About this title: The #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.
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Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Date Published: 2009-04-07
ISBN-13:9780143115571ISBN:014311557X
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780143115571. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780143115571ISBN:014311557X
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Edition: Revised
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group Usa
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780143115571ISBN:014311557X
Description: The #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Viking, New York
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780143115571ISBN:014311557X
Description: Very Good in Paperback jacket. 8vo. Pp lviii [3] 498. "Benazir Bhutto's assassination and the crisis in Pakistan are only the beginning. Rashid assesses what her death means for the region and the future. Rashid has unparalleled access to the figures in this global drama, and provides up-to-the-minute analysis better than anyone else. Descent Into Chaos will do for Central Asia what Thomas Rick's Fiasco did for Iraq-offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and an impassioned call ... read more
Description: New. 014311557X *NEW BOOK! * RETURNS ARE NO PROBLEM! We LOVE happy customers. All our orders sent with tracking information. ALIBRIS. read more
"When Bill Clinton briefed President-elect George Bush at the White House in December 2000, he enumerated six major security threats facing the United States. Three were: Al Qaeda, nuclear tensions between Pakistan and India, and Pakistan's links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The book soul are these three big threats, unfortunately for world all these threats are still at large after 9 years.In his appropriately titled "Descent Into Chaos," Ahmed Rashid says the Clinton administration bears some responsibility for where we find ourselves today in South and Central Asia. It had blown "hot and cold when it came to Afghanistan and chasing Al Qaeda," had "no coherent strategy for undermining the Taliban regime". Some examples are:
1. C.I.A. officers had made only a handful of trips to Afghanistan during the Clinton years.
2. No one in the agency spoke Pashto, the language of the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.
But the real target of Rashid's blistering critique is the Bush administration, and particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He counts some of the failures done by him in Afghanistan:
1. He insisted on bringing Afghanistan's notorious warlords into the government.
2. He blocked a "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan.
3. He opposed expanding the multinational International Security Assistance Force to work beyond Kabul.
Pakistan, Rashid explains, supported the Taliban when they were in power, in order to keep Afghanistan in Pakistan's corner against India. Since 9/11, the country's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, better known as I.S.I., has been duplicitous, at best. It continues to provide sanctuary and military support for the Taliban, even to this day, while arresting some Arabs among their fighters to appease Washington.
Rashid's indictment of the Bush administration, and his scathing criticism of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is persuasive. But in making his case, he sometimes reaches too far. He says, for instance, that the White House sought the extradition of Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the convicted murderer of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. "Pakistan refused," Rashid writes, disapprovingly.
Rashid supports a greater military commitment, as well as more money for development. The Taliban resurgence could have been avoided with more troops for security and with more money, better spent, for nation building, Rashid argues. But maybe the United States is just not capable of nation building. It is certainly hard to find a success since Germany and Japan.
Author talks about Afghanistan , India and Pakistan there relation and how they are treating the environment created after 9/11.
Afghanistan: The country remains in the grip of warlords and drug traffickers. Rashid generally admires President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, whom he calls "my friend." Ultimately, however, he acknowledges that Karzai has been unwilling to take on the drug traffickers. Many were "his political allies or close friends," and, Rashid writes, Karzai's brother Wali was said to be mixed up with the drug lords.
Pakistan: The problems in Pakistan may be worse. The country suffers from an "identity crisis," Rashid says, and has removed from its schoolbooks references to the tolerance and secularism preached by its revered founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Pakistan's elite have shown little concern for the poor. "Sixty years after independence, Pakistan's literacy rate is an appalling 54 percent, with female literacy at less than 30 percent," Rashid notes. Indentured labor is still pervasive; I personally saw women and children making bricks in the blazing sun for a few dollars a day.
The current political situation is unstable. The Bush administration considered Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, indispensable, and so did not push for democratic reforms, Rashid observes. But given the record of civilian governments in Pakistan, might this have been a reasonable conclusion? For most of the decade before Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were the prime ministers. Their governments were marked by enormous corruption (Bhutto's more so than Sharif's) and ineffectiveness. Today, the most powerful civilian leaders in the country are Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and Sharif, whom Rashid describes as "right-wing, anti-American and close to the Islamic parties."
One of the most valuable contributions of "Descent Into Chaos" is its discussion of Kashmir, the region that has been in dispute between India and Pakistan since independence in 1947. It is the linchpin of the tense relations between Pakistan and India, and Pakistan, as Rashid explains, basically views its Afghan policy through the prism of India. It seems evident that the United States will have to become more involved in achieving a settlement in Kashmir, perhaps through a special envoy like Christopher Hill, who, with patience and persistence, has achieved breakthroughs in negotiations with North Korea.
"Descent Into Chaos" can help the next administration understand the mistakes of the past, but it will have to do more than that to achieve stability in the future. For example, a President McCain or President Obama should consider negotiating with the Taliban, as repugnant as that sounds. Rashid notes that there are moderates among them who want no truck with Al Qaeda. Similarly, the next secretary of state should consider something equally radical: rotating the ranking diplomats among Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, with, say, two years in each capital. This will help ward off "clientitis," an occupational disease that weakens the effectiveness of too many ambassadors.
Such bold, imaginative initiatives will be necessary, whoever becomes president. Otherwise, four or eight years from now, an outgoing McCain or Obama administration will probably be delivering the same briefing that Clinton gave Bush in 2000."
"As expected from a reputed journalist the book is full of facts and figures. However I have always maintained that each and every data point or historical fact in a non fiction can be countered by other authors. Therefore the acceptability of the data becomes troublesome. However given the repute of the author I am willing to buy his perspective and presentation. A brilliant book overall if anyone wants to know about Central Asia, Afghanistan, Taliban, ISI, CIA and the impotent USA Government from George Bush Senior to Bill Clinton to George Bush Jr.
The book throws light on various Islamic Terrorism angles in the world, touches about tacit understanding of China is promoting these groups alongside the erstwhile USSR. It presents the internal strife and wars in Afghan tribes and poses a bleak picture for its future. It appears that it was a mistake to make bunch of these tribes a nation. Despite having a proper constitution in 1926 they hardly moved towards civilization.
The book is recommended for people wanting to know more about and also to have better and correct facts about Taliban, ISI and CIA."
"Actually, I think I'd like to give this book 3.5 stars. I think it's a good book to read if you care to know anything about what's going on in that region. Unfortunately, I also think Americans in general don't care. I will definitely be keeping this book around for a future reference. It is filled with information you will not get by watching any American based news agency, and it's nice to get a perspective of things that doesn't come from an American, but from some one who has actually lived there. And let me say this, he does not flatter America at all. If you hated the Bush administration, this will take you to a new level. If you liked Bush, you'll probably hate this book.
I don't necessarily agree with everything the author says in regards to U.S. involvement in the region, but this is just a short book review not a debate of the facts. I find it annoying when people review based on weather or not they agree with the author's point of view and not on the merits of the book itself. The only issue I had with this book is that the author jumped around with dates a lot. I would lose track of what year he was talking about. I wish he would have kept it more chronological."
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