Descent into Chaos:

How the War Against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid

The Sunday Times review by Max Hastings: where the West has gone wrong in the war in Central Asia

Afghan women fight for humanitarian aid, mostly winter supplies, in front of Hallal Ahmed humanitarian organization in Kabul on February 6, 2002.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist of the highest narrative and analytical gifts, is baffled by the West's almost demented indifference and folly towards Afghanistan and his own country. The stakes are huge. If either state fails, as is highly plausible, global stability will be rocked. The United Nations, Nato, the European Union and, of course, America will see their purposes and credibility set at naught.

Yet, as Rashid writes: "The international community's lukewarm commitment to Afghanistan after 9/11 has been matched only by its incompetence, incoherence and conflicting strategies — all led by the United States." Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Washington's commitment, since 2001, to support President Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship rather than to promote the interests of the Pakistani people, "has created immense hatred for the US army and America, hatred that penetrates all classes of society".

These are strong words, yet Rashid is no foaming leftist, still less an enthusiast for Islamic militance. He merely tells a story from the viewpoint of a highly informed Pakistani who knows intimately almost all the leading players, including Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, many of the Afghan warlords, and, of course, key figures in his own country.

The severest criticism that can be made of his tale is that we know some of it already. A group of ignorant, immensely powerful and thus dangerous men in Washington, of whom Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, was probably the worst, sought to exploit America's shock after 9/11 to pursue their own global agenda, on which taking out Saddam Hussein was tops.

Rashid inks in much detail about the post-conflict failure in Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in December 2001. Rumsfeld's rejection of nation- building, matched by America's willingness to deliver much of the country to warlords paid by the CIA, destroyed any chance of achieving post-Taliban stability, or making a Karzai national government work.

Americans on the ground ladled out cash to the wrong people, ignored mass killings of prisoners and presided over systemic and illegal brutality to captives. "Suspects" as old as 88 and as young as 13 were shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The neocons cared about only one objective, hitting Al-Qaeda, and were indifferent both to collateral damage and to the importance of salvaging the Afghan society that they had overrun.

The book asserts that America's refusal to deploy even a few thousand ground troops enabled thousands of Taliban, not to mention Osama Bin Laden, to escape into Pakistan. The author flatly states that the opportunity was there to catch Bin Laden at Tora Bora at the end of 2001, if America had displayed greater commitment and skill.

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