Descent Into Chaos

"This is a thorough analysis of how Western policy towards the region has made things worse since 2001. It is pretty bleak. Rashid joked to me while he was writing it that the working title was, What A Fucking Mess. This is an extensive analysis – he has tremendous contacts in Western governments and in the Pakistani and Afghan governments and he details what a difficult situation this is. I think his work is very readable and I like his bestseller on the Taliban too. It’s the kind of thing that a regular person with no explicit knowledge of the region can pick up and read through and it’s going to make sense. It’s over 400 pages so it isn’t a light read but it is organised well and written in a way that takes you through the issues. It’s such a complex region, even more so than the Middle East because there are so many factors. There are wider geo-political struggles like the rivalry between India and Pakistan, the long-standing tensions between Iran and the US. He discusses how these geo-political issues are played out in Afghanistan. Then there is the drugs trade, which plays a role in the destabilisation of Afghanistan. Rashid walks you through the policies that have failed here. He paints a bleak picture but, again, he ends on a note of optimism. The Pakistani people came out on the streets in 2007 to protest at the firing of the Supreme Court Chief Justice and ended up unseating Musharaf, and then they elected a moderate political party. In my experience, Pakistan is a country of moderates at its core that is being destabilised by a minority of extremists, who are increasingly funding themselves though enormously profitable criminal activity. It is vitally important to the West to understand what is going on there. Every terror attack that happens in the world has some link to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Drugs are the largest moneymaker for the Afghan Taliban, but the various extremist groups operating in the border areas also make money from kidnapping, extortion and gemstone smuggling and all sorts of other illicit activity. They behave more like Mafiosi than holy warriors. People think they are fanatics living in caves, and while this may be true of some of the foot soldiers, at the top of the chain of command is an enormous amount of criminal money and it is clear that some of them live very well. In my research I would hear of rich warlords and insurgent commanders spending the weekend living it up in Dubai in ways that hardly make them look like pious Muslims. But, to be honest, there is no real sign that anybody is living like Pablo Escobar, so there is a real concern here – what are they going to do with all this money?"

"Ahmed Rashid is a well-known writer on Afghanistan. His book about the Taliban came to prominence after 9/11 . What Rashid manages to do is to show that this is a transnational problem. You cannot understand what is going on in Afghanistan without understanding the politics of Pakistan. He is able to explain to some extent the double game Pakistan has always been playing in Afghanistan. It wants to install and dominate a Pashtun Afghan government in Kabul. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . They were strong supporters of the Taliban, helped bring them to power, but after 9/11 they were confronted with an American threat. The US demanded that the Taliban turn in Osama bin Laden or face destruction. Pakistan was asked to choose whether it wanted to be an American ally or an American target in the Bush administration’s new War on Terror. Hoping to save the situation, Pakistan pleaded with Mullah Omar to give up Osama bin Laden, promising him that the Taliban regime would then not be a target if he did. But the Taliban weren’t quite as co-operative as they expected and refused. While Pakistan abandoned the Taliban when the Americans invaded Afghanistan, they never dropped their covert support for the movement. Thus Pakistan showed little hesitation in going after al Qaeda members who fled to Pakistan but gave refuge to Mullah Omar and his followers in Quetta, Baluchistan. For that reason the insurgency in Southern Afghanistan had its roots across the border in Pakistan. Since Pakistan denied it was aiding the Taliban, Ahmed Rashid was one of the few people with the contacts necessary to sort out such a transborder conflict and the ability to sort through the complexity of Pakistani politics. Rashid also knows the Afghan side well, Karzai in particular. So his descriptions of the political factions there are also good and he can put them in a longer-term context. It gives a really good understanding of all the different problems which make it so difficult to bring peace to Afghanistan."

"Because it is the authoritative account of the current situation in the region. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to understand what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is certainly one of its strengths. The other is his depth of understanding. It’s also very trenchant in analysing the mistakes that the West has made in relation to Afghanistan and Pakistan."