. . Cat de mai bine este echipata politica externa americana pentru episodul ISIS? ____________________________ NO GOOD MEN AMONG THE LIVING Told through the lives of three Afghans, the stunning tale of how the United States had triumph in sight in Afghanistan—and then brought the Taliban back from the dead In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America’s war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent; a US-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power; and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could in fact have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the US invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively, the Taliban ceased to exist—yet the Americans were unwilling to accept such a turnaround. Instead, driven by false intelligence from their allies and an unyielding mandate to fight terrorism, American forces continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day. With its intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan, Gopal’s thoroughly original reporting lays bare the workings of America’s longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A heartbreaking story of mistakes and misdeeds, No Good Men Among the Living challenges our usual perceptions of the Afghan conflict, its victims, and its supposed winners. __________________________ For the first time since 2001, more Americans believe it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan than see it as the right call, at least according to a recent Gallup poll. Almost 13 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, we’re conflicted about what we are still doing in Afghanistan and confused about what happened there. Americans are tired of America’s long war, especially as it drones on. The journalist Anand Gopal tries to make sense of the morass in his first book, “No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes.” It’s an apt time for reflection on America’s lingering Asian folly — Afghanistan’s presidential election was held earlier this month, and the United States plans to withdraw most of its troops by the end of this year. Afghanistan will either muddle along or again fall into chaos. Gopal’s book is essential reading for anyone concerned about how America got Afghanistan so wrong. It is a devastating, well-honed prosecution detailing how our government bungled the initial salvo in the so-called war on terror, ignored attempts by top Taliban leaders to surrender, trusted the wrong people and backed a feckless and corrupt Afghan regime. The book has its flaws, minimizing the role of neighboring Pakistan in the Taliban’s resurgence and letting the Taliban off too easy. But it is ultimately the most compelling account I’ve read of how Afghans themselves see the war. Gopal, who covered Afghanistan for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, describes the intricate web of relationships in the country, and how mutable those alliances are. In their desire to pick a side and see Afghans in black and white, the Americans failed to realize that Afghanistan is a gray country where today’s ally can be tomorrow’s enemy. There are no heroes or villains in Afghanistan, as suggested by the book’s title, taken from a Pashtun proverb: “There are no good men among the living, and no bad ones among the dead.” After moving to Afghanistan in 2008, Gopal learned the language, grew a beard and traveled to remote corners other correspondents rarely ventured. (As the former South Asia bureau chief for The Chicago Tribune, I met Gopal in Afghanistan. I felt that many areas he visited were too dangerous — for me, at least.) His book, reported over four years, tells the story of the war through the lives of three Afghans: a Taliban commander, a tribal strongman and a village housewife. They are all Pashtun, members of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. Gopal traces their lives through the country’s struggles: the Soviet invasion of 1979; the subsequent C.I.A.-backed insurgency; the brutal civil war of the 1990s; and the strict rule of the Taliban, who sheltered Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Much of the book is devoted to what happened after the Taliban regime fell in late 2001, when Hamid Karzai took over. The strongman, Jan Mohammed, was a longtime Karzai pal who became the governor of Oruzgan Province, where he racked up points and money with the Americans and crushed anyone who opposed him. The housewife, Heela, fled Kabul for an Oruzgan village during the civil war. She suffered various tragedies at the hands of Jan Mohammed’s men — she found her husband’s bullet-riddled body “lying neatly on the dirt road, on a bed of flour sacks,” Gopal writes — before winning a spot in Afghanistan’s senate. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story And then there is Mullah Cable, the Taliban commander who earned his nickname for his way with a whip. Mullah Cable, whose given name is Akbar Gul, retreated to Pakistan as the Taliban fell. He later returned, renounced the gun and opened a phone-repair shop. But his peaceful stint as a civilian didn’t last. Upset with the corruption of the local police and the continuing presence of the Americans, Akbar Gul rejoined the Taliban. Gopal’s depiction of Akbar Gul is as murky as Afghanistan. If Heela is the virtuous villager and Jan Mohammed the conniving heavy, Akbar Gul is the reluctant man pressed into battle. Even his attempts to kill American soldiers are described in somewhat muted terms. “Many minutes passed as the firing continued,” Gopal writes, “and in a haze of smoke and dust Akbar Gul could no longer see what he was shooting at.” Gopal shows how the Americans messed things up from the beginning. Civilian casualties and night raids bred resentment. The United States also backed the same warlords responsible for atrocities during the ’90s. In the war’s early years, there was no rehabilitation for a former Talib, no re-entry program, no probation, no real way to join the new government. For leaders of the Taliban, unlike other Afghans with a bloody past, there was no way out — except to run or hide. The American military was also naïve about how things worked in the country. Afghan informants exacted revenge against rivals by calling in raids. Gopal describes how one tribal elder was so successful in uncovering official corruption that he was branded a Taliban spy, which was enough to get him banished to Guantánamo Bay. Such mistakes turned average Afghans against the United States, as did corrupt local police and administrators who would shake down civiliansfor an easy buck. By 2005, the Taliban had returned. Yet even as Gopal offers key insights into the Afghan experience, he looks at the war through a narrow lens. He barely acknowledges how Pakistan’s main spy agency, the ubiquitous Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, helped back the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. (It is only toward the end of the book that Gopal mentions how the ISI “threw its support behind the insurgency — even as it publicly proclaimed support for the U.S. mission.”) He also portrays the Taliban with an almost rosy hue, maybe enamored of the access he must have worked so hard to win. The Taliban are largely depicted as a groundswell of oppressed ethnic Pashtuns pushing back against a corrupt Afghan government and an invading foreign force. Few atrocities are their fault; rather, circumstances made them do it. The sole description of a serious Taliban massacre comes nearly three-quarters of the way through, in an account of how Talibs slaughtered a busload of Afghans on their way to find work in Iran. Gopal seems to hold the warlords, the government and the West more accountable for recent brutalities. That depiction is not entirely fair. The United States certainly made mistakes. But the American military as a whole didn’t target civilians methodically and deliberately — unlike the Taliban, which recently stormed a hotel restaurant, shooting innocent women and children at point-blank range. I finished the book wanting more of a look forward. It’s probably to Gopal’s credit that he resisted that urge: Afghanistan is impossible to predict. Many Afghan observers figured that Karzai, barred from seeking a third presidential term, would finagle a delay to Afghanistan’s April election. But he didn’t. Few pundits thought that Afghans would defy the Taliban and turn out overwhelmingly to vote. But they did. Others predicted rampant election violence. But there wasn’t. Instead, Gopal’s book left me looking back, feeling regrets and “if onlys.” If only the United States had better understood the Afghan people, if only we knew then what we know now, Afghanistan might have become a different place. Not Switzerland, to be sure. But a place that could bottle the defiance and hope shown on Afghanistan’s Election Day, and put that energy to work. NO GOOD MEN AMONG THE LIVING America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes By Anand Gopal 304 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $27. amazon/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/product-reviews/0805091793/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 02:43:31 +0000
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