Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001,   ISBN:B001RNI20E

Customer Rating: 

This is an outstanding book detailing the US involvement with Afghanistan. Read in combination with Ahmed Rahsid's "Descent into Chaos" (See review) , it forms a powerful duo. The main strengths of Coll's book is its thoroughness from the American point of view. He has researched well the personalities involved within the US Government, particularly the CIA, and gives a coherent picture of how decisions were arrived. If one is a student of CIA history, this is a good starting point. The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because the story is a bit one-sided. It is a balanced book in its viewpoint but because the vast majority of the sources are English-based, I felt like I was reading only part of the story, though a very good one. Having read this book right after finishing "Descent into Chaos", the difference in the depth of knowledge and details were quite obvious to me. It is also quite obvious that the book was written in a hurry as the cadence of the story line varies tremendously. Once again compared to other books like Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilization", I didn't get a sense of "profound" understanding of the subject matter. Nonetheless, it is still excellent reading.

Customer Rating: 

This should be read by anyone who wants to understand some of the problems in the middle east (much of it caused by the US).

Worthy of a purchase for sure.

Customer Rating: 

This is an establishment version of what ultimately led to 9/11. You can find out more about the causes of 9/11 from going to the web and looking up original sources. For one thing the book tries to gloss over that Palestine, the utter ugly inhumanness of the Israelis toward the Palestinians, is what drew bin Laden to Azzam (a Palestinian and founder of Hamas) his mentor. The author treats that formative association hazily, giving it not a fraction of the details he devotes to expounding on how Clinton fooling around with Monica Lewinsky deverted his attention and cost him credibility in dealing with the threat from Al Qaeda. In other words, he substitutes barely relevant circumstance for critically dealing with the fact that our support for Israel in all it's criminal features motivated 9/11 as payback. cf [...]. for a quick primer on this. Much detail about the idiosyncrasies and personalities of american intelligence people, their careers, machinations inside Pakistani and Saudi intelligence, and Massoud in Afghanistan. Really trivial in meaning for in how we ended up being attacked. Who cares that Pervez Mushareff's daughter married a filmmaker? You'll get lot's of that kind of thing. I'm sorry but a worthless book. I gave up on page 421.

Customer Rating: 

The CIA and the Pakistan Intelligence service created the Taliban with the financial support of the Saudis. They were trained and funded by these players to drive out the Soviets from Afghanistan. The Taliban were an uneducated bunch of patriots who goal was to drive out the godless communists from their country. It is extremely interesting reading especially in light of where the US goes from here in rebuilding Afghanistan.

Customer Rating: 

Great book! A well researched, unbiased view of the CIA's relationship with Afghanistan's many personality's over the latter part of the twentieth century.