Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism [Hardcover]

John K. Cooley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

To oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US formed an extraordinary anti-communist alliance with militant Islamic forces in Central Asia. In this controversial book, John Cooley provides a behind-the-scenes account of this alliance and of how the CIA planned and ran the "holy war" in Afghanistan. Cooley describes the development of US foreign policy and CIA covert activity in the 1980s, which facilitated the training and arming of almost a quarter of a million Islamic mercenaries drawn from across the Arab world. Cooley marshals evidence to demonstrate the devastating consequences of this training once the mercenaries returned to their own countries - from the assassination of Sadat, the destabilisation of Algeria and Chechenya and the emergence of the Taliban, to the bombings of the World Trade Centre and the US embassies in Africa. Cooley examines the crucial role of Pakistan's military intelligence organisation; uncovers China's involvement and its aftermath; the extent of Saudi financial support; the role of "America's most wanted man", the guerrilla leader Osama bin Laden; the BCCI connection; and the CIA's cynical promotion of drug traffic in the Golden Crescent.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cooley, an ABC correspondent who has spent many years in the Middle East, calls his book a "narration," and indeed it reads more like a conversation than a traditional book. He focuses on the numerous riots, uprisings, and terrorist acts in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Middle East over the last two decades, which began when freedom fighters in Afghanistan returned to their home countries after the Afghan war. Cooley carries such ties even to the World Trade Center and Kenyan and Tanzanian embassy bombings. Since the CIA (and others) funded the fighters in Afghanistan, we are reaping a strange harvest for our efforts. Although there are minor factual errors and some of the movements may have fewer ties to Afghanistan than Cooley implies in his more sweeping statements, this provocative book certainly will provide insight into many events in the Middle East for the general reader.ADonald Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Cooley's important and timely book examines 'a strange love-affair that went disastrously wrong,' the alliance between America and 'some of the most conservative and fanatical followers of Islam.' To my knowledge, it is the first on this theme....the author [is] a well-regarded Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and more recently for ABC News.... 'Unholy Wars' asks salient questions and draws on an impressive body of sources." -- Karl E. Meyer, Los Angeles Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Pr; First Edition edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745313280
• ISBN-13: 978-0745313283
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,584,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dry But Informative, April 25, 2002

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Paperback)

This author can say more in 5 words then I could say in 50. To say this book is dense and jammed packed with detail may be an understatement. This book is the authors attempt to detail the creation and support of the Afghanistan freedom fighters in the 1980's and how these fighters then went out in the 90's to form the base of the Al - Qaeda terrorist group. The author takes us through the different countries and ways that the Afghani fighters were funded and supported. It then covers the terrorist acts these same fighters have been committing over the last ten years.

We get a very good look at the other nations involved in this issue and how the internal politics of one nation may effect the world. For example the help that China provided the Afghani fighters to keep the Russians busy then turned into an issue for China when those same fighters started working with separatist organizations in Western China. The books main point is that if you use mercenaries to fight a war for you it tends to have far reaching repercussions.

What I did not like about the book was the bone-dry writing. He managed to take an interesting topic and turn it into a story with all the excitement of an economics lecture. This is good stuff, punch it up a bit and get me excited to move to the next page. I also wanted a bit more background or links to other events - we get a blizzard of facts, dates, places etc, but it is not tied together very well. And if you are a nut on typos (you probably would get mad at my typing) then watch out because it does not look like too much editing was done on the text.

If you want more detail on the Afghanistan freedom fighters / CIA funding process during the 1980's I would suggest the book "The Forth World War", a great book written by the head of the French version of the CIA which is quoted a number of times in this book. For a more in-depth look at what happened to the aid the book "The Bear Trap" is also very interesting. If you just want a nice, easy to read overview of UBL then I would suggest "Holy War Inc".

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unholy alliances, October 19, 2002

By 

Chapulina R (Tovarischi Imports, USA/RUS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Paperback)

Former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for his Middle East peace efforts. Yet Carter's Central Asian policies were directly responsible for the spawning of international terrorism as we know it now. On Juy 3, 1979, Carter, acting on the recommendation of his National Security Advisor, cold-warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, began clandestinely supporting Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan. Carter may rue this now. But at the time, he believed Afghani Islamist rebels were simply fellow Believers denied their religious freedom by the "godless" Marxist government in Kabul. Brzezinski knew better. But as he stated in a 1998 interview: "This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap." When the Soviet Army entered Afghanistan in late December 1979, Brzezinski gloated, "Now we can give the USSR its own Vietnam War!" Brzezinski and Carter's CIA Director Adm. Stansfield Turner freely acknowledged that "possible adverse consequences of the anti-communist alliance with Afghan Islamists (and shortly afterward with their radical Muslim allies around the world) -- the growth of a new international terrorist movement and global outreach of Central Asian drug-trafficking -- did not weigh heavily, if at all" in their calculations. Brzezinski, asked later whether he regretted arming and training future terrorists, retorted: "What was more important in world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few over-excited Islamists, or the liberation of eastern Europe?" Brzezinski's native Poland was, of course, in eastern Europe... Carter encouraged Islamist incursions into the Central Asian republics of the USSR, ostensibly to foment religious rebellion in those secular Islamic states. As Brzezinski admitted, the US intended to "build bridges to states having a strong Muslim identity." However, the insurgents frequently committed small-scale terrorist acts by planting bombs in crowded markets, bus depots, apartment and government buildings, and through kidnappings and executions. Carter's sincere but misguided religious naivety regarding Islamism was rewarded with the Iranian hostage crisis which ended his chances of a second term.
The Reagan regime continued Carter's Central Asian policy, and began to deploy an army of Muslim zealots from geographically strategic Pakistan and wealthy Saudi Arabia. Jihadists from every corner of the Muslim world were recruited and trained by the CIA and US military Special Forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even at US military bases. Reagan vastly increased funding of mujahedin "holy warriors" who established their own facilities -- later to become terrorist training camps -- in Afghanistan. There, exiled Saudi billionaire Usama bin Laden started his ascent from mujahed commander to international terrorist mastermind. Following the death of Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev implored the UN to intervene and help negociate an end to the Soviet Afghan quagmire. At this, Reagan responded with his infamous exhortation to the mujahedin "Declare holy jihad and go for the victory!" After the Soviet withdrawal, the government of Afghanistan collapsed. The various mujahedin factions began to fight amongst themselves for political supremacy, territory, and opium. The fundamentalist Wahabist Taliban emerged victorious. The so-called northern alliance was (and still is) a loose coalition of warlords and bandits with the motive of personal power, tribal bigotry, and drug profits for its opposition to the Saudi-sponsored Taliban. Moscow regarded the Northern Alliance as the sole barrier between Wahabist extremism and the vulnerable bordering Central Asian states. Russia committed ongoing support to the northern forces, whose leader was, ironically, one of the most notorious CIA-trained rebel operatives during the Soviet Afghan War.
Normally, I am not impressed by right-of-center interpretations of history, because they so frequently attempt to absolve the US of responsibility for disasterous policy. But Cooley has written an honest, unbiased account of the birth and rise of a world-threatening evil. And "Unholy Wars" does not spare recriminations toward any country whose actions contributed to the empowerment of international terrorism. It is a frighteningly eye-opening and timely book. All I can say is, read it now!

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Badly Written, Badly Edited, October 10, 2001

By 

Donald R McGregor - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Hardcover)

There's a good book struggling to get out of this mess, but in the end it remained securely chained. It's badly written, badly edited, and riddled with errors that call into question the care and scholarship of the author.

Sentences, paragraphs, and whole chapters start off going one way, then wander off the path and into the forest. The book is riddled with editing errors that place critical dates off by a decade, and enough minor errors exist to call into question whatever fact checking was done. To take a few items at random from one chapter: the Special Operations Command is incorrectly named; a California university is misplaced in Nevada; and critical dates are refered to as 1977 rather than 1987. One would hope that a reporter's book would be more carefully edited, or at least proof-read.

There is some good information there, but I don't know how much to trust it, given the other errors.

The author has an axe to grind with the Reagan administration, which wouldn't be all that bad, if the book had been properly executed. It wasn't.