Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

by Ahmed Rashid

Book Overview

The classic account of America's experience in Afghanistan, explaining the rise of the Taliban in the aftermath of America's failed war on terrorism--essential reading to understand the collapse in Afghanistan today.

[A] brilliant and passionate book.--The New York Review of Books

A blistering critique of American policy--a dire and prescient warning predicting how our disastrous strategies in Central Asia's failing states...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014311557X
• ISBN13: 9780143115571
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.4" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Ahmed Rashid the Lion Heart

I am not going to say much about the book apart from telling you that if you are someone who prides him/herself on being well informed and especially if you are from the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan or India then you would be making a huge blunder in not reading this book not to mention owning a copy. The contents are chilling, mind boggling and will leave you like the sheeted dead squeaking and gibbering ere the mighty Ceasar fell. The import of my message is: Even in today's dollar driven world, there are still people like Ahmed Rashid who put their life on the line everyday by simply doing their work. I am from India and I really dont know why the ISI havent either assasinated Ahmed Rashid or atleast maimed him so that he cant continue his work. God forbid this should happen but read the book and you will find out that the man has earned the ire of the ISI. The amazing thing is he lives in Lahore!!! He is truly one Lion Hearted guy. His pen is startlingly unbiased and his passion shines forth as a truly concerned citizen of the region and not just Pakistan. His love for Afghanistan seems very evident in fact. A truly altruistic man, a Pakistani I lift my hat off to, a man I would love to meet, shake his hand, ask his autograph and tell him that night and day I pray for his safety and the continuation of his work. God bless you Ahmed Rashid.

A Ferocious Polemic and Indispensable Guide

I'm torn - Rashid's book is at once a searing, distorted polemic and an indispensable guide to Afghanistan's and Pakistan's near-simultaneous "Descent into Chaos" - for once, a sensational-sounding title on which the following text actually delivers. The polemic force-fits everything that's happened in Central and South Asia over the last eight years into the view that this is all a direct result of monstrous wrongs committed by the United States and its Defense Department and intelligence community operators - e.g., without explicitly stating as much, Rashid characterizes CIA as a near perfect analogue of Pakistan's ISI in terms of dark, maliciously conceived, stupidly executed intent - a contention that will draw cries of agreement from many quarters but frequently relieves the locals of their portion of culpability. There's a curious, YES, Karzai failed to build parties, BUT the Americans didn't insist that he do so, and thus the blame falls properly on them. On the other hand, the post-9/11 descent of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is told in thematic chapters - e.g., drugs, warlords, security, nation-building, Musharraf's failures, Karzai's failures - is in effect a sequel to Steve Coll's masterful Ghost Wars and tells a tale of almost unremitting mistakes, perfidy, venality, stupidity, and ultimately woe to the people of the region - much of which Rashid reported on or experienced first hand. . But even as Rashid acknowledges periodically the difficulty of national building and its failures in places like East Timor, despite massive international intervention and funding, he believes that, "If only the United States had done what I in hindsight thought it should have, a miracle would have occurred in this rocky land where no seed but violence seems to find purchase." Rashid is particularly harsh on Pakistan, its military intelligence agency, ISI, and former President and Army Chief Pervez Musharraf for playing a double game (and, to read the headlines, the double game remains on) of agreeing with the United States that counterterrorism is the highest of priorities while continuing to funnel large amounts of aid and providing safe harbor to the Afghan Talibans, a "strategic asset" in the reportedly intercepted words of current Pakistani Army chief, the US-trained Ashraf Kiyani. By all means read this passionate book by a man who is among the bravest of all the world's heroically brave journalists), but DON'T suspend your judgment: keep those critical antennae up.

Author has excellent access...read this after Ghost Wars

I am headed over to Kabul in a couple weeks to work in NATO's security assistance force. I have been reading a ton about the region over the past several months. Ghost Wars stands alone as the best read out there, but its narrative ends abruptly on Sept 10, 2001. For me this book can serve as a worthy sequel since a great deal of it deals with events since 9/11. The author is extremely thorough and detailed, but he also manages to hold the reader's interest by addressing themes instead of providing a straight chronology, which would have been painful given everything he includes here. Be forewarned, the author is very critical of US policy in the region, and seems to frequently overstate the degree to which the US policymakers can drive reform around the world. But I will say he spreads his criticisms fairly to other quarters...such as Karzai's government, and ultimately his opinions are articulated well enough to actually add something to the book. A totally objective, unimpassioned text would have been very dry. The author is a Pakistani journalist with incredible access and sources in that part of the world, and his text includes extensive notation. It should also be said that the incoming commander of Central Command Gen David Patreaus is a fan of this book. He recently brought the author onto his 100-member strategy review team dealing with Central and South Asia. So if you want to quickly become 'well read' on the area, pick up this book. It's extremely relevant at this point and time. I'm going to bring this over with me because I'm expecting it to serve as an excelent reference for regional people and place names.

A deeply troubling book

Ahmed Rashid has long been a leading expert on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Muslim states of Central Asia that were once part of the Soviet Union. In 2000, the year before 9/11, he published 'Taliban', a book which politicians rushed to read after the attack on the Twin Towers; and if Central Asia catches fire, they will doubtlessly rush to his following book, 'Jihad', first published in 2002, which is an equally authoritative account of the dangers lurking in that area. After a brilliant introduction of 21 pages, the first three chapters of the present book give the story of American involvement in Afghanistan before 9/11. The characteristic unreliability of American policy is brought out: help given to the Islamic forces and to Pakistan while the Soviets were in Afghanistan; then a total lack of interest in the period after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when Afghanistan was first torn apart by competing war-lords and was then overrun by the Taliban. No longer in need of Pakistan, the USA then imposed sanctions on that country because it, like India, had carried out tests of nuclear weapons. The next 15 chapters are essentially a sequel to the author's Taliban, and chronicles in great and sometimes in dense detail, right up to early 2008, the story of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the expulsion of the Taliban at the end of 2001 and the installation of Hamid Karzai as interim President. The victory had been not only been swift (it took two months), but had also been cheap for the Americans. They had fought the campaign from the air, leaving the land fighting to the war-lords of the Northern Alliance. The Americans lost just one man killed. Karzai was installed as interim president. This easy victory led the Americans to believe that it could be copied in Iraq, an attack on which the neo-cons had planned even before the Afghan war. Once the Iraq war began, the Americans concentrated on that and paid much less attention to Afghanistan, on which they wanted to spend as little money as possible. Rumsfeld was explicitly not interested in `nation building': helping Afghanistan to develop a healthy infrastructure.. From this all sorts of mistakes arose: 1. It seemed easier to use the armies of the war-lords than to build and train an Afghan National Army. 2. Karzai, a Pashtun, had no control over the Tajik and Uzbek war-lords. They refused to disarm or to let their men be integrated into a national army. Occasionally they fought each other; they collected tolls which they refused to hand over to the government; and they alienated the Pashtun majority. For a long time Karzai dared not confront them. When eventually he managed to form a new government without them in 2004, he proved indecisive in implementing a programme of reform. 3. He was unwilling to stamp out the cultivation of opium and the drug-lords, one of whom was his own brother. Drug dealing corrupted the entire administration and the police. The Allies did not

A very important work

This timely and critical book gives and experts overview of the current situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan and should serve as a wake uo call for policy makers interested in the region and people interested in the threat that instability and renewed Islamism pose. Here we are walked through the current unending war in Afghanistan and given a tour of the history of the American relationship with Pakistan before the author plunges into the nitty gritty of what is taking place. The book examines both the opium crop in Afghanistan and the renewel of the Taliban and their offensives against coalition and government troops. We are given an account of the rise of Islamism and the endurance of Al Quiada in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan and the coming apart of the Musharreff consensus in the wake of the death of Bhutto. As a last vignette we are taken to Uzbekistan where the author asks 'who lost this country?' In fact this last part is where 'central asia' comes into play but it should have been beefed up. Instead of one chapter detaling the problems in Uzbekistan the book should have included discussions of the rest of 'Central Asia' which appears in the subtitle. What of Kyrgizistan and Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and the threats that might emerge from them? The other subtitle is the question of 'nation-building' and here we are asked to consider the 'failure' of American arms, diplomacy and money. In Pakistan it is not a question so much of failure but rather of the inability of the U.S to invade the parts of that country which have been taken over by Al Quaida. In fact Pakistan is failing not only in the NWFP tribal areas but also in Baluchistan. Afghanistan, once a success, is being overun and the opium crop is funding the thugs turned drug barons turned Islamists. A short chapter on the nuclear issue also details some of the threats from increased instability or the fall of Pakistan. An important and well written work. Seth J. Frantzman