Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll Date: 23 February, 2004   —   $20.37   —   Book product page Rating:

Steve Coll's book, "Ghost Wars", is a challenging read, but like any challenge, success brings rewards. In this case, the reader gets a detailed account of the CIA's relationship with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and every other country and organization with links to bin Laden during the twenty years before September 11, 2001. And since the book is essentially a history of recent military, political, and religious events in Afghanistan, it's an interesting background to what we'll witness this year as that country attempts to hold its first democratic election in decades.

The book is fairly dry. It reads more like a military history - dates, names, and terse descriptions of actions - than some other books that have come out on the subject recently. But if you make it through, you'll know all you ever wanted to know about the rise of petro-dollar Islam,  our country's on-again-off-again relationship with Pakistan, bin Laden's relationship with the Saudi royal family and Saudi intelligence, the significance of the Unocal pipeline in Afghanistan, why Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan, the truth about the alleged Sudanese offer to hand over bin Laden to the US, why it's been so difficult,  politically and tactically, to capture or assassinate bin Laden, and so much more.

Starting with President Carter's secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Coll presents a comprehensive account of the CIA's relationship with that ill-fated country and its most infamous denizen, Osama bin Laden. Like Saddam Hussein, bin Laden was at first encouraged by the United States as a Cold War client, even to the extent of being allowed to open a jihadist recruiting office in Tucson, Arizona in 1986. The turning point in the relationship came in 1990 when bin Laden offered his veteran Afghanistan fighters to the Saudi government to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. He was rebuffed in favor of the US military.

This is also the account of a small number of CIA and government officials attempting to get the American government's bureaucratic juggernaut to acknowledge terrorism as a serious threat. Other than to pull the US Marines out of Lebanon after the 1983 Beirut bombing (thus handing terrorists their first major victory), Reagan did nothing to combat terrorism, and GHW Bush failed to retaliate for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. It took the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, less than a month after Clinton took office, before our government started to take the threat seriously.

The book ends with the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud in Afghanistan, the man who was the sole counter to complete Taliban domination of that country. A plan to eliminate bin Laden languishes, unread, on President Bush's desk as he vacations in Texas, and Hamid Karzai laments, "What an unlucky country." Afghanistan? George W. Bush's USA? Take your pick.