Michiko Kakutani: The Choices That Closed a Window Into Afghanistan
Among the many lasting consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the collateral damage it inflicted on Afghanistan and the war there against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Money, troops and expertise were diverted to Iraq, and as the RAND Corporation political scientist Seth G. Jones observes in his useful new book, the initial success of the military operation in Afghanistan was squandered.
The slender window for securing a stable democracy in Afghanistan began to close, and by 2006, Mr. Jones writes, a “perfect storm of political upheaval” had gathered, with several crises ominously converging: “Pakistan emerged as a sanctuary for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, allowing them to conduct a greater number of operations from bases across the border; Afghan governance became unhinged as corruption worked its way through the government like a cancer, leaving massive discontent throughout the country; and the international presence, hamstrung by the U.S. focus on Iraq, was too small to deal with the escalating violence.”
The first major operation using additional troops sent to Afghanistan by President Obama recently began in the southern part of that country, even as Taliban advances in border regions have aided Al Qaeda’s efforts to destabilize neighboring Pakistan.
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning books have already dealt cogently with aspects of Afghanistan and the war on terror: Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars” (2004) examined the C.I.A.’s covert role during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and America’s subsequent neglect of the country during the post-cold-war ’90s, and Lawrence Wright’s “Looming Tower” (2006) probed Al Qaeda’s evolution and its activities in Afghanistan leading up to 9/11. In these pages Mr. Jones lightly retraces the ground covered by those pioneering books while zeroing in on what went awry after America’s successful routing of the Taliban in late 2001. His narrative is fleshed out with information from declassified government documents and interviews with military officers, diplomats and national security experts familiar with events on the ground in Afghanistan — most notably, the former ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad and the current ambassador to Afghanistan (who was a top military commander there), Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry....
Read entire article at NYT
The slender window for securing a stable democracy in Afghanistan began to close, and by 2006, Mr. Jones writes, a “perfect storm of political upheaval” had gathered, with several crises ominously converging: “Pakistan emerged as a sanctuary for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, allowing them to conduct a greater number of operations from bases across the border; Afghan governance became unhinged as corruption worked its way through the government like a cancer, leaving massive discontent throughout the country; and the international presence, hamstrung by the U.S. focus on Iraq, was too small to deal with the escalating violence.”
The first major operation using additional troops sent to Afghanistan by President Obama recently began in the southern part of that country, even as Taliban advances in border regions have aided Al Qaeda’s efforts to destabilize neighboring Pakistan.
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning books have already dealt cogently with aspects of Afghanistan and the war on terror: Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars” (2004) examined the C.I.A.’s covert role during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and America’s subsequent neglect of the country during the post-cold-war ’90s, and Lawrence Wright’s “Looming Tower” (2006) probed Al Qaeda’s evolution and its activities in Afghanistan leading up to 9/11. In these pages Mr. Jones lightly retraces the ground covered by those pioneering books while zeroing in on what went awry after America’s successful routing of the Taliban in late 2001. His narrative is fleshed out with information from declassified government documents and interviews with military officers, diplomats and national security experts familiar with events on the ground in Afghanistan — most notably, the former ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad and the current ambassador to Afghanistan (who was a top military commander there), Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry....