between warlods, etc.).
Bottom Line: Afghtnistan and Pakistan have slipped into greater Taliban control because of U.S. failure to nation-build; the failure continues.
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