Customer Reviews

Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan

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Michael Griffin has reached a better understanding of the Taliban in his book than I have come across anywhere else. This is a highly intelligent account of one of the most interesting and disturbing political movements in the world, and is essential reading to anyone who wishes to understand its nature.

Michael Griffin has done us a great service with his book, teasing out the nuances of political, religious, and ethnic strife in Afghanistan -- a country that is both hidden and of immense importance to the Post-Cold War world. He shows us the blundering interventions of international players, ranging from greedy American and Argentine oil companies, to self-serving Iranian and Pakistani politicians. He provides a unique inside account of the agonizing choices faced by United Nations agencies -- a devil's dilemma between lending tacit support to the Taliban's brutal war against women's rights, and withholding relief supplies for suffering Afghani civilians. This book is crucial, not just for regional specialists, but for anyone who wants to understand the limitations of foreign policy in the growing number of violently sectarian strongholds in the world.

There is some good stuff in this book about America's new friends in the war for freedom and against terrorism, the Northern Alliance. I've noticed recently some commentators saying that the Northern Alliance leaders had nothing to do with the massive bloodshed in Afghanistan from 1992-96 and that was all the fault of Gullubdin Heckmatyar. Well, according to this book Heckmatyar's organization received through Pakistan about half of all the money funnled by the West and the reactionary Arab regimes into the Jihad against the Soviet Union in the 80's. He the guy wholikes to throw acid in women's faces who don't wear the burkha and has been involved in the drug trade, though his influence has been reduced dramatically in the past few years. After the communist government was overthrown in April 1992, Heckmatyar began massively bombarding civillians in Kabul. President Rabbani made him prime minister of his government in mid-93 but he took to bombarding Kabul again on Janary 1st 1994 along with general Rashid Dostum and the Shiite group Hizb-i-Wahdat, two of the prominent members of the current Northern Alliance. The Taliban drove them away in February 1995 shortly before they began their own massive bombardment of Kabul. In May 1996 Rabbani, who recently reinstalled himself in Kabul, once again made Heckmatyar prime minister and bans on certain forms of entertainment were introduced, as well as Sharia law and Islamic dress code and so on.

Other mass killings are described in this book like those by like the current northern alliance forces of Ahmad Massoud's army in the Shia Hazarajat and Abdul Malik, whose forces defected from Dostum's government to allow the Taliban to capture Mazar-i-Sharif in May 1997 but almost immediately turned against the Taliban and conducted a Saddam Hussein-like massacre of Taliban prisoners of war and it seems, thousands of civillians.

Of course it is hard to reach the utter barbarism of the Taliban. There is no need to repeat the horrific details. They emerged as a group friends in Kandahar province in late 94' who gained noteriety for fierce piety and honesty in contrast to the former Mujahadeen warlords whose forces were running around looting and raping and killing everybody. The U.S. clearly hoped that the efforts of Unocal to make arrangements with the Taliban leaders for a trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline from Turkmenistan would succeed. The dictator of Turkmenistan had switched allegiances from Bridas of Argentina to Unocal. After the whole thing blew up and they were left with a regime that was sheltering Osama Bin Laden, the monster that the Reagan adminstration helped create in the 80's, and serving as a conduit for drug smugglers (The Northern Alliance people are very heavy into that business also though Griffin does not say this).

Al Quaida is a very decentralized organization. Bin Laden may not have known about Sept 11. The evidence presented for his involvement by the British government has been rather thin. Griffin says that the evidence for him being involved in the attacks on the U.S. embassies in August 1998 and his relationship to the Al Shifa medicine plant in the Sudan which Clinton blew up is very tenuous. (...)

The prose style in this book is in parts really leaden. One gets the feeling that the book as a whole was not edited very well.

Don't look here for flowery prose; this is an academic accounting of the modern history of Afghanistan and the origins of the Taliban movement. In a flood of chronological detail, Michael Griffin traces the political evolution (or devolution) of the country from the 1973 fall of King Zahir Shah, through Soviet occupation and horrifying civil war, to the birth and victory of the Taliban. Playing a central role in this history is Osama Bin Laden, whose presence in Afghanistan severely muddied an already bleak environment. Griffin is even-handed in his analysis - misogynistic Taliban, expansionist Pakistanis and disingenuous U.S. administrations all receive sharp criticism. We [...] strongly recommend this clear-headed history of a now critical region to all readers.

Not being as grammatically proficient as some of the other reviewists, I can only add my observation.
While being a difficult book to read, not easy flowing as in a novel, the subject of this book is so well researched and packed with facts, that slower reading is required to assimilate all the info.
To me Afghanistan has always been a vague cauldron of politics.
Michael Griffin's book has opened this 'mystery' of politics by explaining in detail the interaction of all neighboring countries, especially Pakistan who plays a leading role in the politics of the area and the Taliban.
Very informative reading. If you are interested in politics read it, if not read Harry Potter.
Highly recomended, most intelligent book I've read in a decade.

This was written before 9/11. It is the story of how the Taliban came ot power in Afghanistan. It shows the culpability of Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and finally the United States and how their actions resulted in the rise of the Taliban. I think the US had less to worry about with the coming of the Taliban, but they had a role. Pakistan created this monster with money from the Saudis. Massoud, and the other guerrillas rivalry also created an atmosphere of lawlessness.

This is a detailed read on the old regime in Afghanistan. It is a must read to understand the nature of the conflict.

Michael Griffin has stitched together a narrative on the Taliban movement from literally hundreds of local and international news reports. Much of his material consists of comments on comments and rumor and innuendo, all fused into a reality that provides the reader with a book at once informative, and also hyperbolic. Indeed the civilized world will be put more than ill at ease by the authors description of the barbaric behavior engaged in by a collection of factions, all of who have played some role in the rise of the Taliban.

In a real sense it's as if the competing tribes are behaving like some turbaned group of Mafia families playing a round robin playoff in a deadly game of tissue damage. The goal is to decide who will rule the money flows from the proposed trans Caucausus and central Asian pipelines that will run from the world's largest oil reserves in Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkmenstan. Follow the money and overlay the story with the imposition of the Taliban's idea of Islamic law and you have the picture. Like most ruling elites they set rules for others that they themselves only hint at following.

The author provides you with all the geopolitical drama of the constantly shifting tribal and religious alliances which will determine Afghanistans fate. This tale differs little, except in style, with the contrast between a society that builds and a society that destroys. What has the Taliban built? Contrast this with their destruction of the Bhuddist sculptures of Bamiyan, their denial of basic education to the people, their grisley public amputations and inhumane executions of those who disagree with their religious doctrine. For the politically correct they dont treat their women very well either. Indeed they've overseen a destruction of their own socio-economic sphere of the world.

Balint Vazsonyi's book "America's 30 years war" is instructive in comparing societies that engage in "building up" with those that engage in "tearing down". Abe Lincoln once said that there are two ways to have the biggest house in town; build it or tear everyone else's down. Ipso the attack on America re the WTC and the Pentagon.

When America withdrew from the Afghani theatre after the fall of the USSR, the Taliban won in their Mafioso version of "going to the mattresses". This book gives you all the available details. It's best to remember that all wars seem to be fought over money in the name of religion. In that sense this conflict appears to be no different.

The first few pages of this book are informative, but in the same way a few pages on europe might summarize its history from the 16th century onward. I was so overwhelmed that I gave up.