Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul

by Jere Van Dyk

“Without The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul” is the untold story of the origins, political awakening, and rise of what the United States and its allies call the Haqqani Network, and what the Haqqani family calls the Haqqani Mujahideen. The author lived with the Haqqanis as a young reporter for the New York Times in the 1980s, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, when they were America’s allies in the Afghan-Soviet war. After 9/11, the network became America’s enemy. This book tells the exciting story of how the author began to try to find the Haqqanis again, and, later, his quest to understand their influence in the greater Middle East. This is the story of the rise of an ideology and movement born in the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, which resurfaced in Arabia and India in the 18th Century, lived on in the anti-Christian, anti-British, anti-European, and anti-Russian colonial movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, and in modern times evolved, with American help, into the Haqqani Mujahideen, and that of their allies, and their Arab backers, and followers around the world.

Genres: History

404 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[Alex Geng · Rating 4 out of 5]

Style: 3 stars
Content: 5 stars

It's tough book to review. I had heard the author's interview on fresh air and was fascinated by his experience. I picked up this book hoping to be enlightened about the middle East and Afghanistan. I struggled to get through this book due to the style of writing.


STYLE:
The book is broken down into 2 to 5 page short story chapters. They are interconnected but the connections are not always apparent. The timeline is also not always explicitly stated. In narrative fiction, that could be a writing device. In a documentary nonfiction, it is a pain point. There are also significant number of paragraphs involving 2 or more persons. Pronouns, usually he and him - most of the figures in this book are men - are strung together without regard to my ability to discern who is who while the paragraphs run on. In places like these, it was very challenging to get a coherent idea or any idea at all.

The book also refers to many well know figures in the world the book is set in. For me, a novice in the geopolitics in the Islamic world, it was challenging for grasp the significance of these characters or the events they refer to without looking them up online. For more seasoned readers on the topic, this might not be a hindrance.

In several chapters, it appears the content may have been hastily adapted from shorthand notes, unfit for publication and reader consumption.

CONTENT:
This book is the culmination of the author's experience interviewing many important figures in the Islamic world, looking for the answers of why Afghanistan turned out the way it has and who and why abducted him and held him hostage.

The most important chapters to me are the ones involving Ibrahim, jalaludin's brother. The narrative is lucid and logic mostly cogent.

The other interviews documented opinions from many figures in the Islamic world, regarding Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iran and touched on different t sects of Islam, its ideologies such as salafism, Wahhabism.

I followed up after reading this book, with the author's first book, In Afghanistan: an American Odyssey (IAAO). Some of the confusions I had about this boom were clarified by reading IAAO. Both booms are important and independent contributions to a western perspective into this world. Neither is redundant by the existence of the other. The narrative of the first book, however is definitely superior.

When my friend asked me, "you finished it, so you liked it?"

I raised an eyebrow, thought for a minute. "I didn't like it but I'm glad I read it."

One final note is on the admirable courage of the author.

This review was made on a mobile device. I apologize for the autocorrect driven typos and errors.