Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground

Steele (Defeat), former chief foreign correspondent for the Guardian, surveys 30 years of war in Afghanistan in this impressionistic history. Drawing upon 14 trips to the country over the past 30 years, dozens of interviews with Afghans, and revelations from the trove of official U.S. diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks, the author claims that the ghosts of Afghan wars past—i.e., the “catastrophic mistakes made by earlier invaders”—haunts Obama’s war today. Not only has the U.S. refused to acknowledge those earlier mistakes but it also has erected a litany of myths to support its “doomed strategy” of armed intervention and occupation. Among the myths that the author proposes and methodically, if often disingenuously, debunks is the notion that the “Soviet Union suffered military defeat” in Afghanistan and that the Taliban are unpopular and uniquely evil. Ultimately, Steele concludes, the U.S. must acknowledge the “folly” of its intervention and seek a negotiated settlement that will establish a sovereign but neutral Afghanistan. Even he, however, admits that after 30 years of armed intervention and civil war such a grand bargain “will not be easy,” and he neglects to offer any concrete steps to get there. (Nov.)