Justice and the enemy

By Karen Greenberg

On November 13, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would be tried in federal court alongside four co-defendants, reversing the 2008 Bush administration decision to try the 9/11 conspirators before a military commissions tribunal. On April 4, 2011, after an avalanche of criticism based on legal and security concerns, Holder sheepishly announced a reversal of policy. The country was now back where it had started: Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) would be tried by military commission at Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps because of the evident unease of the administration's turn about, ostensibly in response to political pressure, the debate over military versus federal tribunals for Guantanamo's High Value Detainees is still very much alive.

Recognizing this, William Shawcross's Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed joins the debate on the side of the military commissions. His somewhat standard reasoning begins with a relatively new, and somewhat flawed premise: that today's military commissions are but the current version of the "remarkable achievement" of the Nuremberg Trials, the international military tribunal which tried twenty-two Nazi defendants accused of war crimes and over which the American Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson presided as chief prosecutor. Shawcross, whose father was the chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg, insists that at Nuremberg, "Justice was done." From the start, Shawcross sets up Jackson as his hero, the unquestionable voice of wisdom, carrying the message from Nuremberg to terrorism.

To justify his reliance on Nuremberg as the determinative precedent, Shawcross asserts a foundational principle - that al-Qaeda is but the most recent example of the evil that evidenced itself in the Nazi atrocities, an evil that "did not die" with the twelve men condemned to death at Nuremburg, an evil that "reinvents itself in every age" and that "struck America on September 11." From this, he extrapolates that, when it comes to al-Qaeda defendants, it is only right to try them by military commissions.

From the trial of Zacarious Moussaoui, who pled guilty in 2005 to charges of conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks, to the reading of Miranda rights, albeit after a delay, to the Christmas Day bomber, Shawcross echoes the oft-repeated opinion that in these cases, "justice was not done." No case, to his mind, has demonstrated this more clearly than the trial in 2010 of Ahmed Ghailani on charges of conspiring in the 1998 Embassy Bombings in East Africa. Taking place twelve years after the crime, during which time Ghailani was tortured at a CIA black site and held at Guantanamo, the Ghailani trial was the Obama administration's attempt to test the federal court system. When the jury found Ghailani not guilty on 284 of 285 charges, Holder's reversal became inevitable. Although Ghailani was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Shawcross is far from satisfied at what he considers a decision "perilously close to acquitting [Ghailani] altogether." He cringes at the notion that "either the government would have had to let him go," causing "immense strategic consequences," or they would have to "detain him despite the verdict of innocence." Justice Jackson, he tells us, would have agreed that terrorism detainees should not be released. Jackson, he reminds us, had opined that prosecutors "must never put a man on trial unless you are prepared to see him walk free," - a notion that Shawcross finds unthinkable in these cases, ignoring the fact that under Jackson's supervision, three of the Nuremberg defendants, were acquitted, and indeed, did walk free. Here, as elsewhere, Shawcross is shamelessly certain about prophesizing what Jackson would have done, telling us at one point that Jackson would have condoned not just the trial of KSM in a military tribunal but Obama's targeted killings policy as well. He cites Jackson on the matter of executing war criminals, "'If it is considered good policy for the future peace of the world, if it is believed that the example will outweigh the tendency to create....a myth of martyrdom, then let them be executed. But...let the decision to execute them be made as a military or political decision,'" not a judicial one. Shawcross's logic, shaped by its usefulness for his argument, fails to consider that Awlaki's crimes as well as bin Laden's were those which both the criminal justice system and Guantanamo had prosecuted, and that bin Laden, indicted in federal court, was already squarely within the trajectory of the criminal justice system.

Ultimately, Shawcross rests his position on the belief that terrorism defendants are categorically different from those accused tried in criminal proceedings. As such, they are undeserving of the precious protections offered by the U.S. Constitution. When it comes to terrorism, he cannot understand applying the age-old dictum, "it is better for ten guilty men to go free than to have one innocent man convicted." Why, he wonders, must "that generous principle" be extended to terrorists, those who would "murder their way to a destruction of the rule of law and its replacement by a sectarian dictatorship?" "The idea that the Nazis should have had the protections afforded to Americans by the United States Constitution never occurred to Justice Jackson or any of the other jurists involved in the tribunal." Showing no allegiance to political correctness, Shawcross goes so far as to ask, "Why is one religion being accorded so much more deference than all the others?" Here, it is not just Shawcross's logic which is faulty but his misunderstanding of the law which posits that guilt and innocence must be tested in a fair, evidence-based trial and that ideological leanings do not alter that access to the system of law.

For the untoward "generosity" on the part of those who defend the use of the federal courts and who seek to defend Guantanamo detainees, Shawcross blames the Left, specifically the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU, both organizations which have been devoted to creating defense strategies for the Guantanamo detainees, largely through habeas petitions or aid to defense counsel at Guantanamo. In Shawcross's words, "Some of the lawyers, at times, seemed more concerned about the alleged injustices done to the detained terrorists than they did to those perpetrated by them." But it is not just the Left that he blames; the criminal justice system itself as well is to be blamed. Failing to distinguish law enforcement in terms of intelligence gathering and preventive police work from criminal prosecutions of terrorists accused of specific plots, Shawcross sees 9/11 as proof for his argument. "The very fact that 9/11 happened at all spelled failure for the law enforcement approach to terrorism." Viewed this way, denial of the right to hold trials in federal court seems almost like just punishment to Shawcross. Quoting Justice Scalia's dissent In the Boumedienne ruling which granted the detainees the right to habeas corpus, Shawcross reasserts his fears of the inadequacies of the legal system: the question of "'how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch [the judiciary] that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails."

Those who came of age politically during the Vietnam War might find themselves surprised by William Shawcross's ready acceptance of policies that have consistently bypassed the legal system amidst secrecy, fears of exposure for illegal policies, and without regard for either expediency or efficiency. His 1979 book Sideshow provided an unparalleled contemporary critique of the foils of power gone wrong. Confident, immensely detailed, and persuasive, Sideshow was journalism in the service of opposition politics, and as such, became one of the seminal works on the Vietnam War. Now, nearly twenty-five years later, Mr. Shawcross has given us a book which is eons away from the spirit of his earlier work. Instead of a critique of those in power, Justice and the Enemy is a defiant embrace of decision-making that yields to political pressure whatever the stakes. Rather than see this books as a novel argument in defense of military commissions, Shawcross's book is perhaps best viewed as a reminder of the fading spirit of those determined to check the use of power in the name of national security.

Karen Greenberg is director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University's School of Law and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days.

JANET HAMLIN/AFP/GettyImages

Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

By Madiha Sattar

NationalPublic Radio host Steve Inskeep's newwork is not a comprehensive look at the complex history or troubled presentof my city. It is a roving, at times whimsical narrative telling certain storiesthat follow, intersect or run alongside each other. It winds through selectedplaces, events, and people, revisits some of them, keeps going, and comes backfor more. It is ostensibly pegged to one event, but in reality that event issimply a particularly convenient launching pad for talking about some of the violentconflicts, identity crises, power struggles and practical problems that hold hostagethe people of Karachi, Pakistan's largest and most cosmopolitan city.

Withthis approach, Instant City: Life andDeath in Karachi only honors the nature of this megalopolis.

Partof the problem in writing about Karachi is its enormity. There is its population,of course, on which the host of NPR's MorningEdition has based his title. For him an "instant city" is one that hasgrown significantly faster than the country it belongs to since the end ofWorld War II. Karachi, with its 13 million people -- an estimate for 2010 basedon a census carried out in 1998, and one that is considerably lower than othersas high as 18 million -- is at least 30 times as populated as it was in 1945,two years before the partition of British India brought hundreds of thousandsof Muslims pouring into the city and turned Karachi into an enduring magnet forPakistanis from other parts of the country.

Read on

RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images

The Black Banners

By Glenn L. Carle

Real enemies will whisper about you. The murmursand hisses to discredit Ali Soufan have echoed through the community of opinionmakers and terrorism experts, and have even reached me. Shortly before Soufan's book, The Black Banners, was published, aproducer from a major media outlet spoke with me. "Was it true that Soufan had been a low-levelFBI employee, who could not speak with authority about the nature of theterrorist threats to the United States because he lacked the necessarysenior-level perspective? Wasn't he exaggerating his knowledge and role? Wasn't he a bit of a self-promoter?" theproducer asked.

I could not help but smile to myself as Ilistened; the same character assassination had happened to me when my own bookon interrogation and the War on Terror came out. I had been kept off a number of programs as aresult. I also knew that Soufan already hadbeen targeted this way several years earlier when his name first became public.I told the producer that Soufan's career and mine had overlapped on manyoccasions, and although we had never to my knowledge met, in many instances Iknew first-hand that Soufan's description of events and policies were accurate.

Soufan was an FBI special agent for eight years, arare native Arabic speaker in a professional FBI culture that was shaped byformer Marines, often Irish Catholic and working class, and which hadtraditionally viewed counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism work as secondtier specializations. CIA culture, too, although white collar rather than blue,viewed these specializations as adjuncts to the "real" work of espionage, whichwas to steal secrets and recruit spies from our historic enemies in the SovietUnion, North Korea, or Iran. It wouldprove an ironic twist that the Bush Administration also viewed terroristthreats as small-bore issues. Until 9/11,that is, after which the Bush Administration subjected us all to eight years oflarge-bore, misguided, and muscular obsessions. But, Soufan, the FBI officerswho had worked the first World Trade Center bombing case, and especially hisoriginal mentor, the head of the FBI's New York office, John O'Neill (killed onSeptember 11, 2001, at the base of the World Trade Center towers,) had long understoodthe seriousness of the jihadist threat from the mid-1990s-as had the ClintonAdministration and many in the CIA. Soufan quickly found himself playing a keyrole in the FBI's counterterrorism efforts, and spent a frantic decade tryingto piece together enough information to stop the Muslim terrorists trying tokill us.

TheBlack Banners at first seems to lose the reader inan endless series of incomprehensible names, unrelated dates, places, andcases. But what emerges from Soufan's welter ofdetails and minor episodes is his answer to one of the critical questions abouthow the U.S. should protect itself from terrorism.

Should counterterrorism work be approached as acriminal matter, or as a war which considers terrorists neither enemycombatants nor criminals? The issue, ofcourse, became instantly politicized after 9/11, as the Bush Administrationturned U.S. counterterrorism efforts into the "War on Terror," in so doingjustifying the jettisoning of habeascorpus, the utility of U.S. civilian courts for terrorism cases, and varioushistoric constraints on what American intelligence, military, and lawenforcement officials could do. Soufan's involvement in investigating most ofthe major al-Qaeda attacks and plots that have afflicted us, from the "BlindSheik" of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, to al-Qaeda's attackagainst the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, tothe long struggle to find Osama bin Laden, makes clear that painstakingcriminal and intelligence work-classic FBI investigations, relying on andshaped by the legal requirements of U.S. law-led to the perpetrators in waysthat made prosecution possible and, even more importantly, identified terroristorganizations, individual terrorists, and their plans and intentions.

Even as a sense of reassurance grows with eachharried, scrambling response Soufan and his colleagues make to new threats andincomprehensible bits of information our anger grows, too, as we become awareof a second critical theme of The BlackBanners. Certainly before 9/11, andeven after the reforms of the 9/11 Commission to the intelligence andcounterterrorism communities, the FBI and CIA were afflicted by bureaucraticinfighting, pettiness, and parochialism, while political leaders exploitedterrorist threats to serve political objectives not always related to thethreats themselves. Soufan relates what many in the intelligence communityexperienced: "Prior to the Iraq war,when there was a lot of pressure on the FBI from the White House to produce a"link" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the 9/11 Team's assessment, againand again, was that there was no link. The White House didn't like that answer, and told the bureau to lookinto it more and ‘come up with one.'" These vices may well have kept us fromstopping the 9/11 attacks and from far more quickly destroying al-Qaeda than wehave.

We share Soufan's repeated frustration with whatthe FBI and CIA called "the Wall." Neither agency shared information fully with the other, out of acombination of bureaucratic rivalry, mutual disdain, and honest belief thatlegal constraints forbid the sharing of information. I lived this self-harmmyself in the years prior to 9/11 with some of Soufan's New York FBIcolleagues, as one of them told me he would not share information I neededbecause I was a CIA officer, and he could not "compromise the source." I evenresponded, "but we are on the same team!" And so, our counterterrorist operation fizzled.

It is important that one bear first-hand witnessto our failings, as Soufan does. We shouldsit on the bathroom floor and cry with him after the 9/11 attacks, inheartbreak and anger, believing that we could have stopped the attacks and hadbeen done in by our own failings. "I threw up....my whole body was shaking....I wasstill trying to process the fact that the information I had requested aboutmajor al-Qaeda operatives, information the CIA had claimed they knew nothingabout, had been in the agency's hands since January 2000..." And what can one feel but the astonishment andcontempt Soufan relates when he was told in June 2001 that the Bushadministration had decided for political reasons to misrepresent the factsabout the Cole investigation, and toclaim the attack had not been the work of al-Qaeda and was, in any event,"stale." "Maybe to them," Soufan writes in understated anger, "but not to us,not to the victims and their families, and certainly not to bin Laden andal-Qaeda." Less than three months later the administration's Cold Warriorswould no longer be able to decide that the president could not "risk[political] capital going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan."

The third theme of The Black Banners is the most disturbing, poignant and effectivesection of the book: Soufan's growingdisgust at how the interrogation methods developed and imposed on theintelligence community by the Bush Administration undermine our principles,break our laws, and do not work-indeed, how they actually hinder ourintelligence work. Soufan and hiscolleagues in the FBI had been successfully interrogating terrorists for yearsbefore the sudden introduction of "enhanced interrogation techniques"-"torture"is the word a layman would use. We seeconvincing, devastating proof in his detailed descriptions of how, in caseafter case (e.g., Jamal Al-Fadl, Abu Jandal, Abu Zubaydah, Khaled bin Rasheedand on and on) he and his colleagues successfully interrogated al-Qaeda membersby "establish[ing] rapport" with them, by talking about religion, or family, bysharing a taste for sweets, or by laughing with them, if necessary, rather thanby intimidating and physically abusing a detainee. He describes his and his colleagues'consternation when confronted with the snake oil salesmen who peddled andimposed "enhanced interrogation techniques"-a pseudo-expert the CIA brought into oversee interrogations, whom Soufan gives the appropriately menacing andfoolish sobriquet "Boris"-who had never conducted an interrogation, knewnothing about terrorism, and who knew nothing about intelligence work. "Why is this necessary" Soufan asked whenfirst confronted with such measures as sensory deprivation, overload, orhumiliation, "given that Abu Zubydah is cooperating?" As "Boris" tinkered with ever-increasinglyharsh, and ever-ineffective, ways to break detainees, Soufan and his colleaguestried to oppose them, but as was the case with everyone involved in theinterrogation program (myself included,) failed. Soufan and the FBI formally ceased anyinvolvement in the case. "I can nolonger remain here. Either I leave orI'll arrest [Boris]." It is tellingthat, to my knowledge, four individuals with first-hand experience ininterrogations during the "War on Terror," have spoken out about enhancedinterrogation methods: two Air Forceofficers (Steve Kleinman and another officer writing under the pseudonymMatthew Alexander), an FBI officer (Soufan), and a CIA officer (myself). All ofus, independently, make the same points: interrogation must be based on rapport; enhanced interrogation methodsare ineffective, counterproductive, immoral, illegal, and unnecessary, and theyhad nothing to do with obtaining much, if any, information not otherwiseobtainable. It is only apologists forthe Bush Administration, or Bush Administration policymakers themselves, whoassert that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are legal, or work. Soufan is devastating about thesemethods: "The person or persons runningthe program were not sane....the interrogation was stepping over the line fromborderline torture. Way over the line.""In FBI headquarters, the situation was clear....What Boris was doing wasun-American and ineffective."

The book on occasion manifests a characteristictypical of many memoirs: if only they had listened to me, well, we would havedone everything right. The damning factsin Soufan's book, though, are powerful. Yes, the FBI and CIA did so much right, but got so much wrong. The Bush Administration was purblind andarrogant, from dismissing terrorism at first, to down-playing the Cole case for political reasons, toinstituting ineffective, and illegal "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Well, I was there, too. Soufan's and my workoverlapped-we served with the same people, in the same places, dealt with thesame "Wall" imposed by the same people in the CIA and the FBI. We worked with remarkable men and women, whogave their souls to stopping the terrorist threats facing the UnitedStates. We reacted precisely the same ways to the same challenges, in almost literallythe same words, to what we experienced about terrorist threats, enhancedinterrogation and bureaucratic infighting. Soufan knows exactly what he is talking about, and does us all a serviceby having set it down in The Black Banner.

Glenn L. Carle is a former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, and spent 23 years in the Clandestine Servicesof the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also the author of TheInterrogator: An Education.

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Counterstrike

By Michael Waltz

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker's Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda,traces the evolution since 9/11 of U.S. counterterrorism strategy within themilitary, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement, the results of which are nowat work in combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. Schmitt and Shankerdo a thorough job of pulling together all of the bits and pieces of the effortsacross the myriad agencies and departments now dealing with terrorism, and presentingthem in a fast paced, gripping story. The authors personalize the often mundanebureaucratic policy initiatives such as Presidential findings, resources, andauthorities needed to gradually shift our approach to terrorism through thestories of key individuals working on these issues over the last ten years.

The pair further put flesh on the bones of our counterterrorismcampaign by highlighting key milestones such as the raids on al-Qaeda leaders andsafehouses in places like Taji and Sinjar in Iraq. These battlefield detailsshow the reader how policy initiatives and technology developed in Washingtonand elsewhere actually played out on the ground, and how the treasure trove ofintelligence gained from such operations then, in turn, helped our policies shiftand enhanced our knowledge of al-Qaida's operations and leadership.

Shanker and Schmitt describe in detail how people like thePentagon's former Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low IntensityConflict (now Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) Michael Vickers and then-JointSpecial Operations Command chief Gen. Stanley McChrystal pushed for the droppingof information barriers and the massive influx of resources that allowed forceson the ground to "find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze" information gainedfrom the battlefield. This push in turn made the discovery of al-Qaeda's "Rolodex"at Sinjar and their "database" at Taji possible. The information proved sovaluable that it changed our diplomatic approach to countries producingterrorist recruits and harboring facilitation networks. Rather than keeping theinformation gleaned classified, McChrystal:

Decided to break down more walls.He believed that effective pressure could be mounted by sharing the informationwith the countries of origin for the jihadists -- even those countries withwhich the United States had little or no alliance in the struggle. And, evenmore, he thought the pages of the highly classified intelligence findingsshould be thrust into the very public marketplace of ideas to shape theinternational debate on terrorism.

From my own experience commanding Special Forces unitsduring multiple tours in Afghanistan, the authors' description of how themilitary and intelligence agencies grappled with integrating the various "INTs"(signals intelligence, human intelligence, imagery intelligence, etc) islargely accurate. Throughout my tour in 2006 we had to request these assetsfrom the theater headquarters level. However, by my next tour in 2009, not onlywere the various types of intelligence pushed out to my forces in the field,but we had actual representatives from the various intelligence agencies aswell as the FBI attached directly to my command, representing a sea change inour ability to exploit intelligence and target insurgent leadership.

The pair then turn to how our counterterrorism campaign hasgrown and developed beyond kill-capture missions to executing increasinglysophisticated counter-messaging campaigns, as well as efforts to counter all aspectsof terrorist networks, such as their ability to recruit and train, theirability to raise funds, and the legitimacy of their actions within the broaderMuslim world. The authors are critical of the Bush Administration for itsinitially narrow focus on kinetic missions, the lack of an overall strategy andthe paucity of resources applied to the campaign, and in turn, credit the ObamaAdministration for our now more expansive approach. Yet I would argue, based onmy time in the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations and Low IntensityConflict and later in the White House, that the current, more sophisticatedcounterterrorism campaign is a natural progression that benefitted greatly fromthe trial and error of previous years.

But setting these details and descriptions aside, perhaps thecentral theme running throughout Counterstrikeis the application of deterrence theory from the Cold war to the issue of counteringterrorism. Schmitt and Shanker do a masterful job of explaining the important elementsof the theory and the problems key Bush Administration officials had with usingtraditional tools to possibly deter a person willing to die for a cause. Theearly post-9/11 thinking was that terrorists did not seize or want to hold territoryin the traditional sense, were not afraid of retribution, and did not have resourcesthey needed or wanted to protect. In keeping with that thinking, theintelligence community's initial focus was to shift resources to fill itsinitial intelligence gaps, while the military focused on enhancing its abilityto kill or capture individual al-Qaeda leaders.

However, Schmitt and Shanker trace how a small group of formerCold War theorists slowly began gaining traction with their idea of a "newdeterrence." Douglas Feith, Barry Pavel, Tom Kroenig and others promoted thenotion that terrorists do indeed have issues they care about, issues that canbe used to pressure individual terrorists and whole groups. The advocates ofthe new deterrence argued that the "terrain" extremist organizations need tohold is the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. In a pivotal briefing toPresident Bush, Gen. James Cartwright, then head of America's nuclear arsenal,applied Cold War-era deterrence theory to terrorism, stating "If you canintroduce ambiguity and uncertainty into the minds of the attacker...if you canremove a certainty of success in striking an objective, if you make the pricetoo high, then you increase the opportunity the adversary will notstrike."

Furthermore, terrorist networks hoping for large-scaleaction and sustained campaigns need a constant stream of fresh recruits, fundsto operate, sanctuary in physical locations to train and prepare, and to knowthat their efforts will have an effect on the United States or other targets. Isaw these efforts first hand during my participation in the White House's CounterterrorismSecurity Group, where we worked to develop and implement a whole of government --military, diplomatic, intelligence, homeland defense, and development --approach to pressure, deter, and harden against terrorist groups, techniques thatcould indeed minimize the threat in the short term while slowly eroding it inthe long term. Over the course of time, as Schmitt and Shanker accuratelydescribe, we moved our efforts beyond reforming our bureaucracies andintegrating our streams of information to undermining the legitimacy of the extremists'ideology (later known as counter-messaging), disrupting financial flows, andworking through military or diplomatic means with other countries(as well asextending development aid to ungoverned spaces) to deny terrorists thesanctuary they need to operate.

Schmitt and Shanker, carefully following key individuals inthis process, go on describe how al-Qaeda began metastasizing and reacting toour initiatives by shifting their efforts onto the Internet. The authors giveinsight into enormously complicated issues of military versus intelligenceauthorities and the long-running debates within government about whether todestroy an extremist website facilitating the killing of Americans or continueto monitor the sites for additional information. The authors reference a numberof government sources to describe how we have purportedly gained the ability togo on to radical websites and post information and orders that areindistinguishable from legitimate orders issued by al-Qaeda's leadership,resulting in dissent and confusion among supporters and operators.

Finally, they describe the speed with which the cloak anddagger of counterterrorism on the Web is evolving and changing in chillingdetail. The most dangerous trend to emerge is the recruitment of home-grownfanatics to attack the West from within. Schmitt and Shanker highlight thecases of Najibullah Zazi, Nidal Hassan, and Faisal Shahzad to call attention toal-Qaeda's new dual track strategy of radicalizing individuals in the West throughthe internet to conduct smaller scale and harder to detect attacks with ahigher probability of success while still aiming to repeat a massive 9/11 styleattack.

*****

Counterstrike willbe a revealing and informative read to the average reader, who may have spentthe last ten years only vaguely aware of simplified terms and governmentclichés popularly used in the media, from "drone strikes," to "intelligencefusion," and "connecting the dots." Schmittand Shanker effectively bring to life the confusing vernacular that mycolleagues in Washington national security circles use as part of theireveryday speech. The authors also effectively tell the story of ourcounterterrorism campaign by personalizing the struggles of key individuals whorecognized the need to radically change the way our law enforcement agencies,intelligence agencies, the military and our policy-making bodies did -- andstill do -- business.

Curiously, however, the vitally important issue of detaineeinterrogations and their significant contribution to the counterterrorismcampaign is missing from the book. I was surprised to not see an entire chapterdevoted to the detainee issue, given its centrality to the effort to understandterrorist networks, the important intelligence gained from the capture ofal-Qaeda members and fellow-travelers, and the controversy surrounding detaineetreatment and proper interrogation practices that persists to this day. In my own experience in eastern Afghanistan in2009, the information gained from detainees -- from that dealing with thecomplicity of the Pakistani Army with insurgent networks to tribal motivations behindindividual support for the insurgency -- was critical to our counterinsurgencyand counterterrorism efforts. In fact, at the strategic level, one of the maindrivers behind the push within the last administration to conductcross border raids into Pakistan rather than kinetic strikes, even with theinevitable diplomatic fallout they caused, was to create the possibility forcapturing key al-Qaeda leaders for the information they could provide.

Also left unexamined are the hugely significant implicationsof the Arab Spring on al-Qaeda's legitimacy. Schmitt and Shanker conclude Counterstrikewith a discussion of ‘How this Ends,' and the authors rightly discuss thetransformation of al-Qaeda from being an individual man and highly-ordered butsmall vanguard group to being an inspirational philosophy and a movement. However,I disagree with the authors' conclusion that "you can't destroy the idea of al-Qaeda."The philosophical underpinnings of the organization are currently crumbling inthe midst of peaceful protests in the Middle East rather than the violent jihadit preaches, which by nearly all measures has failed. Most damning is that the protestsmovements have not made the introduction of Islamic law a central point of contention.The much decried corrupt governments in North Africa and the Middle East arefalling one by one, and al-Qaeda is becoming less and less relevant on the ArabStreet. This could be the beginning of ‘How this Ends,' much as perestroika andthe solidarity movement marked the beginning of the end of communism as apopular ideal.

Overall, the educated lay reader who is going to pick upCounterstrike will find this book to be a well reported, well written dive intothe arcane world of counterterrorism over the past decade. It largely comportswith my own experiences both in the field and in Washington, and is asignificant contribution to our body of knowledge regarding our campaign thusfar in the "Long War" against al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.

Michael Waltz formerlyserved as a senior advisor for counterterrorism to Vice President RichardCheney and still serves as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer in the reservecomponent. He is currently Vice President for Strategy at Metis Solutions, LLC.

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The 9/11 Wars

By Daniel Byman

The ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has led tostock-taking of the attacks and their legacy. Even after ten years, debates remain fierce about the scope of thethreat, and the proper nature of any response.

Making sense of the aftermath of 9/11, the subject of JasonBurke's The 9/11 Wars, is amonumental task -- but Burke is up to the job. The 9/11 Wars is insightful, thorough, and at times fascinating. Burkebrings the reader from villages in Afghanistan and Iraq to slums in London andFrance, offering individual portraits of combatants and those overrun by warwhile also weaving in government policies and scholarly research to portray thebroader context. The resulting tapestry leaves the reader more informed, thoughoften appalled by policymakers' ignorance and furious when well-intentionedpolicies backfire.

Burke himself is well-qualified for his ambitious task. Aveteran reporter for The Guardian andThe Observer, he has writtenextensively on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The 9/11 Wars draws on a wide range of sources and, in contrast tothe works of many journalists, is meticulously documented.

Burke's work is a book big in scope and, weighing in at a hefty752 pages, in substance. Such size is understandable. As he points out, theconflicts associated with 9/11's aftermath are not one but many, and each onehas its own intricacies. Burke is at hisbest giving ground truth to the war on terrorism. He claims his book is aboutpeople, not politicians, and for the most part he stays true to his promise.

The United States and al-Qaeda, Burke contends, repeatedlymisunderstood the complexity of the societies in which they waged their wars. Whetherit was trying to impose Western concepts of women's rights on villages inAfghanistan or viewing the Kurdistan-based terrorist group Ansar al-Islam asfriendly to Saddam Hussein's regime (when it was in fact hostile to the former),the United States frequently was its own worst enemy. Nor do U.S. allies farebetter. Indeed, after the July 2005terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom, the discourse in Europe on terrorism becameparticularly absurd. Muslimorganizations had embraced a crude anti-Americanism and made claims that they werereceiving Nazi-like treatment from European governments, while nativistscaricatured Muslims as brutal rapists.

Al-Qaeda, however, fares even worse in Burke's telling. It wasoften disorganized and fractious, held together by personal links rather thanfirm institutional ties. Attacks oncivilians turned locals against al-Qaeda in places like Jordan and Indonesia,squandering the goodwill its fighters had gained from their battles againstU.S. soldiers. Striking at Americans inIraq was seen as heroic, Burke points out, "But when the violence came home itprovoked a very different reaction. Thesight of blood on one's own streets, the dismembered bodies of one's owncompatriots, the grieving parents who could have been one's own ... turnedentire populations away from violence." As they lost popularity, the terroristsrelied more on coercion -- and in so doing made themselves even lesspopular.

Burke's fundamental argument is a simple one: the local isthe enemy of the global. For the United States, this meant that grandiosemissions to transform the Arab world into a mirror image of Western democracyled to insurgency and scorn. For al-Qaeda, attempts to impose an Islamic stateran into stiff opposition from nationalists, practitioners of more traditionalforms of Islam, tribal leaders, and others with a stake in their long-establishedways of life. In the battle against al-Qaeda, "Bloody-minded localparticularism" is America's greatest ally.

Burke at times offers guarded praise for U.S. and alliedpolicies after 2006. The new U.S. counter-insurgency manual, for example,stresses cultural sensitivities and local concerns as a way to win the war,while Burke describes how deradicalization programs in Europe and the MiddleEast offer a softer, but in his view often more effective, form ofcounter-terrorism.

Al-Qaeda, in contrast, remains under siege. To secure aplace to hide its leaders, the group often must avoid training, planning, andrecruiting on a large scale. Conditions forwould-be fighters hiding out in the tribal parts of Pakistan are much worsethan they were before 9/11 under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Burke relates howone Belgian recruit who got malaria was "left in the corner" and "given a jabevery few days by a kid who was the little brother of the local doctor." Even al-Qaeda'smany affiliates, which offer some bench strength to the group, often do notheed the central leadership, or frequently they lack popularity themselves. Asa result, the much-vaunted "network of networks," he argues, is "battered anddisjointed."

Pakistan, which Burke correctly identifies as the mostimportant theater in the 9/11 wars, comes off the most poorly (thoughAfghanistan is a close second). Use of jihadist proxies has long been part ofPakistan's overall strategy, and the Pakistani security establishment remainscommitted to them, even after 9/11 and subsequent violence in Pakistan showedthat the militants were off the leash. Sadly, Burke finds that in this dividedcountry there is more unity than ever on one issue: that the United States and its allies arepart of an anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim conspiracy.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of The 9/11 Wars -- one common to many accounts of counter-terrorism-- is that it misses much of the day-to-day of intelligence gathering andpolice work against suspected jihadists around the world. The CIA is blastedfor its "extensive [program] of kidnapping suspects overseas, illegaldetention, collusion and direct participation in torture." However, thenear-constant, and largely successful, intelligence effort against al-Qaedagets little attention. In countries as far apart (politically as well asgeographically) as Sweden, Malaysia, Morocco, and Russia, security serviceshunt suspected jihadists with U.S. support and guidance. Such behind-the-scenesarrests rarely make good stories, but they put pressure on al-Qaeda and itsallies worldwide, making it far harder for the organization to communicate,plan, and conduct attacks. Indeed, the biggest threats emanate from where counter-terrorismcooperation is poor due to the host country's support for jihadists (Pakistan)or lack of governance (such as in Somalia or Yemen).

In its attempt to be comprehensive, the book at times offerstoo much detail. The story of the U.S. fiasco in Iraq has been told, and toldwell, in other books, and another detailed repetition won't offer most readerstoo much (though the additional attention on the followers of radical Shi'acleric Moqtada al-Sadr is most welcome, as their role in the Iraq conflict isoften poorly understood). While the ups and downs of terrorism andcounterterrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan are less-known, some of thematerial could be condensed, as the reader may get bogged down in each twistand turn and lose sight of the bigger picture.

The 9/11 Wars wentto press as the Arab Spring broke out and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden waskilled, so understandably Burke doesn't have much to add on thesetransformative events beyond the most general analysis. Such events, however,are in keeping with Burke's theme that local politics and the aspirations ofordinary people shape the battlefield, and that the most profound events areoften the least expected.

Burke ends, appropriately, on a sober and grim note: thebody counts. As he points out, there is no clear winner of the 9/11 wars, but"losers are not hard to identify." Thetens of thousands dead from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan arelikely to be joined by tens of thousands more in the next decade. New theaters,ranging from Yemen to Nigeria, may also become enflamed. Stopping theconflagration is beyond the skill and means of even the best of leaders, but ifthey avoid the mistakes Burke identifies, they can better shield their owncitizens and avoid adding fuel to the fire.

Daniel Byman is theauthor of A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of IsraeliCounterterrorism. He is a professor atGeorgetown University and the research director of the Saban Center atBrookings.

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The Wars of Afghanistan

By Charles Cogan

Don'tShoot the Mailman

"There are three ways to get into Afghanistan: through
Russia, through Iran, and through Pakistan. You take your choice."

Thesetimeless words were uttered to me by my friend, Frank Anderson, then(1991-1994) chief of the Near East and South Asia Division of the Directorateof Operations of the CIA (the division that ran covert operations inAfghanistan during the Soviet War there) and one of my successors in theposition. His observation was not only his way of saying that this was thepreferred (and only) route for massive shipments of arms to the Afghan mujahideen in their resistance againstthe Soviets in the 1980's. It also spoke of another verity: that Pakistan andits own intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI),held the high ground in this covert action operation -- the CIA was only amailman.

Anumber of U.S. lawmakers, otherwise quite effective in helping provideadditional funding for this operation, were often unsympathetic to the idea ofrelying on Pakistan as the sole channel for arms. Some thought of themanifestly impractical option of air drops. Others, including somepolicymakers, thought that U.S. officials, especially in the CIA, failed to putenough pressure on the Pakistanis to compel them to send more arms to the"moderate" mujahideen and not to more hardline, fundamentalist commanders. Iwill come back to this later.

Pakistan'sIdentity Crisis

Inwhat is appearing more and more to have been an awful mistake, Pakistan wastorn away from the body politic of the Indian sub-continent in the 1947partition. Having rejected its former identity as part of India and itsgovernment institutions (and having to build new ones), and, more generally,having rejected its common Muslim and non-Muslim heritage, Pakistan's defaultidentity has gradually moved, for many of its citizens, toward radicalIslamism.

Thisrejection of the pre-partition past has become all the more fraught with thesudden ascension of India as a world power while Pakistan has becomeincreasingly engulfed in sectarian and ideological violence. Whatever earlyambition Pakistan may have had of being a part of a group of regional Muslimnations coalescing with the aim of containing India, has long gone away. Thiscontrast with India is all the more poignant for Pakistan's elites, especiallyits Punjabi elites, who have traditionally regarded themselves, as did many oftheir former colonial rulers, as the cream of the sub-continent's peoples.

AatishTaseer, son of the former governor of Pakistan's Punjab province murderedearlier this year by religious extremists, has summedup one of the psychological dynamics operating in Pakistan:

To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge - its hysteria - it is necessary to understand its rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus against India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.

TheRevenge Factor

Inthe summer of 1979, Pakistan approached the U.S. for aid to the mujahideen intheir uprising against the recently installed Communist government. The resultwas a Presidential Finding of July 1979, signed by Jimmy Carter, authorizingthe CIA to provide non-lethal aid to the mujahideen. Immediately after theSoviet invasion at the end of the year, a new finding authorizing lethal aidwas signed.

Fromthe outset, CIA officers charged with carrying out the operation -- at least Ican speak for myself -- saw this as a golden opportunity for revenge: a chance toget back at the Soviets for what they had done to us earlier, in Vietnam, withtheir massive arms support to the North Vietnamese. In the end, and from thispoint of view, the operation in Afghanistan was a success: the Soviets, likethe Americans in Southeast Asia a decade earlier, had to leave the country theyoccupied. For the Soviets, it was a "one quarter Vietnam": 14,000 deathsagainst 58,000 American deaths in Vietnam. No American troops were engaged. Theend of the Cold War was hastened.

Whathappened in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in February 1989 hassometimes obscured the fact of this operation's success. What happened in Afghanistanafter the Soviet withdrawal is the main focus of the bookunder review, Peter Tomsen's The Warsof Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures ofGreat Powers.

***

Butit is not the only focus of this monumental, deeply pondered, and well writtenstudy. Ambassador Tomsen's book is an account of the Afghan historicalexperience, with some epochs getting more detailed treatment than others. Asits title suggests, it is first and foremost a study of foreign interference inAfghanistan, from the 19^th-century until today . The author getsinto the story himself at the time of the Soviet withdrawal from the country inFebruary 1989, more than half of the way through the book. At Congressional insistence,he is named special envoy to the Afghan mujahideen with the rank of Ambassador.The Embassy in Kabul is closed during the chaotic situation that accompaniedthe departure of the Soviets, leaving Tomsen to operate mainly out of theAmerican Embassy in Islamabad.

AmbassadorTomsen has poured his energy, his taste for research, and his own recollectionsinto an impressive brick of 849 pages, including footnotes and appendices.Anyone who wants to get up to speed on Afghanistan can profit from reading thisbook. It is particularly useful in presenting documentation from the Sovietside of the conflict (Tomsen was a former deputy chief of mission in Moscow andalso in Beijing). The documents show that the Soviets were as unsuccessful inknocking fractious Afghan heads together as the United States has been over thelast decade. The pleas of both superpowers for party unity among their proxiesfell (or have fallen) on deaf ears.

ButTomsen also has a point of view, one that can be quite strident and incessant.Here I would mention two of his contentions: firstly, that the CIA was thehandmaiden of the ISI, and supported Pakistan's anti-American favorites amongthe mujahideen, notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with the result that the CIA wasat times at cross-purposes with the policy arm of the U.S. Government; andsecondly that Pakistan's policy in Afghanistan was in the straight line offormer president Zia-al-Haq, who Tomsen describes as an out-and-out Islamistwho sought to establish a non-democratic and radically religious regime inKabul. I will treat these assertions one by one.

Asfor the issue of CIA support to anti-American mujahideen, most notablyHekmatyar, though it is repeatedly asserted by Tomsen, it is not in keepingwith the facts. Keeping in mind the CIA's role as mailman, it is not realistic,as Tomsen asserts, that the U.S. could have put pressure on the Pakistanis tocease such a policy.

Tomsenaccompanies this charge with the repeated assertions of a CIA animus againstAhmad Shah Masood, whose troops, as well as those of Hekmatyar, were doing mostof the fighting among the seven mujahideen groups. Again, the evidence suggestsotherwise. Throughout the U.S. Government, including the CIA, there wasadmiration for Masood and quite the opposite for Hekmatyar, who was consideredunreliable and even treacherous.

Furthermore,Tomsen asserts that, "the United States should have supported its naturalallies, moderate-nationalist Afghans and traditional tribal structure." But theyardstick used was to give much of the weapons to the groups that were doingmost of the fighting. It was logical, at least in principle, that the groupsdoing most of the fighting (Hekmatyar and Masood) should receive the bulk ofthe arms aid, although it was clear that Masood, an ethnic Tajik, was not afavorite of the Pakistanis. The CIA devoted considerable efforts to confirmingwhich groups were doing effective fighting, and to finding ways to support themore moderate factions, especially Masood's, despite severe logisticaldifficulties.

CIAofficers, motivated by the revenge factor cited above, were interested inseeing the end of the Soviet protégé Mohammad Najib's Government, which held onto power following the departure of Soviet troops in February 1989. The surestmeans to this end was to continue to support the joint operation with the ISI.In any event, U.S. military aid from the CIA through the ISI to the mujahideenended on January 1, 1992 with the coming into effect of the "negative symmetry"agreement, whereby the U.S. and the USSR (which had ceased to formally existwhen the treaty went into effect) agreed to stop military assistance to theirrespective proxies in Afghanistan.

Thosewho sought a mediated arrangement with the Soviets, aimed at a democraticsuccessor government to that of Najib, were playing with a weak hand: thepassive former King, Zahir Shah, and the royalist leaders among the mujahideen,Mojaddedi and Gailani. Among them was Peter Tomsen. In addition, this approachwas not generally supported by the Congress and ranking policymakers. In theend, the zero-sum mentality evident through much of the region prevailed, andthe opposing sides in the Afghan struggle for power could not agree on amediated settlement. Chaos ensued, and it was ended in 1996, after thePakistanis switched their sponsorship from Hekmatyar to Mullah Omar and theTaliban (though, as Tomsen points out on page 531, the ISI was involved in thecreation of the Taliban in 1994)

Therewere hardheads on both sides of the State-CIA divide, which Tomsen returns torepeatedly and which he tends to over-emphasize. Perhaps in a reflection of theadage, "where you stand is where you sit," Tomsen has this assessment of "men of military or intelligence backgrounds,"as he describes the prelude to the most recent invasion of Afghanistan:

When President [George W.] Bush and his advisersgathered at Camp David...to chart America's post-9/11 attack on the Taliban, theadvantages of exploiting the moderate-nationalist and traditional tribalmainstream in Afghanistan did not enter the discussion. Most of theparticipants were men of military or intelligence backgrounds with little or noknowledge of the Afghan context and the country's tribal society. They did notcomment on a long-term post-conflict policy vision for Afghanistan or theregion. They stressed direct employment of American military power and covertaction.

Althoughthe moment called for action, it must be admitted that Tomsen was not entirelyoff the mark in his assessment.

Throughoutthe history of American intervention in Afghanistan since 1979, there hasgenerally been good cooperation between State and CIA, in no small measure dueto the fact that all hands at home -- the Congress, the State Department, theCIA, Defense, and the White House -- favored the covert action operation inAfghanistan against the Soviets.

Andnow, turning back to Zia. As I indicated at the beginning of this review,Pakistan is a country of special origins, and special problems. As theresolution of the country's identity conundrum moved it more and more towardIslamism (and quite contrary to the vision of its founder, Mohammad AliJinnah), Zia recognized the trend and went with it, but mainly to shore up hispolitical base. A devout Muslim, he did sponsor the growth of Islamic schools,or madrassas. But he was also just asmuch a Pakistani nationalist.

Theauthor's disapproval of troubled and troubling Pakistan, and his criticism ofPakistani policy in Afghanistan as "unholy," is patent, and it gives the bookan unfortunate polemic tinge. But overall, this is a useful book, particularlyfor the period when the author describes his own contacts with many Afghanplayers as he tried to bring the conflict in Afghanistan to a negotiatedconclusion. The effort failed, but the account is instructive. The fractioustendencies in Afghan society were too strong. They remain so today.

Charles Cogan spent 37 yearsin the CIA's operations directorate, and is now an associate at the HarvardKennedy School Belfer Center.

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The Triple Agent

By Art Keller, July 25, 2011

Were Shakespeare alive, he would find ample material for a high tragedy among the players in veteran intelligence correspondent Joby Warrick's new book, The Triple Agent. All the ingredients are there, including betrayal, shame, heroism, and more than one person with a recklessly determined hubris worthy of King Lear himself. Yet as those who have operated in the world of human intelligence will viscerally feel, this is not cathartic fiction, but a factual account of a modern day human intelligence operation gone terribly wrong, involving real men and women, with all the failings thereof. The Triple Agent provides a riveting look at the disastrous attempt by the CIA and their partners in the Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) to maneuver the Jordanian doctor-cum-cyber-jihadist, Humam al-Balawi, into penetrating the leadership of al-Qaeda.

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The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan

By Gerard Russell, April 14, 2011

Not many writers risk their lives for their work.But then again, not many former assistant secretaries of defense andMarine officers spend their retirement years on the battlefield, beinghospitalized with cholera, shaken down by an Afghan soldier, and shot at byTaliban with rocket-propelled grenades. The writer in question, Bing West, theauthor of The Wrong War, isan unusual man.

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Pakistan: A Hard Country

By Huma Yusuf, April 11, 2011

Following the incident in January of this year where CIA contractorRaymond Davis shot two Pakistanis in shadowy circumstances, U.S.-Pakistanrelations have remained perched at a critical but precarious impasse. Bilateralengagement surrounding Davis' arrest and controversial release highlighted themany reasons why the relationship remains fractious; the divergent strategicinterests these cautious allies have for the region, the Pakistaniestablishment's ambivalent attitude towards militancy, the public's adamantanti-Americanism, and the civilian government's inability to manage all of theabove issues.

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Inside the Taliban Shuffle

By Joshua Foust, March 2, 2011

Not many women can say that Nawaz Sharif,Pakistan's troubled former prime minister, tried to set her up on a date with aPakistani man. Kim Barker, the author of TheTaliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, can do thatone better: she can say Sharif tried to set her up with Asif Ali Zardari, the presidentof Pakistan.

Barker, appropriately, declined Sharif's kindinvitation; she also had to decline, sometime later, Sharif's invitation to behis latest mistress. Her surreal book is chock full of such ridiculousexperiences, whether the grabby, eve-teasing crowds ofPakistani men in Peshawar or the uncomfortably flirtatious former Afghanattorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabit. Barker, a former Chicago Tribune correspondent now with ProPublica, recounts nearlya decade of soul-wrenching zaniness, perpetrated in equal parts by the Afghans,Pakistanis, and the white people moving amongst them both, with a good sense ofhumor. This is funny stuff, it's true. But it's also very sad.

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Ailing Aid: Afghanistan

By Art Keller, February 25, 2011

Editor's note: This is Part II of a two-part seriesfocusing on aid provision in conflict zones. The first installment can be foundhere.

Ehsan Entezar's Afghanistan101, dryly academic though its language tends to be, is nevertheless anilluminating guide to the Afghanistantoday. As a scholar born, raised, and educated in Afghanistanbefore obtaining his doctorate in the UnitedStates, Entezar lends the insight of a native son inilluminating the realities of Afghan culture and society, and by doing so,providing some sharp clues as to the likely efficacy of the aid programs thatare allegedly "building" Afghanistan.

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Ailing aid

By Art Keller, February 24, 2011

Editor's note: This is Part I of a two-part seriesfocusing on aid provision in conflict zones, with tomorrow's edition to focuson Afghanistan.

Although the White House was cautiously optimistic in itsrecent strategy review on Afghanistan, even for seasoned AfPak watchers, itcan be difficult to discern exactly what the U.S. strategy istowards Afghanistan. The sound bite summary "clear, hold, build" may besimplistic, but it still offers a useful starting place to evaluate U.S. andNATO efforts. The "clear" and "hold" represent the straightforward ideas (intheory if not execution) of taking and holding ground, operations with whichmilitaries are well-acquainted. The real issue, and the key to success orfailure, is defining what "build" really means, and examining how the United States andNATO are "building" in Afghanistan.

While many factors in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, for thatmatter) are unique, in a larger sense, the challenges faced there are the sameissues, with new faces, that the United States has been long been struggling with inother countries. The U.S. government clearly hopes to "build" the Afghangovernment and military up to the point that it will take the lead in battlingthe Taliban. For decades now, in countries around the world, the tool mostfrequently called on to "build" countries is aid. Sometimes aid comes in theform of humanitarian, short-term assistance, i.e. emergency food, medicine,water, and shelter, aimed at stabilizing crisis situations. In other cases, aidcomes in the form of "official development assistance" or ODA, most often adirect cash transfer from a donor government or donor institution to arecipient country, usually in the form of grants or low-interest loans, andaimed at promoting long-term growth by developing infrastructure, education,and more. In the case of Afghanistan (and Pakistan), aid to the region hasconsisted of a mixture of both humanitarian and strategic (ODA) aid.

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The Generals' Victory

By Peter Bergen, December 16, 2010

The arrival of a new Bob Woodward book is attended with rituals as solemn and predictable as those of the annual Congress of the Communist Party in North Korea-there are the three days of excerpts in The Washington Post; a few days before that the obligatory spoiler piece in The New York Times where an enterprising reporter has obtained a copy of the heavily-embargoed tome; Woodward appearing for the full hour with Larry King; the defensive comments from the institutions that have something to defend-when asked to comment on Obama's Wars, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell demurred, explaining "We don't do literary criticism;" the quotable insider disses, the best being General Tommy Franks on the senior Bush Pentagon official Douglas Feith-"the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth"; and the telling anecdotes about key players in the narrative, such as the one about the intensely focused General Petraeus electing to stay in Iraq rather than attend the funeral of his father.

The action in all of Woodward's past five books has taken place largely in the bowels of the White House, often in the Situation Room, with occasional forays to the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. If there is a shift outside the Beltway, it is usually to Tampa to visit the headquarters of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and adjoining parts of Asia. Woodward has written three books about the Iraq War and never visited Iraq, and he has written two books about the Afghan War and has visited Afghanistan for forty-eight hours (a visit well milked here).

As a result, Woodward's books do not have the whiff of cordite but the waft of stale coffee, as harried staffers pull all-nighters to write papers that the "principals" will probably never read, and meetings drone on interminably because, while everything has already been said, not everything has been said by everyone. The notoriously garrulous Joe Biden makes an intervention at one National Security Council discussion of Afghanistan that a backbencher clocks at twenty-one minutes.

To read the rest of this article, visit TheNewRepublic.com, where this was originally published.

Peter Bergen, the editor of the AfPak Channel, is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and at New York University's Center on Law and Security, and the author of the forthcoming The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda. He is a national security analyst for CNN.

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Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History

By Gerard Russell, June 29, 2010

If time spent studying Afghanistan brings wisdom, thenThomas Barfield must have the judgment of Solomon: He has been traveling theresince the early 1970s as an anthropologist. Any book that he -- now a professor at BostonUniversity -- writes on the subject deserves to be takenseriously. His latest book, Afghanistan:A Cultural and Political History, also has the ambitious goalof being a comprehensive but readable short history of Afghanistan, with aheavy focus on the last nine years.

It hits the target. Although casual readers may find theearly pages hard going, the pace soon picks up; quotations from the poet Sa'diand Ibn Khaldun provide variety. Barfield's vision of the "longue durée" meanslooking at Afghanistan's development over the course of centuries. Not for himthe perpetually renewed mantra that "the next six months are critical";'he caninstead bring a vision of Afghanistan over the centuries to cut through knottydebates with easy self-confidence and lapidary sentences.

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The challenge of Islam

By Gerard Russell, June 3, 2010

"America,"said Alexis de Tocqueville, "is a country of freedom where, in order not towound anyone, the foreigner must not speak freely." By these standards AkbarAhmed, a professor at American University and formerly an administrator on Pakistan'snorth-west frontier, has published a particularly audacious book.

His book Journeyinto America: The Challenge of Islam, which comes out on June 15, speaks freely about the Muslimperspective on American society. It knowingly comes in the aftermath of acts ofterrorism carried out by American Muslims. Its focus is rightly much broader,but this sharpens its relevance.

In the spirit of de Tocqueville, whom he frequently quotes, Ahmed led a mixedteam of Muslims and Christians, Americans and foreigners, to examine AmericanMuslim society with the eye of an anthropologist and an expert on Islam. Over the course of a year the author and his team traveled to more than 75 U.S. cities across the country, visiting more than 100 mosques, residences, and educational institutions. Thebook offers plenty of colorful observations based on 2,000 interviews -- boththose one might expect (Noam Chomsky, U.S. Muslim leaders) and those one mightnot (the Ku Klux Klan and a Las Vegasstripper). In 520 pages, Ahmed gives a series of insightful vignettes oninterfaith relations, politics, conversion, and race. And then the book makes adisturbing prediction: that violence involving U.S. Muslims will continue toincrease.

Ahmed blames for this both the American intelligence and security community("the cheerleaders of the hate and fear-mongering directed against Muslims")and Muslim leaders in the United States.These, he says, "need to face the crisis in their community rather than recoilin the customary defensive manner." In any event he feels many are out oftouch, and have failed to build relationships with other faith communities --specifically, the Mormon and Jewish communities (if you're wondering whyMuslims should build relations with these two other faith-groups in particular,then the book explains this at some length).

There are plenty of better American Muslim voices, he suggests, which are asyet unheard by the mainstream media. Those voices can be heard through thisbook. They include leading African-American Muslims, given that some estimatessuggest that African-Americans, though they are a lesser proportion of U.S.Muslims generally, make up one third of regular mosque attendance in the United States.

I could have used a book like this, written about Britain, when I was in chargeof the U.K. government's outreach to Muslims from 2001 to 2003. British Muslimsare a diverse enough grouping, but in the United States they are even more so-- including rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats, of over eighty differentethnicities and lacking any single religious hierarchy that is universallyrespected. Some are not religious at all; some resent being defined by theirreligion.

The whole idea of governments engaging with people on the basis of theirreligion is an uncomfortable one. Done crudely, it reinforces (ironicallyenough) the very rhetoric it is designed to counter. Islamic militants wantreligious identity to trump all others; when Britain(or the U.S.)attempts to reach its citizens through religious leaders rather thandemocratically elected representatives, it risks promoting this same agenda.

There are two quite different reasons, though, why Dr. Ahmed's book is welcome.Parts of this book are particularly good in portraying Islamic religiousleaders who have a genuine following, and can credibly promote non-violence andtolerance. This is something the U.S. government and media shouldregister.

The other reason is that, among stories that are disheartening, it has somethat give hope. A warm welcome is given in rural Alabama to a woman on the team, who iswearing a full-length Islamic robe. Radical Muslim preachers proclaim theirlove for America.Ahmed movingly describes his own interfaith discussion with the father ofDaniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamist militantsin 2002 in Pakistan.Studies of Muslims in Americaare not just important because of violence or terrorism -- which have entrappedonly a tiny number of practicing Muslims -- but because they represent some ofthe United States'newest, most diverse, and least understood communities. Dr. Ahmed does us all afavor by illustrating them with this marvelously diverse set of interviews.

Gerard Russell was incharge of the British government's outreach to the Muslim world in 2001-2003.He is now an Afghanistan/Pakistan Fellow at the HarvardKennedy School'sCarr Center for Human Rights.

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The Bhuttos and their books

By Saba Imtiaz, April 27, 2010

Over the past four decades, the name Bhutto has come to symbolize --depending on which version of history you believe -- Pakistan. It has become our lot inlife to obsess over the Bhuttos, discuss their macabre deaths -- Zulfikar washanged, Shah Nawaz poisoned, Murtaza and Benazir shot -- and wonder how manymore Bhuttos will come to rule over Pakistan.

The latest author to chronicle the Bhuttos is Fatima Bhutto, Murtaza'sdaughter and the much-fawned over columnist and poet whose book, Songsof Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir, was recently released in Pakistan,India, and the United Kingdom. Songs of Blood and Sword is Fatima'sattempt at writing a memoir of her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who died in 1996when the Karachipolice fired on his convoy while his sister, Benazir Bhutto, was primeminister.

On first read, this memoir often feels like a rehash of Daughterof the East, Benazir Bhutto's 1988 autobiography that documented herlife in prison under General Zia ul-Haq's regime and the events that precededit, including her father being hanged by Haq's administration, simply becauseFatima is as defensive of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's domestic and foreign policies asBenazir was.

But Fatima Bhutto's grief is palpable on every page -- anyone who haslost a parent can empathize with her pain, and anyone who hasn't will stillcommiserate. But in her attempt to document her father's life from his birth tohis years in exile in Syria from the early 1980s and eventual return toPakistan in 1993, Fatima tries to wipe the slate clean and goes down the sameroute that Benazir did in Daughter of theEast: selectively using quotes from those who agree with her worldview.

Fatima traces Murtaza's history and finds witty gems and beautiful ex-girlfriendsas she travels to Boston and Athens to discover her father's life. Shefinds professors reminiscing about their talented young student, and oldfriends sharing anecdotes and letters written by Zulfikar to Murtaza.

She writes at length about their shared memories, their bond as fatherand daughter, strengthened further by the fact that he brought her up almostsingle-handedly,since her parents divorced shortly after Shah Nawaz Bhutto's death. Fatima's accountof their life in Damascusis poignant, peppered with their shared interests, anecdotes of Murtaza'sboisterous sense of humor and conversations about life and love. These partsare engaging, make for a compelling read and deserve to be documented. Hewrites a poem to her in a letter while he was in jail, excerpted here:

Here is a small one on Wadi [Benazir] and Slippery Joe [presumably Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir's husband]
Inky, Pinky, Ponky
Her husband is a donkey
Both loot the country
Her husband is a monkey
Inky, Pinky, Ponky.

Fatima also paints a chilling narrative of thenight Murtaza was shot dead along with several of his supporters, an accountthat explains why this book is laden with not-so-quiet rage. In the epilogue,she writes of an occasion when President Asif Ali Zardari and his entouragewere being received at the British consulate, close to Fatima'sresidence, as she stood at the same spot her father had been shot. "Here I was,standing where my father was murdered, and the man who I believe was in partresponsible for the execution was across the road from me, being receiveddiplomatically. I felt my knees buckle. I sat down on the curb."

She transports the reader back to the streets of Karachi and the frenzied scenes in thehospital where doctors tried to save Murtaza's life. It is the story of yetanother Bhutto trying to come to terms with yet another strange and unexpected death,the fourth in as many decades. These are the losses that have shaped Pakistan'shistory to a great extent and will be an influential factor for the foreseeablefuture.

But given that this is a grieving daughter's memoir of her father whowas killed at the young age of 42, it is clear that she does not intend tocriticize his actions in any way. Fatima Bhutto glosses over the time he spentin Libya as a guest of Colonel Gaddafi or in Kabul, as the alleged head of theAl-Zulfikar Organization (AZO) that was set up to avenge the death of ZulfikarAli Bhutto. Unsurprisingly, Murtaza is absolved of all responsibility for AZO.The famed 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines plane in Kabul that AZO tookcredit for is explained differently. Fatimaquotes a friend of Murtaza's extensively, who claims that the hijacker,Salamullah Tipu, was not a member of the AZO and that Murtaza was actuallynegotiating with the hijackers to release the women and children on board. Itis an account that is widely disputed by former members of the AZO (RajaAnwar, The Terrorist Prince, 1997).

But in this new episode in the saga of the Bhutto dynasty that Fatima has chronicled, the blame -- as well as theacerbic barbs and the retorts -- are all directed at her aunt Benazir Bhutto. Fatimacriticizes Benazir from her choice of room décor at the Bhuttos' Karachi residence to Benazir's decision to wear a headscarf and her wit -- anecdotes all dissected to form a portrayal of a self-centered,power-hungry woman who Fatima squarely holdsresponsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Bhutto dynasty.

In her quest to absolve Murtaza of lingering criticism surrounding hisname and paint Benazir as the "bad guy," Fatima blames her aunt for everythingfrom Murtaza's incarceration after he returned from exile, to alienating NusratBhutto, Benazir's mother and Fatima'sgrandmother, from the PPP and being hungry for power. She does share anecdotesof her memories with her aunt, but writes that "since we returned to Pakisan Ihad seen a different, ugly side of my aunt," citing an incident where Fatima asked her to visit Murtaza in jail with her andBenazir refused, saying "I couldn't get permission from the jail to come." Fatima couldn'tfathom this, given that Benazir was prime minister at the time, and writes, "Icouldn't shift the blame from her any more. She was involved. She was runningthe show." The final blow came after Murtaza's death, when Benazir reportedlycalled his widow, Ghinwa, a ‘bellydancer' from the ‘backwoods of Lebanon.'Fatima writes, "After Papa was killed, I neversaw that old Wadi again. She was gone."

In her quest though, Fatima even attempts to hold Benazir responsiblefor the death of Shah Nawaz,Benazir and Murtaza's brother, who died under rather strange circumstances in Francein 1985. (While the Bhutto family was on holiday in Cannes, where Shah Nawazlived with his wife and daughter, they was alerted by his wife one morning thatShah Nawaz had "taken something" (p.250, Daughter of the East). They discoveredhe was dead, allegedly having taken poison, but the Bhutto family believes hewas murdered while his wife was charged (and then cleared) of not assistingShah Nawaz in time.) Her source? The observations of the lawyer Murtaza andBenazir engaged to fight the case in French courts, Jacques Verges. Theinsinuation that Benazir may have ordered Shah Nawaz's killing and the remarksshe chooses to include by Benazir (such as indulgent postcards she sent toMurtaza at university) sour the book. It no longer feels like a memoir, but yetanother blame game in the history of the Bhutto family that is still at oddswith each other. Their conflict shows no signs of dissipating or staying withinthe family. Last week, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nephew Tariq Islam senta letter to the Dawn newspaper disputing at least one account in Songs of Blood and Sword by quotingconversations he had with Zulfikar before Zulfikar was executed in 1979.

Fatima Bhutto's rage at Benazir, who she believes was either involved inor complicit in covering up the killing of her father, Murtaza-- the woman she once thought of as her favorite aunt -- isunderstandable. But it is a niece's anger, not a historian's or a memoirist's.

Songs of Bloodand Sword is not, and should not be treated as, a chapter in the Bhuttos'history. It is a self-serving charade discounting other versions or charactersbecause they do not fit with Fatima's take onevents that occurred in Murtaza's life.

The book has reportedly sold well in Pakistan (ExpressTribune), but the reviews in the Pakistani press have been rather scathing(TheNews, Dawn,ExpressTribune). It is hard to gauge Pakistani public approval or disapproval ofthe book, given that Fatima Bhutto flew out of Pakistan for a book tour after itlaunched and has reportedly refused to sit down for face-to-face interviewswith Pakistani journalists. Conventional readings and Q&A sessions wouldhave given insights, but this is no conventional book. It will continue to sellwell -- anything with the Bhutto name does -- but whether it can spark any negativepublic reaction to Fatima or Zardari remains to be seen.

Ultimately, Songs of Blood andSword is yet another in the series of books written by the Bhuttos abouttheir versions of history as they see it. Mark your calendars: 22 years fromnow, another Bhutto will be penning a memoir. As Tariq Islam says Zulfikar AliBhutto told him in jail, "Iwill go down in history. Songs will be written about me." He probably didn'texpect the songs would be written by members of his own family.

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