Customer Reviews

The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan

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As the author noted in his book: "This book is a personal and not a scholarly account...it neither pretends nor claims to be an inside account of Washington policy deliberations" [p. xiii]. Sadly, the author is forthrightly honest: the reader is not going to get much insight about any "dirt" about how the staffs of various U.S. agencies (State, the Pentagon, USAID) disagreed over policy goals while the author served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan (2005-2007). The author said that he wrote this book while referring to the letters that he had written to his wife. Like most letters written home by soldiers serving in a combat zone, they try to write `upbeat' letters - so as not to alarm their family members. This book is much like that: upbeat without much drama or trauma. But then, this ambassador-author is a diplomat after all. Throughout his book the ambassador recounts numerous problems of Afghanistan: a weak economy; the impact of hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees seeking both protection and employment; how warlords controlled the opium poppy-trade to fund either themselves or the opposing Taliban; the lack of electricity; the lack of roads for bringing farmers' products to town; the lack of an educated bureaucracy; the lack of a trained military - let alone the lack of sufficient numbers; among many other problems. From reading this book, while the author details his meetings with various international agencies (UN, WMF, IMF, USAID, the European Union, etc.) in seeking funds to rebuild Afghanistan, he doesn't present anything like a 35-page Power-Point Presentation in noting how various programs needed to be prioritized (as the author openly stated, his book isn't a `scholarly' accounting of the implementation of specific programs and their successes or failures). This book has more of your youthful `here is what I did during my summer vacation' paper you used to write in grade school, rather anything like a revengeful supermarket-tabloid article exposing the policy misdeeds of the Bush-Chaney-Rumsfield team of diverting attention away from Taliban-Afghanistan to pursue the overthrow of Saddam Hussain in Iraq. He mentions some of the problems with the Pakistani government in being `two faced' about its conflicting dual support of Pres. Karzai's government and the opposing Taliban (but doesn't go into details). Frustration, but not any really deep analysis of the international conflicts; sadly, even discussion of the border problem of the Durand Line is left to an endnote [p. 227]. Yes, this is not a sugar-coated book of the ambassador defending his tour - he highlights many of his frustrations with the lack of either funding or White House support, but then, it is very disappointing to a reader who is seeking a back-stabbing, cat-claw scratching, shocking kiss-and-tell revelation of the disputes between the Embassy, State Dept., the Pentagon, and the White House (one gets hints, but no specific `name calling' - although the author did note that when Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld left office: "We shed no tears in Kabul" [p. 144]). A book better than what I have reviewed here.

Ronald Neumann was the U.S. ambassador in Kabul in 2005-07. The Taliban were stronger at the end of this period than they were at the beginning. "The Other War" fails because it does not explain why this happened.

The book must have been drawn from Neumann's diaries and letters, because it plods forward week by week, meeting by meeting, with little background information or Afghan context. One gets the impression Neumann spent his time haggling over budgets with Washington, trouble-shooting mismanaged programs, doing "development tourism," and attending donor coordination meetings. Neumann's portrayal of President Karzai is very thin. Other Afghans hardly appear at all, except as people trying to blow up Americans or in audiences assembled by embassy staff to hear Neumann's banal speeches. Unforgivably, there's virtually no analysis of the Taliban's structure, political/military strategy, or support base. It's an unromantic and U.S.-centric view of the Foreign Service.

I liked the book because many vignettes reminded me of my own year in AmEmbassy Kabul. There's no doubt that Neumann was an honorable and intelligent public servant, who deserved better than to work for an Administration fixated on quick fixes and obsessed with the unfolding disaster in Iraq. But his book is dry to the point of tedium, and it does little to tell readers how we were sucked into an Afghan quagmire or how we should get out.

I picked this up prior to a work trip to Afghanistan to better understand the current political situation, nation-building and counterterrorism efforts.

The Ambassador has written an excellent case study for Foreign Service Officers, policy-makers, and those who want to understand the nuts and bolts of nation-building in Afghanistan. It should be required reading at the Foreign Service Institute for those assigned to Afghanistan. It chronicled the day to day decisions an Ambassador makes like how to allocate funding, mediate among tribal leaders and negotiate with Washington for resources.

However, for someone wanting a broad overview like me, it was a little too in the weeds. For a broader overview, I'm going to next try reading "In the Graveyard of Empires."

THE OTHER WAR: WINNING AND LOSING IN AFGHANISTAN provides a powerful account of the author's role as the U.S. ambassador who came to Kabul from Baghdad as the U.S. ambassador with a lifetime in the greater Middle East. His account of how the war there unfolded over the next two years considers politics, policies and social issues and pinpoints faults in the U.S. operations there, documenting failures as well as successes. Key for any collection strong in Middle East history and culture.