Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars,
bestselling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and
enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic
efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan
since 9/11
Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale
covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although
often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence
agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive
and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was
covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in
order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when
fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid
to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the
U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.
Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of
military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on
resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes
painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the
failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions
of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S." This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of
historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the
Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence
agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of
players, including some of the most prominent military and political
figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms
but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence.
Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of
the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and
attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and
intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking.
This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly
ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict
in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal
and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a
complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
