The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014

by Carlotta Gall

Carlotta Gall has reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American invasion and occupation, beginning shortly after 9/11. She knows just how much this war has cost the Afghan people, and how much damage can be traced to Pakistan and its duplicitous government and intelligence forces. Now that American troops are withdrawing, it is time to tell the full history of how we have been fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong country.Gall combines searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who endured a terrible war of more than a decade. Her firsthand accounts of Taliban warlords, Pakistani intelligence thugs, American generals, Afghan politicians, and the many innocents who were caught up in this long war are riveting. Her evidence that Pakistan fueled the Taliban and protected Osama bin Laden is revelatory. This is a sweeping account of a war brought by well-intentioned American leaders against an enemy they barely understood, and could not truly engage.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, Politics, Middle East, Military Fiction, Pakistan

353 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Avani ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

The Wrong enemy by Carlotta Gall, an author and a journalist who was amongst the handful of others in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1990s after the Russians were driven out.

The book talks about the personal accounts of herself as well as some portraits and stories of common Afghans living there and suffering for more than over a decade.

Keeping in mind the current world situation, I wanted to pick up literature based on Afghanistan and Pakistan and educate myself on things that happened in the past. I stumbled upon this audiobook on Storytel and immediately started reading it.

The narrator - Jennifer M. Dixon has done a brilliant job in narrating this book with utmost precision and it helped me get through a heavy book like this with little bit of ease. Carlotta Gall, the journalist gives us a very raw picture of Afghanistan in this book.

The war right after 9/11 has caused alot to the people of Afghan, and we get to know about the cultural as well as political aspects of what went into different countries involved in this event during that time.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As presidential election results in Afghanistan are being counted one must ask the question; how much better off is Afghanistan today, as compared to the period before the American invasion following 9/11? Further one must ask; what is the future outlook for Afghanistan as the United States and its NATO allies are about to withdraw by the end of the year? Carlotta Gall, a New York Times reporter who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than ten years attempts to answer these questions and many others in her new book, THE WRONG ENEMY, AMERICA IN AFGHANISTAN 2001-2014. A number of books have been written about America’s role in Afghanistan and its relationship with Pakistan the best of which are Steven Coll’s GHOST WARS, Ahmed Rashid’s DESCENT INTO CHAOS, and Barnet R. Rubin’s AFGHANISTAN FROM THE COLD WAR THROUGH THE WAR ON TERROR, but what sets Gall’s apart is her knowledge of the region and her ability to coax interviews with villagers, mujahideen, Taliban fighters, government officials, intelligence sources, and major decision makers involved on both sides of this never ending war. Gall takes the reader inside councils held by the Taliban, government meetings in Kabul, decision making within Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and discussions among village elders as they try to cope with the threats they face on a daily basis. Gall’s premise is that the United States has failed to confront the real enemy in its Afghani war, Pakistan. Gall argues that the Pakistani governments, including its presidents over a period of time and the ISI have pursued a duplicitous policy by publicly claiming to be an ally in the war on terror with the United States, but privately creating and supporting the Taliban as a means of manipulating events in Afghanistan and controlling its government in Kabul. These conclusions are sound, well argued, and supported by abundant research and sources that only she has had access to.

From the outset Gall writes from the perspective of the victims and does not claim to be objective. She argues persuasively that the ISI is the real power in Pakistan and controls its press and media. By December, 2001 after the Taliban’s leadership misjudged the strength of the American attack, and their standing with the Afghani people, thereby forcing them to flee to the safety of Peshawar across the Pakistani border. Soon after, Taliban commanders convened a council of war which included Afghan Taliban commanders, their Pakistani allies from the Pashtun border areas, and Pakistani militant and religious leaders to discuss how they should respond to the American attack. Watching from the sidelines, but present at these meetings were representatives from the ISI and Pakistani Special Forces who had been involved with the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Also in attendance was the son of the powerful Taliban commander and minister, Jalaluddin Haqqani, a stalwart against the Soviet Union and a favorite of Pakistani intelligence and Arab donors. The goal of the Taliban was to create an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan would now be continued as a guerilla war against the United States and its western allies. The goal for Pakistan was to continue to employ “proxy forces, Afghan mijahideen, Taliban in Afghanistan, and Kashmiri militants against India to project its influence beyond its border.”(21) As Seth Jones, the author of IN THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES: AMERICA’S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN wrote in the New York Times on April 10, 2014, “Islamabad’s rationale for supporting Afghan insurgents is straightforward and, in many ways, understandable. Hemmed in by its archenemy, India, to the east, Pakistan wants an ally in the west. It doesn’t have one at the moment. Instead, New Delhi has a close relationship with the Afghan government. Feeling strategically encircled by India, Islamabad has resorted to proxy warfare to replace the current Afghan government with a friendlier regime.”

Gall follows the war as the United States pursued its neocon agenda of the Bush administration and shifted important resources from Afghanistan to support its ill conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003. This left open the door for the Taliban to try and recapture its position in Afghanistan. Many have asked why the United States chose Hamid Karzai to head the government in Kabul. Gall concludes that he was a compromise candidate as he was Pashtun and acceptable in the northern part of the country. Gall accurately concludes further that Karzai was the problem from the outset. For the next thirteen years Karzai would oversee the most corrupt country in the world as stated in the “Transparency International Scale”, as it was tied with Myanmar,” with only Somalia lower. (216) the key to the Taliban resurgence would be their “friends and supporters in power in Pakistan’s border provinces.” This would allow Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader to emerge in February 2003 and publicly call on all Afghans to wage holy war against American forces. (67)

Galls details the Taliban resurgence and Pakistan’s role in their successes and points out the flaw in American policy towards Afghanistan. According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who wrote a strategic review on Afghanistan for the incoming Obama administration in 2009, the Bush administration considered the Taliban irrelevant once they were defeated. In addition, the Bush White House never gave instructions to its intelligence officials in Pakistan to follow the Taliban and CIA officials in Pakistan saw the Taliban as a “spent force.” (75) The road was open for the Taliban to succeed especially when the ISI forced many Taliban exiles that fled to Pakistan to join the insurgency. Gall describes the situations in northern and southern Waziristan were foreign militants were sheltered in tribal areas and foreign journalists were banned by the Pakistani government from traveling. Gall explores the role of President Pervez Musharraf and his double dealing with the United States. He would feign being an ally and turn over a few Taliban wanted by Washington, but in reality was training, supplying, and encouraging the insurgency to the detriment of Afghanistan who he needed to control because of his fears of India.

Gall correctly argues that America’s approach in dealing with counter terrorism through the use of massive bombing was self defeating. It alienated the Afghan villagers and turned the Afghan people further against what they viewed as their corrupt government in Kabul that was allied with the United States. In 2004 the United States supported the reelection of Karzai, but despite his reelection his policies under the heavy handedness of his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was in charge of the southern part of the country further alienated the Afghan people and did little to counter the onslaught of the Taliban. With the economy in dire straits and little hope for improvement, “young unemployed men were going to Pakistan in search of work and being recruited by the Taliban….who paid $175 a month to join and fight.” (133)

Gall makes many important observations in her narrative. It was clear that America’s NATO allies were not very successful. With only 2000 Canadian troops in the south the task for the Taliban to seize control of the Kandahar region was made easier. The U.S. asked its allies for further troop commitments, but they refused. Exacerbating the problem was the increase in suicide bombings in 2006, many of which were in the south. Gall accurately describes the voyage of young men to madrassas to receive suicide bombing indoctrination and the final committing of the act. Most were traced back to Pakistan were Islamic cells functioned quite freely. Afghan intelligence would share information with NATO allies, who would forward the information to the ISI, which was like warning the suicide cells and resulted in the torture and death of Afghan informers. The nexus of Pakistani support for the Taliban was Quetta and other border areas. “The madrassas are a cover, a camouflage,” a Pashtun legislator told the author, “behind the curtain, hidden in the shadows, lurked the ISI.” (159) From Gall’s extensive interviews in the border region her contention that the ISI played the major role in the Taliban success is well founded.

Some of Gall’s most interesting chapters deal with militant blow back in Pakistan as the ISI periodically would lose some control and then recover, a cycle that went on for years; how close the Taliban came to conquering the south as they reached the outskirts of Kandahar; and the role of Ahmed Karzai. Many Americans have grown tired of Karzai’s act over the years believing he was ungrateful for the sacrifices and support given by the United States. However, despite his antics Karzai’s point of view is important in understanding the events of the last thirteen years. Gall does a remarkable job presenting Karzai’s perspective and making sense out of his statements and actions. Granted his government was corrupt and appointments were based on tribal membership or political faction, but the United States was aware of the political culture around him from the outset. But as Gall correctly points out that when a society functions “on patronage, a duty to help your relatives and clans comb[ined] with Karzai’s poor management and the influx of vast sums of assistance, often poorly administered by donors, [it] created the most corrupt regime Afghans had ever seen.” (216) By 2010, $900 million in loans disappeared implicating Karzai’s family. The problem is that Karzai is not personally corrupt, yet he has tolerated and benefited from it. Karzai would brush off complaints “as a necessary way of doing business in cash strapped country.” (217)

By 2009, after the United States mistakenly bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan and Washington’s failure to deal with Pakistan, Karzai became convinced that the US was not going to defeat the Taliban. As Pakistan continued to ignore American requests to reign in the Taliban, Karzai’s bitterness increased and he decided the only way forward that made sense was to negotiate peace with the Taliban and Pakistan. Richard C. Holbrooke, the US Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan began back channel contacts with the Taliban. Holbrooke realized the difficulty Karzai faced and realized further that peace with Pakistan was the key; as he summed up the situation in 2010, “we may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.” (222)

In 2009 the Obama administration also announced a “surge” of 30,000 troops in the south as Kandahar was in danger of falling to the Taliban. The joint operation with Afghan and Canadian troops lifted the Taliban siege and Gall’s description of the fighting as she went on patrol with US troops brought the reader to the battlefield. The IEDs, the mines, the booby traps, the rigged houses provide insight into Taliban tactics and what American and Afghan troops faced and have to undo. However, the Taliban hold in the south was broken. Over the next three years the Taliban would be kept at bay, but a new crisis developed with Pakistan over the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. Gall has an excellent chapter on the raid and Pakistan’s culpability in having Bin Laden seized from under its nose. From Gall’s interviews it is clear that Pakistani officials were involved with Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. Whether it was military or ISI involvement is not totally clear, but it’s beyond the pale to imagine that the Pakistani government was not involved.

Gall closes her book with a somewhat optimistic chapter about the future of Afghanistan, however the threat from Pakistan remains constant and they must be reined in. At the outset of this review I asked whether Afghanistan was in a better position since the pre-9/11 period. One thing is clear the United States has brought modernity, rebuilding and bright educated graduates in every government office, but “the fundamentals of Afghanistan’s predicament remain the same: a weak state, prey to ambitions of its neighbors and extremist Islamists.” (286) 2014 is a perfect storm for Afghanistan, NATO and US forces are withdrawing, the election of a new president and the appointment of a new government, and the handover of security to Afghan forces in the middle of the summer fighting season. What will the future hold? I would be naive to think that once the US withdraws the security situation will not collapse, but we will see. For those who are interested in reaching an educated guess about Afghanistan’s future I would read Carlotta Gall’s powerful new book.

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[Ryan Goodrich · Rating 1 out of 5]

To anyone who decides, willingly, to read such a convoluted book by a journalist with a highly biased opinion and narrow perspective (she admits it herself), take it from someone who's been there and served during much of the same time period: Ms. Gall is in no place to say, "against an enemy they barely understood, and could not truly engage." I'm sorry, but, even with my admitted problems I have with the military at times, I would still never be so quick to say they've (the U.S. military) had their heads in the dirt for more than a decade (actually much, much longer than that-she needs to research our presence over there better)and haven't a clue about a war/s they learned to fight very well actually.

Read this book if you must, but understand who's writing it, where the information is coming from, and remember how the media loves to paint pictures which are highly one-sided and promote self-serving agendas. Really? You feel bad for an enemy that has no problem sending their own women and children, with dynamite strapped to their chests, to blow up others who are trying to give them their rights and a chance at life with equality? We are talking about a culture that values death more than life and believes women and children are expendable.

I don't always agree with the military (Marines) of which I served for almost a decade, but anyone who believes a journalist, who's never served in the government or military, over highly trained individuals who have interacted and fought against such an unpredictable enemy for so long, has to be outside of their mind and needs to do quite a bit more research than what Ms. Gall has whipped up here: not much more than smoke, fluff, and conspiracy theory. Sorry.
(Originally posted in Goodreads: The History Book Club)

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carlotta Gall is a New York Times reporter who worked extensively in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the U.S. (and its NATO allies) invaded Afghanistan in October, 2001.

She gives us a history of these two very different and difficult countries since then. We see the fall of the Taliban, but then there subsequent comeback, mostly through the help of Pakistan. She gives us a portrait of a waffling Hamid Karzai who is unable to lead and make needed practical decisions in a devastated land. Her on the ground frame of reference gives us searing insights into the two countries.

After the fall of the Taliban there was a conundrum with the local warlords and tribal leaders, when for the most part they were disarmed and their private armies dismantled. Granted that these groups and leaders were often violators of human dignity and human rights – but their power vacuum helped paved the way back for the resurgent Taliban. And this comeback was ably assisted by Pakistan. The primary theory of Ms. Gall is that Pakistan, through its’ ISI (Pakistan’s secret service) is the main creator and force behind the Taliban. The ISI and Pakistan’s military are broken into different factions – so much so that one group may only be marginally aware of the plotting and intrigues of other groups. For example Osama Bin Laden’s relocation and existence at Abbottabad was known to some in the ISI. Ms Gall suggests Pervez Musharraf knew this himself.

It was never in Pakistan’s interest to hand Bin Laden over to the U.S.; otherwise the vast flow of dollars and military hardware would slow up. Pakistan sees the U.S. and its NATO allies as temporary players in the “Great Game” of Afghanistan, Pakistan is playing for keeps. It wants to keep Afghanistan fragmented. Pakistan’s nightmare would be to see a strong, independent Afghanistan allied with foreign powers. They want to perpetuate the various terrorist groups and the flow of militants from Pakistan to Afghanistan (via Pakistan’s tribal areas), to combat the apostate U.S. and NATO forces.

However this has started to have repercussions within Pakistan with terrorist militants now striking within – at military bases, hotels and any politicians sympathetic to Western powers. Pakistan is losing control of the many multi-headed monsters it created.

But this is not the case in the murder of Benazir Bhutto which was orchestrated by the ISI – and Ms Gall suggests this was done with the full knowledge and backing of Pervez Musharraf

Page 180 (my volume)
There was “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” that he [Musharraf] did not provide her with adequate security because he wanted to ensure her death in an almost inevitable assassination attempt, the chief prosecutor in her murder trial, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, told me....Chaudhry succeeded in having Musharraf arrested and was pushing to speed up the trial when he was gunned down on his way to work in May 2013

As the author suggests Pakistan is a country on the brink. Only in the last few years have the Western powers realized that Pakistan could not be trusted.

This is a very revealing and clear-cut book on the history of this tormented region since the events of 9/11. We get a excellent breakdown of what happened between these two neighboring states – and the hall of mirrors that exists between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

This book fits in comfortably with “No Good Men Among the Living” (by Anand Gopal) and “The Last Refuge” (by Gregory Johnsen). All stay with one general theme and all are well written.

Here the overarching theme is why Pakistan is the true enemy (of America, its allies, Afghanistan, India and others). This isn’t new ground but the book's depth and analysis make this a worthwhile read. Gall made many strong points and deserves much credit for her fearlessness in getting to the bottom of a story. My only real complaint is that she was a bit too forceful from the very beginning in getting her point across. Her reporting was solid enough on its own.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many books on the Afghan war, but I believe this is the first complete history of the conflict. It is unlikely to be the last.

Gall’s linear story dramatic, in-depth, easy to follow and well-researched, with good insights into the war. Still, the book was disappointingly short on any historical argument, but maybe it’s still too early for that.

Gall leaves ending a bit open; it is quite brief, with no clear opinion on what course should be taken or what we can realistically salvage from a war where US interests aren’t really at stake much longer: al-Qaeda has migrated to new safe havens in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and has little to do with the insurgency in Afghanistan, now made up of the Taliban and its endless Pashtun sympathizers, who have to simply wait for coalition forces to leave.

Gall’s argument is not original: success in Afghanistan depends on eliminating Pakistan as a safe haven for the Taliban. Unfortunately US-Pakistani relations are in terrible shape for a variety of reasons (see Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding). Gall does a good job highlighting the double-dealing of the Pakistani ISI in supporting the Taliban and other insurgent groups, one of the biggest obstacles to the resolution of conflict in that country. In fact, many Taliban exiles joined the insurgency only because ISI threatened to use force against them if they tried to avoid doing so.

ISI supported different Pakistani Islamist factions and Afghan insurgent groups, bribing favored leaders while detaining or assassinating others. As part of this double game, Pakistan permitted the groups to attack inside Afghanistan but cracked down on them only if they attacked inside Pakistan.

Gall also questions the commonly believed assumption, often repeated by pundits and authors in this field, that Islamist terrorism would not be as prevalent as it is if only the US had not supported the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war. In fact, most of the Afghan mujahideen were moderates, while the foreign jihadists from Middle Eastern countries received little attention from the CIA. In any case, those jihadist that did join the Soviet war had little interest in attacking the US at that time. So citing the Afghan jihad as a case of US blowback doesn’t really hold up, even though it repeated ad nauseum by authors. A more obvious example of blowback would be Pakistan’s support for jihadists.

In one instance Gall claims that the US-backed mujahideen that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan were “moderates.” This seems overly simplistic. There were many different mujahideen factions, some moderate, and some radical. Of course, the only groups that received support from the US, Pakistan, and the other client states were the radicals like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Moderates like Ahmad Shah Massoud were mostly ignored. One of Gall’s sources also claims that the US only began looking at ISI-Taliban links in 2007; this statement is unbelievable: the US knew of those links even before the war started and recognized it as one of the many obstacles to a victory.

During her account of the battle of Qala-i Jangi in 2001, Gall writes that two US soldiers were killed during the friendly-fire incident that occurred, but there are several accounts of that battle and none of them mention any US fatalities. She also writes that Juma Namangani, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was killed in the bombing of Qala-i Jangi, when in fact he was killed elsewhere, at Cheshmai Sheta.

Gall’s book is very human, and does a great job bringing the true cost and tragedy of the war home to the reader. An excellent first draft of the Afghan war’ history.

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish she had bothered to source this book.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The people of Afghanistan have suffered wars inflicted on them over the past four decades by foreign powers. The 1980s saw the Soviet Union trying to assert control over the country. The Afghans thwarted them with help from Pakistan and the US. The 1990s saw the Pashtun Taliban rule the country with support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara Afghans opposed the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate rule. The result was the country in civil strife. Since 2001, Americans have occupied the country, much to the dislike of most of the Afghan population. As I write this, the Taliban is again knocking on the doors of Kabul proclaiming the defeat of the Americans. This book by Carlotta Gall, an NYT journalist, pins down the reasons the United States failed to bring a secure, democratic and US-friendly regime in Kabul. The author’s credentials to write on the subject are impeccable. She has a steadfast affinity, love, and sympathy for the Afghan people. Her father, Sandy Gall, is a former Scottish journalist who spent many years reporting on Afghanistan. By the end of 2012, she had spent nearly twenty years in the country since the Soviet invasion. She was a Russian language student and had reported on Afghanistan from 2001 to 2013 for the NYT. The reportage in this book is excellent. The author shows commitment and courage to her cause despite impediments in Afghanistan as a foreigner and a woman.

The author’s main thesis is that the ISI and the Pakistani Army are the actual enemies of Afghanistan and the US. The book marshalls a lot of evidence to support this theory. I shall touch on a few here. There is testimony from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who says unequivocally that the Americans must fight in Pakistan to secure Afghanistan. She also quotes many of the US military leaders and diplomats like Mike Mullen and Richard Holbrooke saying the same. In November 2001, after the US bombing started, Pakistan’s military advisers, specialists, trainers and ISI agents were trapped in Kunduz. They were in danger of being slaughtered by the Northern Alliance. Pakistan flew up to two sorties a day for a whole fortnight to rescue them. In 2006, ISI agents assaulted and punched the author in Quetta while she was there investigating families of Taliban suicide bombers. She found out later that the head of the ISI press department was behind the assault. They did it to discourage her from pursuing the Taliban suicide bombers. Gall says that Pakistani journalists fare far worse trying similar pursuits. The ISI often silences them through fear or murders the persistent ones. There is also the evidence of finding Osama bin Laden barely forty kilometers from the capital Islamabad in a safe house. Pakistani army men like Major Gul and Colonel Imam have played a substantial role in masterminding the Taliban operations. They channeled arms, ammunition, training and cash for the Taliban.

However, Gall does not lay all the blame only at Pakistan’s doors. She documents the major blunders of both the US forces and Hamid Karzai’s government. The US and British forces routinely bombed entire villages, killing innocent civilians, while pursuing one or two Taliban militants. The Afghans justifiably asked if Britain would bomb houses in Northern Ireland in search of IRA terrorists. It happened so repeatedly that it turned the population against the Americans. Over the years, the US and coalition forces started blaming the Karzai government for the hostility of the Afghans. They accused Karzai of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, and poor leadership. However, the author says that the Karzai administration could not stop the Americans from the indiscriminate bombing of villages. This was the major cause of the loss of faith in Karzai and the Americans. Despite repeated entreaties by Karzai, the coalition forces and US marines continued to commit violence against Afghan civilians. Besides, the Bagram Airbase became a center where faulty intelligence made the US torture and incarcerate many innocent Afghans. They detained some for years without trial and contact with family or lawyers. Gall says that thousands of Afghans passed through the humiliation and pain of Bagram. Some 220 Afghans ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Only a dozen of those were important Taliban figures. The rest were ordinary Afghans, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time or falsely implicated by rivals.

Another important point Gall makes is about the Mujahideen. It is fashionable now to blame the US support for the Mujahideen in the 1980s for today’s debacles. Gall says the Mujahideen were not terrorists. They sacrificed blood and livelihoods to fight the Russians and the Taliban for twenty-five years. Now, the Karzai government has excluded them from power and any formal role in the country. The author says they were natural leaders, resilient, resourceful and brave. It was a callous mistake to denigrate them as war criminals and demobilize them. It reminds us of the folly of demobilization of the Baathists in Iraq.

I agree with the author on the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan’s travails But I feel she has not been fully fair to Pakistan in her critique. Her analysis does justice to the cause of the US and the Afghans. She expresses frustration at the ‘betrayal’ of Pakistan, which has not behaved as a trustworthy ally. But she does not grant that Pakistan has legitimate geo-political goals in this conflict. It is self-evident now that Pakistan will not allow peace in Afghanistan so long as there is a pro-India government in Kabul. Parity with India in the subcontinent is of paramount importance to Pakistan’s elite. Being a much smaller state economically and demographically, Pakistan has always feared India as an existential threat. This insecurity has made it look at Afghanistan as an extended border on its Western front. They want to protect this front at all costs from danger because they already have the threat of India on the eastern front. This means that there has to be a subservient, pliant government in Kabul that they can control. But the US project since 2001 has been to install a democratic, non-Islamic, pro-US government in Kabul. With such a goal, it is no surprise that Pakistan has sabotaged the US effort and worked towards installing a religious, Islamic, pro-Pakistan government in Kabul. But the paradox for the US is that they need Pakistan to open supply lines to Afghanistan. Besides, Pakistan is a major stakeholder in the conflict. Logic suggests that they must not treat Pakistan as an ally, but pragmatism tells them that there is no other way. The Pakistanis grasp this idea very well. But the US still strives to have a secure, democratic regime in Kabul with Pakistan’s cooperation.

On Pakistan’s conduct, I think we must acknowledge the success of their diplomatic and military skills. The author slams Pakistan’s army and ISI for their deceitfulness and perfidy. She is right that Pakistan’s actions are not in the best interests of its own people, especially its poor. However, thinking about it dispassionately, Pakistani diplomats and military have navigated the Afghan minefield with skill, defending Pakistan’s geo-political interests. They have deftly played the role of both a US ally and its enemy in Afghanistan pursuing successfully their strategic goals. The US Navy Seals exposed Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan. Despite damning circumstantial evidence, Pak diplomats got the Obama administration to admit that the Pakistani state was not complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden. In 2001, the Pak army airlifted their 3000-odd jihadi assets from Kunduz to safety back in Pakistan, under tough circumstances. Finally, in Nov 2001, the US bombing struck terror into the Taliban and scattered them away. But the ISI showed patience and resilience in regrouping them. After twenty years, they smell power again in Kabul. These are no mean accomplishments. Though none of these actions advance the Pakistani or Afghan peoples’ interests, one has to acknowledge the skills of their diplomats, ISI and the military top brass. They have outwitted the US diplomats and military in this theater.

The book was written in 2014 and covers the events till 2013. In the last chapter of the book, the author expresses some cautious optimism and despair for the future of Afghanistan. The last words in the book are: “..until the Pakistani military ceases to use the Taliban as an instrument of its strategic aims, Afghanistan’s long war will continue”. Now, in 2020, six years later, we see that the US sees Afghanistan as a lost cause. They have worked out a deal with the Taliban so they can get out without loss of face. The deal releases the 5000 Taliban prisoners the Afghan government holds. The U.S. would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next 3-4 months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. There is nothing in the deal for preventing Pakistan from interference. Nor is there anything on future challenges from ISIS. Experts believe that the fractured Afghan government under the dual presidency of Ghani and Abdullah cannot withstand future Taliban assaults for total control of the government. Will events condemn Afghans to live under a harsh Taliban rule again after twenty years and a trillion dollars down the Helmand river? We have to wait and watch.

It is a gripping book with excellent reportage from the field. Those concerned about the war in Afghanistan will find the book absorbing.

[Owlseyes]

"The outside world, the West, will come to understand. The Talib are not extreme, not revolutionary people" Abdul Mujahid, Taliban's unofficial representative to the United Nations in New York. (...)
Nevertheless, as recent fighting has confirmed, the Taliban remain the dominant power in Afghanistan; they control roughly 90% of the territory"
in The Economist, August 12th 2000

"July 2011 marks the beginning of the withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan, (...) Sadly Afghanistan is a pawn in the great Pakistan-India rivalry. (...)
India provided funding and arms to the Northern Alliance a "military-political umbrella organization opposed to Taliban rule. Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the ISI (Inter-services intelligence), gave the Taliban money, arms and training so as to prevent the Indian backed Northern Alliance from gaining a foothold"
in "Afghanistan: forever a pawn", by Brian Beyer; in "Foreign Policy Handbook", V, August 2010


(2014 election)

(Let the #pen speak once instead of the weapon)


"We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country"
The late Richard C. Holbrooke, US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan

"America should have selected to crush Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan rather than go to war in Iraq" Habib Jalib Baloch, Quetta politician




(Village elders in Baghran, northern Helmand province, who were rounded up and handcuffed during a raid on their homes by American troops in February 2003. "We hate them for this". "In our culture we hate it when someone enters our house without our permission")

She's spent more than 10 years in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pulitzer prize-winner Carlotta Gall knows what she's talking about. The collections of photos in the book are tale-telling, illuminating. Her viewpoint is a development/confirmation of the Holbrooke's premise, above.

A Reporter Analyzes the Driving Role of Pakistan in the Afghan War
in: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/bo...

[Omar Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent quick summary of the Afghan war and where and how America went wrong. She presents a very strong case against Pakistan (from the American and Afghan perspective). She does mention some of America's own cruelties and absurdities and does not fail to mention the terrible and tragic "shoot first and ask questions later" aspect of actual military operations (the scene where a translator witnesses his troops pointlessly shoot innocent Afghan civilians is devastating), but she does not provide any insight into WHY the top US decision-makers were so thoroughly fooled. Still, thanks to her book, this question must now be front and center; that the US was taken for a ride is documented in devastating detail.. WHY they allowed themselves to be taken for a ride (or did they really WANT to be taken for a ride because their aims were never the stabilization of Afghanistan?) is left unclear.
I dont know enough about particular Afghan personages to know if her somewhat uncritically positive views of various police chiefs are really accurate, but even if some details are wrong, this is a must read book. And it is hard to see how this will fail to influence future American attitudes to Pakistan...

[Rohullah Yakobi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, the West have been fighting the the wrong enemy. Unless Pakistan is tamed, the problem will continue and will it get worse.

[Bob Schmitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, depressing book. Carlotta Gall was a reporter in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 when she wrote this book. She describes our enemy as not the Taliban but the duplicitous Pakistani government and military which has advised and funded the Taliban. The story she puts for is really shocking.

In November 2011 Pakistan airlifted out of Kandahar 2 battalions of Pakistani troops including 100’s of snipers, artillery units, special forces, and communication equipment that they had used to support the Taliban.

When the Taliban surrendered peacefully in to the Northern Alliance they were promised safe passage and guards for their leaders. They came in and surrendered their arms peacefully and were deceived. They were killed, tortured and imprisoned. Many combatants were sent to Guantanamo and remained there for more than a decade. These people were military combatants. The Taliban had offered to send their foreign fighters back to their home countries. This offer was denied.
Acquaintances describe Mullah Omar as a stupid but good man. In leading the Taliban to take over Afghanistan from the various warring factions he received military help from the Pakistan Army even including cross border artillery. Pakistani officers and commandos helped in certain battles. When the Taliban took Kabul they executed president Najibullah on orders from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI. Ahmed Massoud the leader of the Northern Alliance wrote a letter to the American people in 1998 that he held 500 Pakistani in his jails and that 28,000 were arrayed against his forces. The Taliban certainly knew about Bin Laden’s pending 9/11 attack. The Pakistani government gave year long multi-entry visas, notoriously difficult to obtain, to the Tunisian men who posed as journalist and killed Massoud.

After 9/11 two Pakistani military advisors to Mullah Omar, Coronel Iman a special forces officer and Lieutenant General Mahmud, advised him to resist American pressure to turn over Bin Laden.
18 months after their defeat the Taliban were gathering openly in Quetta, Pakistan. President Musharraf was not ready to let thousand of homegrown Afghan and Pakistani trained fighters be dismantled. He wanted them hidden somewhere for use later. Only one Taliban official was arrested and handed to the US in the years after 9/11. These people were useful as they siphoned support from his internal political rivals. In 2003 Mullah Omar, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahedeen Pakistani asset and former foe and members of Al Qaeda came together and agreed to cooperate against the Americans. ISI was pressuring former fighters with arrest if they did not return to Afghanistan to fight the Americans. Although others suggested it, George Bush was not interested in cooperating with the Taliban once they had been defeated. He considered them to be irrelevant. It was a missed opportunity as many felt the majority of the Taliban could have been involved in a peaceful settlement and reintegrated into Afghan society. As it was, these soldiers had little other opportunity to support their families than be fighters.

Meanwhile in Pakistan the tribal areas were being run by the Taliban and Al Qaeda with thousands of foreign fighters. Pakistani officials denied the presence of foreign soldiers but also denied entry into these areas by foreign journalist who could report what was going on. In 2004 Musharraf decided to clear a 50 square mile area in South Waziristan and sent in 2,000 troops. They were repulsed in bitter battles with Uzbek Islamic militants with sophisticated defensive systems. The government basically capitulated. Pakistani Genera l Parvez Kayani, trained in the US at Fort Leavenworth, wanted to see the US bogged down in a war in Afghanistan and gave considerable support to the Taliban.

The author describes some of the tactics that the US used that were most egregious to the Afghans and Pakistani. One was breaking down doors and searching women’s quarters in homes which violate sacredly held beliefs. The other is air strikes and drone strikes that cause damage not proportional to the threat, e.g. bombing 4 villages in trying to kill Mullah Omar. American military operations killed a couple of thousand civilians each year. The author was asked by an official if the British Army would be allowed to bomb a house in N. Ireland because a suspected IRA gunman was inside. The US was targeting the civilian population while the source of the insurgency was in the training camps, madrassas and even ISI headquarters in Pakistan. In 2009 General McChrystal changed the way the war was pursued requiring the soldiers to take many more risks but by then the damage was done and the Taliban was entrenched. The author also found that when checking a military report with evidence on the ground the eyewitnesses were straight forward and checked out and the American soldiers were often not truthful.

The author describes torture and atrocities that occurred at Bagram prison. It was a place without legal status and where there was not any method of appeal. Some of the prisoners detained, beaten and killed were respected tribal leaders who had been caught up in a too widely cast net. She described incident after incident where eager, armed, scared US soldiers caused great harm by murdering innocent civilians. The Afghans live such hard lives that a disrespectful action wounds much more deeply than it would an American.

Just as with de-Baathification in Iraq people did warn that mass demobilization of the mujahedeen militias after the defeat of the Taliban was a mistake. Often the militia commanders were local leaders and had great difficulty finding work for their men. The leaders felt left out of the government after so much sacrifice against the Communists and then the Taliban. Though conservative Islamist they were the only real alternative party to the Taliban. And they were the only military force capable of resisting a resurgent Taliban. The central government was simply not strong enough. Instead Karzai turned to foreign troops to provide security, a fatal mistake. When Donald Rumsfeld announce in 2005 that troops would be pulled out to fight in Iraq it was a signal to ISI that it was a time for a Taliban resurgence.

In 2006 suicide bombings crescendoed totaling 119. Suicide is a sin and Islam and the Taliban and its Al Qaeda mentors in Pakistan were using it as an instrument of maximum terror to destroy popular confidence and Afghan government. The Afghans would support whoever would bring security and peace to the nation and it appeared that the Taliban was more determined to do so.
In 2006 the Taliban brought in about 1000 fighters in the southern Afghanistan and planned and assault on Kandahar. It was for foiled by British and American troops but not before pounding the rich agricultural area into dust making many places uninhabitable.

In 2010 Coronel Imam was captured and killed by a group of insurgents but even as they turned on their masters rather than crush them the Pakistani Generals sought to direct them toward other targets. The military released a known militant who’s hatred of Benazir Bhutto was well known a few weeks before she was killed

ISI was complicit in many of the Taliban actions as was evidenced by cell phone text messages and intercepted phone call from ISI headquarters to operatives in Afghanistan. Specifically the Indian Embassy bombing was organized and coordinated by high level ISI senior officials.

Every Afghan that the author talked to said their main concern was the lack of security yet the international agencies decided it was lack of services that was the problem. The government was incapable of protecting its citizens. In 2008 35,000 coalition troops were to provide security in Afghanistan as compared with 165,000 in Iraq for roughly the same population.

Karzai was from a prominent Afghan family. With the Soviet invasion his brothers left and opened restaurants in the US. He stayed. Karzai was a skilled politician but a poor administrator. By 2009 Karzai realized that the only way forward was peace with the Taliban and Pakistan. The US was never going to defeat one or face down the other.

With the surge in 2010 the Taliban was pushed back out of large areas of Afghanistan but the author interviewing Taliban leaders was told that was not a problem. The US would not stay and they would be back. “All we have to do is kill two people in a village and it is back in our hands.”

The author discusses the bin Laden compound in Abbattobad. She made one discovery that a special desk at ISI was assigned to handle the Al Qaeda leader and another that ISI chief, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, had known about the house in Abbattobad.

Finally her solution: “Pakistan has to stand up to its responsibilities as a nuclear power and a large Muslim country and the US cannot walk away until that is ensured.” This obvious comment without describing a means to do it is why she is a reporter and not a policy maker.

[Kaya Heyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carlotta Gall, Afganistan'dan en uzun süre bildiren Batılı gazeteci. Bu kitapta 2001-2014 arasını anlatıyor. Yani 9/11 saldırılarının ardından ABD'nin Afganistan'a girişinden başlıyor, 2014 yılına - yani Batılı güçlerin ülkeden çekilmeye karar verdiği yıla kadar - yaşananları hem birinci ağızdan hem de harika bir arşiv taramasıyla anlatıyor. Bütün kitap aslında 2021 yazında sonuçlanan nihai Taliban zaferini yıllar öncesinden öngörüyor. 2001'deki Afganistan savaşını ben de oradan izledim. Aylarca Kabil'deydim, Afganistan'da dolaşmadık yer bırakmadım. Böyle kitapları okuduğumda kıskanmadan edemiyorum - neden yazmadım diye. Neyse, belki yazarız :)

[Joel Trono-Doerksen · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's never the fault of our God-fearing westerners! America and Britain can do no wrong! They only make "mistakes" and are led astray by the evil Orientals in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Also, apparently the Taliban are "finished" and on the run! I wonder how that worked out lol.

[Aditya आदित्य]

the russians invaded four decades ago
so sons of the soil had gathered to see
the invaders defeated and forced to forgo
but beleaguered were afghans in victory

chaos gave birth to a terrible scourge
the talib fed snakes and whipped the weak
americans were forced to begin a purge
their towers now rubble and safety bleak

an enemy mistaken they fought without cease
while treacherous the neighbour gave refuge
to warlords, terrorists and haters of peace
each without doubt is a pakistani stooge

[Vinod Peris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been following the news on Afghanistan for more than a decade. Of late, I must confess that whenever I see a headline about Afghanistan, the news seems the same: suicide bombs, land mines, ambushes, kidnappings and senseless killings. The war has gone on for so long now that many of us are desensitized to the shocking reality that the Afghans and our troops are dealing with on a day to day basis.

I would not have chosen to read this book, if it didn’t come with strong recommendations. I was in the middle of a heated discussion with a bunch of Indian Expats on whether the long-standing enmity between India and Pakistan was a widespread belief across a broad base of both countries. Needless to say we are unlikely to find out the answer to this question. However, one of the positive outcomes of this debate resulted in my getting a recommendation for this book.

Carlotta has spent a good chunk of her life in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan and you can feel the authenticity in this book. I can’t imagine why someone would choose to spend more than a dozen years on the ground and watch the mayhem up close. Whatever her reasons were, it has resulted in some very detailed accounts of the war and provided us with a unique insight into the many different personalities and the twists and turns along the way.

In hindsight it is easy to see why some decisions of the early Karzai government weren’t the best for the country. While it is easy to dismiss many of the fighters as warlords, it is also important to realize that they provided the leadership fabric for Afghanistan. Disarming the mujahiddeen resulted in creating a leadership vacuum in the country and there was no-one to resist the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006. The author does not mince words in highlighting the role that Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has played in supporting the Taliban and providing them with an unending supply of new recruits. It is clear that the madrassa’s along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border are the hotbed in which the suicide bombers and new recruits are entering the Taliban. What is not clear in the book is “why?”.

I found an interesting paper on “Understanding the Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan” by Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason in Orbis. The authors claim this is a result of the “charismatic mullah movement” that is typical of the region — one that the British dubbed the “mad-mullah movement”. These mullahs are charismatic preachers who are able to convince the local population that they have mystical powers and can foment a rebellion against the military power or easier still “America”. Mullah Omar is at the top of the pyramid and rules with an iron fist. Since most of them are uneducated in everything but religion, their recourse is Shariah Law.

The Taliban started out as peace-keepers, a much needed presence to bring some sanity back to a country that was being ravaged by multiple warlords. However, once they became powerful they quickly learnt that brutality would help them get compliance with their decrees. The book has a rare interview with a Taliban commander where he openly declares that they could control a village simply by killing two villagers and making examples of them. The book also highlights the terror that the Taliban instill in the villagers with the “night letters” that they drop on them. Their common theme is that the Americans will eventually have to leave, but we will remain and come back to haunt you.

The war in Afghanistan does not seem to be ending any time soon, but the book has to come to a close. Carlotta chooses to end on a positive note by highlighting how some of the villages are taking back their authority and openly resisting the Taliban. For the sake of the Afghans and the rest of the reason, I really want to believe that this is true.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Know your enemy.

The author has been covering the Afghanistan-Pakistani war for over ten years. She appears to understand the culture of the Afghans and Pakistanis, which by U.S. actions, it doesn’t know and fight all battles like they fought Germany whose culture was like ours. Russia made the same mistake, although it should have known better since much of their countrymen are Chechen. Afghanistan has always been composed of many tribes, each ruling in their own way, but have through the ages been melded into one country. In the author’s writing, she definitely shows the many differences between the tribes and tribal leaders. She did a fine job of lining up the events as they occurred causing other problems. She is correct in that much of Afghanistan did not want the Taliban interfering in their lives, but the Taliban is a well-organized, well-funded radical religious instrument, which particularly the men like, but it degrades women. Although she didn’t go into that deeply, she did enough so the reader could understand how these different tribal differences clashed, and she certainly was honest enough about the financial help, including young soldiers, given by Pakistan, who really wants to rule Afghanistan.
If the U.S. had not extended itself in a war in Iraq, perhaps it could have done a little more to help the Afghanis help themselves, but if and when the U.S. interjects itself, it is often along the ideals of the U.S. rather than to help the country develop itself per its desires.
I think the author did an excellent job as she covered ten years of war with all of its intrigues, politics and subterfuge. For some readers, it might be too concentrated on the many facets of action in this area of the world, but for those who like history, and even may have kept up with the news over these years, she gave a depth of insight that is not always true of an onlooker. I felt she was quite objective in her reporting, showing the weaknesses and strengths of many of the players in this war game.
For readers of this type of non-fiction I recommend this book.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of information in this book... It's not "entertaining" to read, and can seem at times a bit like a textbook, but the case that Gall makes against Pakistan is rock solid. The final section of the book should be required reading for anyone who still believes that Pakistan didn't know Osama Bin Laden was hiding out next door to their military base. Gall's work as a journalist in Afghanistan and Pakistan was as important as it was brave: it went to show that a superpower like the US can still easily be tricked by a much smaller "ally" with selfish intentions.

[Vipul Kane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a brave book. Talks about the menace that is the Pakistani ISI and the Army. Pakistan now complains about being victims of terrorism, after being the coyote that started the fire in Kashmir and kept it alive in Afghanistan, for its own motives. 'Give your life in the name of Allah and I promise you heaven after death', quite disappointing that people fall for this. Life after death is such a monster that is killing humanity and has devastated life in the area.

[Umar Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very informative read. I chose this book because we are now finally winding down the American involvement in Afghanistan and the Taliban have seized Kabul. I reccomend this book for anyone seeking the details of why and how we wasted over a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and after 20 years Afghanistan had no functional state and military to ward off the Taliban.

[Roshni Sengupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of great insight

[Sumeetha Manikandan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book about Afghanistan and the war on terror.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the level of knowledge represented and shared. The writing was a bit clunkier than I'd have expected from an NYT reporter, but I imagine she had tons of notes and previous articles to sort through and had to get this done quickly. The linear chronology helped a lot. At first I felt a bit drowned by all the names and places, but before too long the tough-love immersion approach worked for me and I found myself feeling like I sort of knew my way around. And the care Gall takes with names, places, tribal affiliations, relationships, histories--you come away feeling certain that this may be the one person out there who really knows what she's talking about.

Some GR reviewers have dinged the book for not sharing anything original re the role of Pakistan in the persistence and resurgence of the Taliban, but it's one thing to say it, and another to show it, as she does here, in each chapter for each year. And to the extent that any of it does sound familiar it's probably because *she is the one who wrote the articles you read in the first place.* You can't blame her for not being original if the story she's echoing is her own.

Reading this book was strangely akin to the experience I had reading John MacLean's Fire on the Mountain, which in turn refers to his father Norman MacLean's Young Men in Fire. You have this OMG I can't believe this is happening AGAIN and we haven't learned a thing. While Gall acknowledges improvements in military tactics since the surge, this whole Afghanistan experience is all about cultural misunderstandings, bureaucratic bungling, the arrogance of the western powers (would Britain bomb a neighborhood or a house in N Ireland just because they thought an IRA leader was holed up there? Why then does it behave this way in Afghanistan? asks an Afghan whose village is annihilated by US forces). For example, NATO removed many of the former anti-Soviet mujahideen leaders, imprisoning some, and disarming others and separating them from their communities. While the mujahideen bear a lot of responsibility for the mess Afghanistan is today--after the Soviets left, they became gangsters and warlords and highwaymen, grabbing land and spoils for themselves. (It was because of this disorder and violence that the people supported the rise of the Taliban. Initially they were just the strongmen for a particular warlord. Initially, people welcomed the order they brought to the country. Until their violence also became too much to bear.) But after the Taliban surrendered to the new, NATO-backed government of Afghanistan, these removed mujahideen were the elders who had the most respect from the community. It was they who could have served as intermediaries between the people and NATO, who could have best rallied the villagers against the return of the Taliban. With the elders removed in this fashion, the young men were adrift, and many joined the Taliban, especially as public opinion turned against the US. Air strikes that killed women and children by the droves didn't help. In a warrior culture like Afghanistan's, killing women and children incurs blood debt and cannot be forgiven. Also unforgivable to Afghans was the disrespect shown by entering homes without asking, as is a common tactic of NATO forces. The door-kicking campaigns did not win any love, even when no one died. Gall shows us that Afghans are often financially poor. They've been through several brutal wars now. What they have is their dignity and self-respect, and that's what they'll fight to defend. The insult of forcible entries (obviously there would have to be some such entries, but US and NATO forces were nowhere near as discriminating as they could have been) can be worse than death to some. Essentially, the battle should have been on the ground, relying on intel and relationships with villagers, instead of by air strike and big attacks on small targets.

Often the central government and US forces failed to protect villagers who were willing to stand against the Taliban. One leader said that if the Taliban say they are going to kill you, you know they will. But if the government or the US says it will protect you, you cannot count on this. Caught between an ineffective government and troop response and the mercilessness of the Taliban, many villagers did not have a choice. When the Taliban were finally turned back after another decade following their first surrender, it was intel, empowered local police forces, and the strength of the remaining elders that did it. Mainly.

The issue remains: Pakistan. Gall leaves no doubt that Pakistani officials knew of bin Laden's whereabouts. That Pakistan has been arming and training the Taliban, often forcibly recruiting sons of families who are not friendly to the Taliban. Suicide bombing is a tactic that came from Pakistan. The bombers are trained there. Most Afghanis, Gall says, view suicide as a sin, and the taking of civilian lives is also a problem, due to the blood debt issue I mentioned earlier. Yet, many families have been shocked to see their sons conscripted into these roles. Pakistan seems to think it will become Afghanistan's puppeteer. It probably has a better chance due to the ethnic relationships in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan. In any case, the US has decided to turn a blind eye for the most part, for reasons that are hard to understand. The US supported Karzai's ineffective government (though there are reasons why Karzai was chosen as president--consensus is so important in that culture... there had to be a leader other tribal leaders could agree upon. Karzai is great at working the tribal networks, but terrible about overall leadership.), and it supported ineffective presidents in Pakistan, men who were not in control of their militaries and their intelligence wings. It's almost as if we'll support them if they say the right things, even if they are arming and giving comfort to our enemies. God, how the Pakistanis must hate us for our stupidity. You scorn those you victimize, and they've been taking money from us and turning it around to arm the men we're fighting for more than a decade now. Eventually, the case becomes insurmountable: we are in effect at war with Pakistan. It's a war we can't win if we can't admit we're in it. Pakistan is not simply providing the Taliban with refuge (bad enough when you consider we went to war with Afghanistan for succoring our terrorist enemies), but is arming, training, salarying, and inciting the Taliban.

Afghanistan is not our enemy, Gall writes. Pakistan is our enemy.

And yet we've given them $4.5 billion in aid in the past couple of years (and a great deal more over time).

I have 135 highlighted items in this book. I don't know where to start in terms of quoting them. However, on my Tumblr blog, I used long extracts of a report about a "mistake" US forces made attacking a village. I encourage you to read this post, because it's not right to be a citizen of a country at war with another country and not have these images in our heads. The burden has to be shared, it can't be borne by our soldiers and the citizens of the other country alone.

Someone complained about Gall's lack of documentation. Well, this is a work of journalism. The sources are the people who tell you stuff. Sometimes you can use their names, and sometimes you can't. Saying, "An Afghan official told me," is perfectly valid journalism. She has to have the notes to back it up. And she does use a lot of names. A LOT of them. Where possible, she's provided footnotes.


I highly recommend this book. I'm also reading Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices right now, and there's a lot to think about in the two accounts of Afghanistan.

[thebookishlawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

📖 After reading many fictions, it's time to read something substantial, about inernational inquests. And this one is just perfect, I had read this one long back, around 4 years ago, and it was time I gave it another read. The book answers one question that the whole world has been asking since The United States of America invaded Afghanistan, particularly the Taliban, as an aftermath of the the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
.
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. 📖 Was Afghanistan the right target to bring Osama Bin Laden and global terrorism to their knees or was there any other measure available or was it the correct target after all ?
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. 📖 This book answers these questions and as this one's written by a journalist, there is an exhaustive index and detailed footnotes for every mention of any event. This book's thoroughly documented, complete with the sources of information and the author's individual analysis of the the ongoing events that she was investigating. Carlotta Gall, the author was a reporter working for the New York Times and was sent to Afghanistan weeks after 9/11. As it was clear that the United States would invade this country to avenge the most horrific & audecious terrorist attack on it's soil. And she stayed in Afghanistan for more than a decade researching, covering and writing about the War against Taliban. Her quest to find out who the right enemy is, takes her through an unbelievable journey, putting her life in danger several times. She also had to come face to face with the powerful ISI of Pakistan, on a trail of suicide bombers, and there she writes about the state of journalists in Pakistan and how they are executed silently for their discoveries of the truth. .
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. 📖 As a reporter, she discusses the realities of the return of the Taliban, and they did return and their connection to Pakistan, how the ISI was helping and supporting them providing them with Intel, arms and strategy. She also points out that how Pakistan has destabilized it's neighbors by exporting terrorism. It's a brilliant take on how Pakistan was the actual hidden enemy in plain sight, that America missed.
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. 📖 This book's full of information on international relations and I love that.

[Ubah Khasimuddin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow - a juggernaut of a book! Gall knows her stuff and she reports as such. This is a damming account of The American war in Afghanistan - while it is billed as a "searing look at Pakistan's involvement in the Afghan war" Gall also lays out all that went wrong with how America started and kept up this war; how many mistakes were made that doomed this war to failure.
Reading this book after the recent pull out of America to Afghanistan, it is sad to know what will happen. There is flashes of optimism in these relatively depressing pages, that maybe Afghanistan will emerge successful, or at least away from the Taliban. We now know that isn't the case. And it is terrible.

Because Pakistan covers its tracks so well, this book tries to build the case that it is Pakistan who is behind the rise of the Taliban but there is very little meat to back it up. Which is not to say, I don't believe her, I do - it is well known that Pakistan is the funder of the Afghanistan Taliban and were it not for Pakistan's money, maybe, just maybe, America could have defeated this movement. But she doesn't give a lot of details about the Pakistan support. Ask any American scholar of this region, or U.S. diplomat serving this area, and after the killing of Bin Laden (who was living in Pakistan), everyone is well aware that Pakistan speaks out of both sides of its mouth.

But 4 stars given because much of the first half of the book is really just about America's mistakes and the Karzai's mistakes and at bits, gets mired down in names of people and details of lives that takes away from the larger picture.

It is not a light read, it will make you so sad about the whole senselessness of it. But if you want to understand more about the current state of affairs in Afghanistan, definitely worth a read.

[Athmika Bp · Rating 5 out of 5]

"One side should be finished, the Taliban or the government, we don't care which." -an Afghani farmer

It is a terrifying book of facts of life in Afghanistan in the 21st century, with the Taliban and without. The author has gone to great lengths to give a firsthand account of the decade-long war and that is commendable. The author also has been brutally honest about her facts in the book which is refreshing compared to how diplomatic she could have been.

The book kick starts with the Taliban's surrender in Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Once the Americans declared war on the roots that inflicted 9/11, the Taliban was forced to flee, leaving Afghanistan under the Presidentship of Hamid Karzai with the NATO and American forces for support. They go into hiding biding their time only to emerge stronger and more determined to establish their rule. Their return to power with a suicide bomb factory backing them up makes them more deadly and unpredictable. Rivals are assassinated, informers are slaughtered and every other road and village is booby trapped with bombs, making it a nightmare for anyone working towards the betterment of the country. The book moves back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan and there seems to be no end to the number of youngsters signing up for war. The killing of Osama bin Laden has a chapter dedicated to it and there is a revelation of how the wrong enemy has been fought in the wrong country.

The book is written with great dedication to bring to light the actual makings of a war. The writing is simple and moves smoothly.
It's a very insightful book and comes highly recommended.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book and then had 4-5 library books on request show up one after another so I got distracted for a bit. This is a really good recap of the US presence in Afghanistan through 2014 and a good refresher after all these years. A lot has happened and fallen by the wayside and the US media is not always on top of things.

To sum things up I'll share one of the closing sections by the author:

"When I remember the beleaguered state of Afghanistan in 2001, marvel at the changes the American intervention has wrought: the rebuilding, the modernity, the bright graduates in every office. yet after thirteen years, a trillion dollars spent, 120,000 foreign troops deployed at the height, and tens of thousands of lives lost, the fundamentals of Afghanistan's predicament remain the same: a weak state, pretty to the ambitions of its neighbors and extremist Islamists. The United States and its Nato allies are departing with the job only half done. Counterinsurgency is slow work. A comprehensive effort to turn things around only began in 2010. The fruits were only starting to show in 2013, and progress remains fragile.
Meanwhile the real enemy remains at large. The Taliban and al Qaeda will certainly seek to regain bases and territory in Afghanistan upon the departure of Western troops. Few Afghans believe that their government and security forces can keep the Taliban at bay. I believe they can, but they will need long-term financial and military support."

So true. I hope things can turn around, but today things look bleak again.

[Prabhash Gokarn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finishing my two-month-long initiative to read books centered around Pakistan, is the well-recommended book, The Wrong Enemy - a decade-long look at the blunder that the US made in concentrating on Afghanistan while turning a blind eye(or for strategic reasons) on the real culprit - Pakistan. To quote, "Pakistan is “perfidious, driving the violence in Afghanistan for its own cynical, hegemonic reasons". Pakistan is the most active participant in the conflict, supporting the Taliban and other terror groups while seemingly supporting America in its war on terror. Pakistan supports the Taliban as a hedge against pro-India Afghan groups. : Washington looks the other way when Pakistan supports militants as long as those militants don’t threaten the United States. The American pattern of dealing with this double game is to mollify Pakistan in public but keep stronger messages private.

However, the book neglects to look at the deep, historic relations between Afghanistan and India; major Indian investments in the Afghan economy that serve to provoke Pakistan. Nor does it explore the overall effect of Pakistan's rearing snakes in its backyard (to quote Hillary Clinton). Terrorism has not just destroyed Afghanistan; it has affected India very badly and it threatening to affect China (through Ughyr Muslims). And, most importantly, as ISI's control over these groups reduces; it also affects Pakistan: Pakistan's current "Civil War" like situation a direct evidence of this.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Amazon review August 29, 2015: Why not just say it?..begins with P and ends with stan!

Well done account from a first-hand perspective. Should be on the required reading list of all these bimbo presidential candidates though I doubt it is. Bottom line is that Pakistan is that enemy that no American politician will face up to. They are a step away from becoming a nuclear-armed ISIS with 180 million people and thanks to the Saudis a vast sector of their youth have been and continue to be indoctrinated with the 'extremist' Islamic ideology of Wahabism and violent jihad. This will not get better until the West faces up to the reality that this version of Islam is spreading worldwide but especially in Pakistan mainly due to millions (billions?) from our 'ally' Saudi Arabia funding madrassas with this ideological form of rabies (to borrow from Mr. Churchill). Isn't it amazing that his quote in that regard is likely called 'hate' speech in the UK today? Simply astounding. The book loses a star for not a single map and being a little disjointed and not too well edited. Still a valuable contribution.

[Rohit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic journalistic account of the ongoing war in Afghanistan. The author does an excellent job of weaving together on-the-ground reporting and interviews with general analysis and statistics and history. This is also not a disspassionate and dry account of the war -- the author is very insistent on tracing the roots of the conflict to elements at the highest levels of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishments, and is quite persuasive. In fact, the focus of the book is such that the title seems very misleading; the book is much more about Pakistan's role in the conflict, than it is about the experiences the US military. The book is also not a particularly chronological take, as the title implies; it follows a roughly chronological path, but bounces around quite a bit.

Overall a very good book; but it shouldn't be the only book on the Afghanistan war you read, as it is ultimately one perspective (albeit a very well-informed and knowledgeable and persuasive perspective).