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

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 – Steve Coll, The Penguin Press/Penguin Group, Inc. (2004) 695p. (S) ** (revised edit)

Sometimes in politics you reap what you sow. In terms of foreign policy, this is known as “blowback,” (see Charlmers Johnson’s book of the same name). Any discussion of the Afghanistan of the 1980s and the correspondent U.S. foreign policy of that era should place this word, “blowback,” (i.e. the corporeal form of Osama Bin Laden), at the fore of any serious analysis. Unfortunately, this is not the path taken by Steve Coll in his rather dense tome of 695 pages.

While the CIA was hot to arm and train Afghan Islamic fundamentalist fanatics (including the likes of Osama Bin Laden) to the teeth, not surprisingly it was the Soviets who raised alarm bells. “[Eduard] Shevardndze had asked for American cooperation [in 1988] in limiting the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.”(p.168) Apparently then Secretary of State George Shultz was sympathetic, but no higher level Reagan officials ever gave much thought to the issue. In 1992, Najibullah, the Afghan communist president, presciently stated: “‘If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world struggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center of terrorism.’”(p.234) Clearly, what the Soviets experienced first hand in their war against the jihadists made the threat of Islamic fundamentalism all the more real and tangible, much more so than in the case of the CIA which principally operated through a Pakistani proxy. Meanwhile, the naïve and zealously ideological Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations thought they could control the dynamite they so foolishly mishandled. Also completely overlooked by Coll is how poppy production and the export of heroin in the 1980s in Afghanistan - and its resumption in the present day - relates to U.S. foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and beyond.

As Coll moves closer to the events of 9/11 that mark the end of his book, he seems to drift further from an accurate rendering. Eager to lay the bulk of responsibility for 9/11 at the feet of the Clinton administration and its often ambivalent foreign policies, Coll seems to forget the obvious fact that the events of 9/11/01 in actuality, not theory, occurred on the watch of Bush Jr.’s administration. Nowhere in Coll’s analysis is there mention of Colleen Rowley and her repeated attempts to reach FBI headquarters regarding the “twentieth hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui. Nor is there mention of the now famous Phoenix memo warning of possible hijackers training at a flight school, nor mention as well of the pair of future hijackers in San Diego that were on the FBI field agents’ radar. Instead, Coll writes, “The [CIA’s] Counterterrorist Center’s failure early in 2000 to watch-list two known al Qaeda adherents, with American visas in their passports appears, in hindsight, as the agency’s single most important unforced era. If it had not occurred, the specific attacks that were to unfold with such unique destructive power in New York and Washington might well have been prevented.”(p.572) To pin the possible prevention of the 9/11 attacks on this singular occurrence is on its face absolutely absurd.

Equally erroneous, Coll states that “The deputies’ [of the Bush Jr. administration, including Paul Wolfowitz] decision to make Bin Laden their top priority marked a change from the Clinton years . . . ”(p.559) Anyone who has read Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies and/or Ron Suskind’s/Paul O’Neill’s The Price of Loyalty knows that from day one the Bush administration was itching for a showdown with Iraq, especially Wolfowitiz, among others. In fact, the Clinton national security team sought to brief the incoming Bush officials on prospective terrorist threats, but the arrogant latter would have none of it, as Condoleeza Rice downplayed the significant threat of Osama Bin Laden.

If the reader is looking for a comparable text in size and length on the events in the run-up to 9/11, he/she would do better by reading Peter Lance’s 1,000 Years For Revenge. Lance gives a more comprehensive view of the 9/11 terrorists themselves and the FBI’s attempted pursuit of them, something that the CIA obsessed Coll completely neglects. Clearly, as his seventy-five pages of notation would indicate, Coll has put a lot of research and effort into his work. Too bad this reviewer is unable to recommend it.