Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 | 
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Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  139 reviews
Sales Rank: 3380
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 738
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0143034669
Dewey Decimal Number: 958.1045
EAN: 9780143034667
ASIN: 0143034669
Publication Date: December 28, 2004
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Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 offers revealing details of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the years before the September 11 attacks. From the beginning, Coll shows how the CIA's on-again, off-again engagement with Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet war left officials at Langley with inadequate resources and intelligence to appreciate the emerging power of the Taliban. He also demonstrates how Afghanistan became a deadly playing field for international politics where Soviet, Pakistani, and U.S. agents armed and trained a succession of warring factions. At the same time, the book, though opinionated, is not solely a critique of the agency. Coll balances accounts of CIA failures with the success stories, like the capture of Mir Amal Kasi. Coll, managing editor for the Washington Post, covered Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992. He demonstrates unprecedented access to records of White House meetings and to formerly classified material, and his command of Saudi, Pakistani, and Afghani politics is impressive. He also provides a seeming insider's perspective on personalities like George Tenet, William Casey, and anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke ("who seemed to wield enormous power precisely because hardly anyone knew who he was or what exactly he did for a living"). Coll manages to weave his research into a narrative that sometimes has the feel of a Tom Clancy novel yet never crosses into excess. While comprehensive, Coll's book may be hard going for those looking for a direct account of the events leading to the 9-11 attacks. The CIA's 1998 engagement with bin Laden as a target for capture begins a full two-thirds of the way into Ghost Wars, only after a lengthy march through developments during the Carter, Reagan, and early Clinton Presidencies. But this is not a critique of Coll's efforts; just a warning that some stamina is required to keep up. Ghost Wars is a complex study of intelligence operations and an invaluable resource for those seeking a nuanced understanding of how a small band of extremists rose to inflict incalculable damage on American soil. --Patrick O'Kelley
Product Description
To what extent did Americas best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Coll details the secret history of the CIAs role in Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 134 more reviews...
 A well edited reality show August 5, 2008
It was a pleasure reading this very well written and researched book. As an Indian, I grew up reading about the defeat of Russians in newspapers. The subsequent battle for Afghanistan between the communist government and the mujahedin entered my consciousness through snatches of news on the radio. So, it was great to get the stories and personalities around people like Masooud.
However, as I reached to the end of the book, I realized that clearly the author was not telling the whole story. Some gaping holes in the book are
1. CIA and the US government remained unaware of Pakistan support to Taliban for a long period. Did they not have sources in the ISI and Pakistan government?
2. Ditto for Saudi support to Taliban.
3. The Israeli agency Mossad is mentioned once in passing in the book. It is difficult to believe that they did not have any intelligence presence in a region which was developing as big threat to their existence. it is difficult to believe that they were a player of no significance in the whole story.
Now, there may be very good reasons for such omissions. However, they left me feeling that the book finally depends on revelations that were very tightly controlled. Obviously there would be control to protect the integrity of sources. But only slightly less obviously, the control can be used to "paint a picture." If you reveal only selected facts, most intelligent readers would draw the conclusions you want them to. I don't know what all has been left out. All I know is that the omissions pointed out above are too significant for me. They make me feel that I am watching a well edited reality show.
 bordering on fraudulent August 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
well, not this book actually, but a related book by Coll's colleague Parag Khanna titled The Second World.
Some of the various, and numerous, factual errors that riddle the book are relatively trivial, but suggest serious sloppiness and disregard for getting facts right. For example, Yugoslavia was not part of Warsaw pact, as Khanna states. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov was appointed to office in 1992 by Boris Yeltsin, and not by Vladimir Putin. Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Albania are not all smaller by population than Manhattan, and the death toll from the civil wars in former Yugoslavia was not greater than half a million. Other obviously wrong assertions seem to be made up simply to provide lurid background color to Khanna's travelogue: the former KGB headquarters in Moscow has not been turned into "a high-class disco," expensive Moscow malls do not charge entrance fees, and police road checkpoints in Uzbekistan do not stop and check all vehicles. And other gross misstatements of fact display a simple complete lack of understanding the history and culture of the countries of which he writes: the (Orthodox) Uspenky cave monastery in Crimea is not representative of Ukraine's "proud Catholic heritage," Zoran Djindjic was not the first democratically elected leader since World War II in former Yugoslavia , and in the 1980s Yugoslav republics like Bosnia and Macedonia were not richer than Spain. Many of Khanna's wildly wrong claims sound like local myths that he has taken at face value. I can easily imagine some misguided elderly Belgrade resident waxing nostalgically for the days "when every one of our republics was richer than Spain!"
Yet more of Khanna's assertions are not merely factually wrong, but far exceed the ludicrous. In the fast paced and dangerous Russian business world, "one is safe only in the sauna, where everyone is naked and no weapons are allowed." It was news to me to learn from Khanna that every winter "waves" of Russians and "thousands of Ukrainians" freeze to death in "crumbling heatless apartment blocks." And he employs gross mischaracterizations of fact to buttress his claims. For example, according to Khanna, in 2006 Greek GDP increased 25% when the government started to account for prostitution and cigarette smuggling in its figures. In fact, the government said it would include all unreported economic activity, mostly in construction and trade, but including a "small" amount for illegal activities such as smuggling. And this is merely a sampling of patently ridiculous claims.
And for a "foreign policy whiz-kid," Khanna makes numerous and serious analytical mistakes, showing a clear misunderstanding of economics, international institutions, and international relations. The unhedged statement, "Russia's diplomatic position is purely residual," will surely surprise diplomats from Brussels to Tokyo. Noting that Gazprom's market capitalization is $300 billion leads Khanna to the conclusion that Gazprom is one third of the Russian economy, confusing market capitalization with GDP. And his bald assertion that "[n]one of Central Asian legal systems have evolved beyond Kakfaaesque" is belied by the numerous successful legislative accomplishments of Kazakhstan and its quite sophisticated legal code, for example.
But the worst moments of Khanna's book are when he quotes conversations that seem of such dubious authenticity as to make me believe they may be fabricated, or at best the result of very selective reporting, only relating those comments that fit within his pre-existing views. "'Our pride has suffered'" explains a "Moscow intellectual over a narrow glass of [of course] ice-chilled vodka, `but this only drives our nationalism further.'" In Kiev, the locals "give lifts to strangers for a token fare." Why? "We suffered enough together, so we still trust each other." There are just too many such (anonymous) quotations that fail to ring true to trust in the author's integrity. And he also reports statements by national leaders as if they were heard in personal conversation, yet in a curiously indirect fashion that suggests otherwise.
A Historical Tour de Force July 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wow! Never have I read such an engaging, informative book of such importance. If you want to understand Middle East politics, conflicts and major principals and how they were affected by American power read Ghost Wars. I found it refreshing to read a true journalistic account as dispassionate and unbiased as Steve Coll's brilliant book. His background information on Middle East history and the movers and shakers was perfect - not too long-winded or short-shifted. About as perfect an investigative non-fiction book can be.
 na June 23, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
i ordered this book about 2 weeks ago and have not yet received it. PlEASE EXPLAIN.
Coll collects the pieces of the puzzle that helped create the picture of terrorism from 9/11 June 22, 2008
The subtitle of this book says it all. If you take nothing else away from this review recognize that. Anything I have to say after that is pretty meaningless by comparison.
The Third World War goes on today. It's not a war in the traditional sense like WWI or II. During World War I and World War II our enemies were unable to cross the Atlantic or Pacific and strike mainland America. Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9/11 indicated that we were at war we just didn't know it yet. That war began before September 11, 2001 but that was the first major strike of the war. The Third World War isn't about ideology but about unfinished business in countries where the Soviets and the United States had interests, slights against other countries and religion.
Steve Coll's excellent, well documented book GHOST WARS examines the events leading up to 9/11, how our policy enabled these horrible events to occur, the inability by U.S. analyst to see (or to have people in power listen to them)and miscalculations/lack of involvement in Afghanistan after the Soviet's pulled out allowed the Taliban to take power and isolate those that might have been our allies. In the process, bin Laden rose to power creating his the insidious network of suicide bombers all in pursuit of his jihad.
Colon does an exceptional job of documenting how all this occurred. The research that Coll and Griff Witt did as the background to this fascinating but also terrifying story provides exhaustive detail on how policy makers could bungle the latest threat that the United States and the rest of the world face today.
Coll begins his book going as far back as 1976 during the Carter administration and the seige on the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and traces the roots of discontent that would bear deadly fruitation in 2001. He connects the dots showing how all of these steps from that seige to the bumbling invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. support (and abandonment) of anti-Soviet guerrilla commanders in that country when brewed together with foreigners such as bin Laden creating the toxic soup of terrorist activity seen before and since that fateful date in 2001.
Coll's book won the Pultizer Prize and is highly recommended for an exhaustive and fascinating glimpse into the pieces of the puzzle that, when put together, gave us a picture of the murder of innocents, destruction and evil. If politics is war by a different means, than so is terrorism.
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