Seth Jones - In the Graveyard of Empires - America's War in Afghanistan
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- Название:In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan
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In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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is a political history of Afghanistan in the “Age of Terror” from 2001 to 2009, exploring the fundamental tragedy of America’s longest war since Vietnam.
After a brief survey of the great empires in Afghanistan—the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the British in the era of Kipling, and the late Soviet Union—Seth G. Jones examines the central question of our own war: how did an insurgency develop? Following the September 11 attacks, the United States successfully overthrew the Taliban regime. It established security throughout the country—killing, capturing, or scattering most of al Qa’ida’s senior operatives—and Afghanistan finally began to emerge from more than two decades of struggle and conflict. But Jones argues that as early as 2001 planning for the Iraq War siphoned off resources and talented personnel, undermining the gains that had been made. After eight years, he says, the United States has managed to push al Qa’ida’s headquarters about one hundred miles across the border into Pakistan, the distance from New York to Philadelphia.
While observing the tense and often adversarial relationship between NATO allies in the Coalition, Jones—who has distinguished himself at RAND and was recently named by
as one of the “Best and Brightest” young policy experts—introduces us to key figures on both sides of the war. Harnessing important new research and integrating thousands of declassified government documents, Jones then analyzes the insurgency from a historical and structural point of view, showing how a rising drug trade, poor security forces, and pervasive corruption undermined the Karzai government, while Americans abandoned a successful strategy, failed to provide the necessary support, and allowed a growing sanctuary for insurgents in Pakistan to catalyze the Taliban resurgence.
Examining what has worked thus far—and what has not—this serious and important book underscores the challenges we face in stabilizing the country and explains where we went wrong and what we must do if the United States is to avoid the disastrous fate that has befallen many of the great world powers to enter the region. 12 maps and charts
From Publishers Weekly
Since 2001, RAND Corporation political scientist Jones (
) has been observing the reinvigorated insurgency in Afghanistan and weighing the potency of its threat to the country's future and American interests in the region. Jones finds the roots of the re-emergence in the expected areas: the deterioration of security after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2002, the U.S.'s focus on Iraq as its foreign policy priority and Pakistan's role as a haven for insurgents. He revisits Afghan history, specifically the invasions by the British in the mid- and late-19th century and the Russians in the late-20th to rue how little the U.S. has learned from these two previous wars. He sheds light on why Pakistan—a consistent supporter of the Taliban—continues to be a key player in the region's future. Jones makes important arguments for the inclusion of local leaders, particularly in rural regions, but his diligent panorama of the situation fails to consider whether the war in Afghanistan is already lost.
Review
“A useful and generally lively account of what can go wrong when outsiders venture onto the Afghan landscape.” (
* )
“This is a serious work that should be factored in as a new policy in Afghanistan evolves.” (
* )
“Offers a valuable window onto how officials have understood the military campaign.” (
* )
“[An] excellent book.” (
* )
“How we got to where we are in Afghanistan.” (
* )
“[Zeroes] in on what went awry after America’s successful routing of the Taliban in late 2001.” (
* )
“A blueprint for winning in a region that has historically brought mighty armies to their knees.” (
* )
“Seth Jones . . . has an anthropologist’s feel for a foreign society, a historian’s intuition for long-term trends, and a novelist’s eye for the telling details that illuminate a much larger story. If you read just one book about the Taliban, terrorism, and the United States, this is the place to start.” (
* )
“A timely and important work, without peer in terms of both its scholarship and the author’s intimate knowledge of the country, the insurgency threatening it, and the challenges in defeating it.” (
* )
“A deeply researched and well-analyzed account of the failures of American policies in Afghanistan,
will be mandatory reading for policymakers from Washington to Kabul.” (
* )
“Seth Jones has combined forceful narrative with careful analysis, illustrating the causes of this deteriorating situation, and recommending sensible, feasible steps to reverse the escalating violence.” (
* )
“Seth G. Jones’s book provides a vivid sense of just how paltry and misguided the American effort has been.…
will help to show what might still be done to build something enduring in Afghanistan and finally allow the U.S. to go home.” (
* )
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59. Author interviews with NATO officials: Washington, DC, June 4, 2007; Kabul, Afghanistan, September 15, 2007; Kandahar, Afghanistan, September 17, 2007.
60. Author interview with Ambassador Said Jawad, August 24, 2007.
61. Author interviews with NATO officials: Washington, DC, June 4, 2007; Kabul, Afghanistan, September 15, 2007; Kandahar, Afghanistan, September 17, 2007.
62. Author interview with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, July 2006; author interview with Dr. Zalmai Rassoul, November 23, 2005.
63. Memorandum of Conversation, From L. Paul Bremer III, June 22, 2003 Meeting with Kofi Annan, Amman, Jordan.
64. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Iranian Support to the Afghan Resistance,” excerpt from unidentified study, n.d.; Defense Intelligence Agency, “Iranian Support to the Afghan Resistance,” 11 July 1985. Released by the National Security Archive.
65. Thom Shanker, “Iran May Know of Weapons for Taliban, Gates Contends,” New York Times, June 14, 2007, p. 12.
66. Bill Gertz, “China Arming Terrorists,” Washington Times, June 15, 2007, p. 5.
67. Author interviews with NATO officials, Kandahar, Afghanistan, September 17, 2007.
68. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 66.
69. European Union and UNAMA, Discussion of Taliban and Insurgency, p. 5.
70. On Saudi Arabia’s historical role in Afghanistan, see National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 371–74.
71. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Frontiers: The Romanes Lecture 1907 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), p. 7.
72. U.S. State Department, Afghanistan, Autumn 2006, p. 17. Unclassified document.
73. Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti, and Carlotta Gall, “U.S. Hopes to Arm Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qa’ida,” New York Times, November 19, 2007, p. A1.
74. Author interview with White House official, Washington, DC, June 20, 2007.
75. Author interview with Western ambassador, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 13, 2007; author interview with Western ambassador, Kabul, Afghanistan, January 10, 2007.
Chapter Sixteen
1. National Intelligence Council, The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, July 2007), p. 1.
2. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 2008), pp. 5–6.
3. Author interview with FBI counterterrorism official, July 1, 2008.
4. House of Commons, Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005, HC 1087 (London: The Stationery Office, 2006), p. 21.
5. Bruce Hoffman, “Challenges for the U.S. Special Operations Command Posed by the Global Terrorist Threat: Al Qa’ida on the Run or on the March?” Written Testimony Submitted to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, February 14, 2007.
6. On the plot’s connection to al Qa’ida, see United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2006, p. 269.
7. Author interview with Bruce Riedel, Washington, DC, June 5, 2008.
8. Seth G. Jones and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, forthcoming).
9. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 60; Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 132, 242.
10. “Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques,” Al Islah (London), September 2, 1996.
11. “Text of World Islamic Front’s Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,” Al-Quds al-Arabi (London), February 23, 1998.
12. House of Commons, Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005, p. 29.
13. See, for example, Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam (New York: Random House, 2003), p. xi.
14. On the establishment of a Caliphate, see, for example, Abu Bakr Naji, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass, translated and published by the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, May 23, 2006.
15. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, translated by Laura Mansfield (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2002), p. 132.
16. Osama bin Laden, “Message to the Peoples of Europe,” released in November 2007.
17. Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 49.
18. Zawahiri’s reference to the Afghan jihad in this context was the Soviet War in the 1980s. He argued that it provided a critical opportunity for training Arabs against the forthcoming war with the United States. Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, p. 38.
19. This section adopts the framework laid out by Bruce Hoffman. See, for example, Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 285–89; Hoffman, “Challenges for the U.S. Special Operations Command Posed by the Global Terrorist Threat.”
20. Indeed, six months after September 11, 2001, al Qa’ida had lost sixteen of twenty-five key leaders on the Pentagon’s “Most Wanted” list. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qa’ida: Global Network of Terror (New York: Berkley Books, 2002), p. 303.
21. “Pakistan: Villagers Start Rebuilding Seminary Destroyed in Bajaur Airstrike,” The News (Pakistan), November 18, 2006.
22. Hoffman, “Challenges for the U.S. Special Operations Command Posed by the Global Terrorist Threat” Jason Burke, Al-Qa’ida: The True Story of Radical Islam (London: Penguin, 2004); Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Touchstone, 2001); Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006).
23. Greg Miller, “Influx of Al Qa’ida, Money into Pakistan Is Seen,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2007.
24. United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2006 (Washington, DC: United States Department of State), p. 269; Hoffman, “Challenges for the U.S. Special Operations Command Posed by the Global Terrorist Threat.”
25. House of Commons, Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005, pp. 24–27; Hoffman, “Challenges for the U.S. Special Operations Command Posed by the Global Terrorist Threat.”
26. New York Police Department, Threat Analysis: JFK Airport/Pipeline Plot (New York: New York Police Department, June 2, 2007).
27. Juzgado Central de Instrucción Numero 5, Audiencia Nacional, Sumario (Proc. Ordinario) 21/2006 L, Madrid, 23 Octubre 2007.
28. The Information Center for the Support of the Iraqi People, Iraqi Jihad, Hopes and Risks: Analysis of the Reality and Visions for the Future, and Actual Steps in the Path of the Blessed Jihad (The Information Center for the Support of the Iraqi People, December 2003).
29. Lorenzo Vidino, “The Hofstad Group: The New Face of Terrorist Networks in Europe,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 579–92; Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst, From Dawa to Jihad: The Various Threats from Radical Islam to the Democratic Legal Order (The Hague: Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst, December 2004).
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