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Descent into Chaos
by Ahmed Rashid
Reviewed by Mark Clifford
Ahmed Rashid has written an extraordinary, compelling and courageous book. One of the world's foremost experts on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, Rashid details the multitude of missteps that have characterized U.S. policy in the region since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. This is a book written in anger and steeped in sorrow.
It is a common sentiment that the Bush administration's misguided obsession with Iraq blinded it to the task in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but no one teases out the tragic details of this mistake better than Rashid. Rashid supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and had high hopes for a massive Marshall-style aid plan. It didn't happen, of course, and Rashid lays out in great detail why not.
Seven years on, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have regrouped; Afghanistan is once again staring into the abyss and is, again, the world's largest opium producer while Pakistan is more unstable than it was while anti-American sentiment there is far broader and deeper. And as if that weren't bad enough, four of the five Central Asian economies have sunk lower than they were in the Soviet period.
This is grim reading. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush are shown making repeated, needless blunders. Incredibly, despite Bush's promise to hunt down Osama bin Laden, the U.S. essentially abandoned pursuit after bin Laden slipped into Pakistan's frontier regions because of unwillingness to confront Pakistani authorities. In Afghanistan, the determination not to engage in serious nation-building has cost the U.S. dearly. This region is, in Rashid's words, the "homeland of global terrorism", yet the U.S. wanted to do what a U.S. administration official termed "nation-building lite." The neo-cons sold the U.S. public a fiction. Now the price is being paid.
In short, if you think Iraq is bad, Rashid warns that the instability in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia might ultimately be more destabilizing globally. The largest of these countries, Pakistan, is a proven proliferator of nuclear weapons technology, and there's real uncertainty as to who even controls Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Add the fact that almost all of the world's opium (and heroin) comes out of Afghanistan and the mix looks even more dangerous.
Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf comes in for Rashid's most sustained and withering assault. After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. gave Musharraf a choice: cooperate or risk your country's survival. Musharraf has played a delicate balancing game ever since, giving the U.S. enough cooperation to retain military aid and political backing from Washington, but at the same time continuing to provide sanctuary to Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. The US$10 billion-plus of U.S. aid pumped into Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks has not brought greater security.
The catalog of Pakistan's deceptions is significant: the sanctuary it provided to Taliban and al-Qaeda militants; the rogue nuclear weapons program run by national hero A.Q. Khan (lauded by Musharraf, allegedly under house arrest ands never allowed to be questioned by U.S. authorities); an army that has refused to allow the sustained development of a democratic political society but has instead embarked on numerous (usually disastrous) military adventures for decades.
One of Rashid's great strengths is that he knows so many of the players intimately. Rashid has been a journalist covering the region for more than two decades; he has also been a participant in the peace process. His is a voice of tolerance and development, not one of religious or nationalistic struggle. This perspective infuses his writings with an authority that few other writers have. Morever, his trenchant cirticisms of Pakistan, especially the country's miliatry and intelligence service, are imbued with a credibility that few other writers have.
Rashid has his biases: he is gentle in his criticism of Afghan President Harmad Karzai, whom he knows well and feels fondness for, but whose indecisiveness and general unwillingness to provoke confrontations have cost his nation dearly. Rashid is also perhaps too forgiving of Benazir Bhutto, whose pattern of corruption and rather shaky commitment to building democracy in Pakistan is given short shrift. But these are minor flaws in an important work.
--
Mark Clifford is Executive Director of the Asia Business Council and editor of Building Energy Efficiency: Why Green Buildings Are Key to Asia's Future.
by Ahmed Rashid
Reviewed by Mark Clifford
Ahmed Rashid has written an extraordinary, compelling and courageous book. One of the world's foremost experts on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, Rashid details the multitude of missteps that have characterized U.S. policy in the region since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. This is a book written in anger and steeped in sorrow.
It is a common sentiment that the Bush administration's misguided obsession with Iraq blinded it to the task in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but no one teases out the tragic details of this mistake better than Rashid. Rashid supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and had high hopes for a massive Marshall-style aid plan. It didn't happen, of course, and Rashid lays out in great detail why not.
Seven years on, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have regrouped; Afghanistan is once again staring into the abyss and is, again, the world's largest opium producer while Pakistan is more unstable than it was while anti-American sentiment there is far broader and deeper. And as if that weren't bad enough, four of the five Central Asian economies have sunk lower than they were in the Soviet period.
This is grim reading. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush are shown making repeated, needless blunders. Incredibly, despite Bush's promise to hunt down Osama bin Laden, the U.S. essentially abandoned pursuit after bin Laden slipped into Pakistan's frontier regions because of unwillingness to confront Pakistani authorities. In Afghanistan, the determination not to engage in serious nation-building has cost the U.S. dearly. This region is, in Rashid's words, the "homeland of global terrorism", yet the U.S. wanted to do what a U.S. administration official termed "nation-building lite." The neo-cons sold the U.S. public a fiction. Now the price is being paid.
In short, if you think Iraq is bad, Rashid warns that the instability in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia might ultimately be more destabilizing globally. The largest of these countries, Pakistan, is a proven proliferator of nuclear weapons technology, and there's real uncertainty as to who even controls Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Add the fact that almost all of the world's opium (and heroin) comes out of Afghanistan and the mix looks even more dangerous.
Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf comes in for Rashid's most sustained and withering assault. After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. gave Musharraf a choice: cooperate or risk your country's survival. Musharraf has played a delicate balancing game ever since, giving the U.S. enough cooperation to retain military aid and political backing from Washington, but at the same time continuing to provide sanctuary to Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. The US$10 billion-plus of U.S. aid pumped into Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks has not brought greater security.
The catalog of Pakistan's deceptions is significant: the sanctuary it provided to Taliban and al-Qaeda militants; the rogue nuclear weapons program run by national hero A.Q. Khan (lauded by Musharraf, allegedly under house arrest ands never allowed to be questioned by U.S. authorities); an army that has refused to allow the sustained development of a democratic political society but has instead embarked on numerous (usually disastrous) military adventures for decades.
One of Rashid's great strengths is that he knows so many of the players intimately. Rashid has been a journalist covering the region for more than two decades; he has also been a participant in the peace process. His is a voice of tolerance and development, not one of religious or nationalistic struggle. This perspective infuses his writings with an authority that few other writers have. Morever, his trenchant cirticisms of Pakistan, especially the country's miliatry and intelligence service, are imbued with a credibility that few other writers have.
Rashid has his biases: he is gentle in his criticism of Afghan President Harmad Karzai, whom he knows well and feels fondness for, but whose indecisiveness and general unwillingness to provoke confrontations have cost his nation dearly. Rashid is also perhaps too forgiving of Benazir Bhutto, whose pattern of corruption and rather shaky commitment to building democracy in Pakistan is given short shrift. But these are minor flaws in an important work.
--
Mark Clifford is Executive Director of the Asia Business Council and editor of Building Energy Efficiency: Why Green Buildings Are Key to Asia's Future.
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