Customer Reviews

Unholy Wars

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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".

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!

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.

After September 11th, the American left was caught off balance.
For the first time, we were facing the prospect of protesting
American military intervention based on an attack on American
soil.

The warmongers quickly seized the high ground with all the trappings of phony patriotism. Overnight, the nation was covered with wall-to-wall flags. Dissent died daring not to raise its head.

Yet, like the beginnings of the Vietnam protest, the resurgence
of the left must begin with information. Freely admitting to an
absymal ignorance of the situation in Afghanistan, I inherently
knew from past experience with the U.S. Government that Bush and Company could not be trusted to give a truthful account of events except to engage in spin doctoring.

"Unholy Wars" places September 11th into its proper place in the time and space continuum of American history. Based on the well-founded principle of blowback, as described in Chalmers Johnson's excellent work, the vents of September 11th have brought home the activities of the CIA in the Middle East and how the arming of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of 1979 has now come home to roost in a permanent and never-ending "war on terrorism."

Certainly, the domestic portion of the ground war at home comes now in the form of a war on the civil liberties of Americans under the guise of a "war on terrorists" (nevermind that these same 'terrorists' were equipped and trained by the CIA).

Under the current thinking, the only view of post September 11th events comes from the corporate media and its sycophants in the entertainment industry, such as "Sir" Paul McCartney. As a musician, I am certain that John lennon must be spinning in his grave watching Sir Paul play the straight he said he was in "How Can You Sleep."

Cooley's book is jam packed with enormous detail presenting the Middle Eastern situation in context and perspective for the reader. Each nation, like the pieces of a puzzle, plays its part reflecting its internal politics and how the U.S. government meddles, interferes and generally screws up in the Middle East. Let's hope well all don't pay the price for their intereference and incompetence.

"Unholy Wars" is the story of a tragi accident happening before our eyes. An accident that we can only stand and watch. An accident caused by the CIA and the intereference of the U.S. Government.

"Unholy Wars" equips the reader with detailed information about the origins of the situation in Afgahnistan. As the corporate media remains focused upon the tragedy of September 11th and catapaults that tragedy into blind patriotism, Americans need more than ever to educate themselves to the realities of the Afghan situation, the Middle East situation and to see beyond the false and phony patriotism of American riding around in their gas guzzling cars (powered by oil from the Middle East)with flags waving. While Bush and Company, like Reagan before him, refuses to develop a national energy policy, refuses conservation, and continues to think that the energy dependence of Americans can be cured by drilling in the Artic, or some other foolishness.

"Unholy Wars" is a tough read, small, detailed and intense print. Yet, it is worth the effort to get beyond the phony, artificial "patriotism" infecting Americans as the American military searches the endless mountains and caves of Afghanistan for Bin Laden, a former CIA operative and veteran of the Afghani wars.

"And when your wounded on Afghan's plain,
and the women come out to cut up what remains,
just roll to your musket and blow out your brains,
and go to your God like a soldier."

Rudyard Kipling
Barrack Ballads

John Cooley, a print and a television journalist, describes how Western nations, and particularly America, assisted the Afghan rebels in their fight to defeat the Russian Communists in their 1979-1989 war. Russia wanted a warm water port and decided that Marx could triumph over Mohammed. Cooley details how many governments besides the United States had a hand in helping these Afghan freedom fighters, and covert operations was how they chose to participate.

Afghanistan is a hard scrabble land with feuding tribes and ruthless warlords. The most cunning, and clever rise to the top and Osama Bin Laden is now one of the most famous. The CIA used mules to bring in the Stinger missiles that turned the tide in the Afghanis favor, but arming, supplying and training these men, who fought the Russians to a standstill, had an unforeseen cost. John Cooley connects the dots through this continuum of events in a professional and learned fashion.

With falling commodity prices the causation for Russia economic failure and with a steady stream of caskets wending their way back to Moscow, the average Ivan and Ivana grew weary of the war; the deaths and the economic belt tightening were grating on the Soviet bear. While this was an outcome that pleased Western policy makers, it also blinded them to the dislike these same men held for America and its principles, and this was the unforeseen cost for the West.

Cooley shows how in a script a thousand years old these well supplied and well-funded holy warriors branched into collateral terrorism on a worldwide basis. They morphed from a local group of Mafia families into an international gang of well-funded and well-trained thugs. As of September 11, 2001 they brought their brand of thuggery to NYC with their bombing of the World Trade Center and to Washington DC with their attack on the Pentagon.

In an original piece on mercenaries written by Niccolai Machiavellian almost 500 years ago he advised his patrons that mercenaries only bring loss, and in this case he was once again proven correct. The same fierce fanaticism with which the Mujhehedin fought the Russians has now been redirected toward Western civilization and particularly at America. The author shows how presidential administrations and the congress, over the last 25 years, must share culpability, with the 1990s being the time of the greatest leniency. But just as liberals said that NYC was ungovernable, Rudy Giuliani proved them wrong and in the same sense the nation hopes that George W. Bush will show toughness where Bill Clinton offered tokenism.

This book is an excellent primer on the details of how this transformation from hardened tribesmen using ancient means, to modern warriors using stinger missles, has affected the entire international community. It's a must read as it offers a playbook on the players who will assume many of the major and minor roles as the world awakens to this new and potentially catastrophic threat.

John Cooley describes the US intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and its aftereffects. The US state, assisted by Thatcher, trained and armed almost a quarter of a million Islamic mercenaries drawn from around the world to fight against Afghani national liberation. It was not supporting a `jihad' but manipulating dupes, just as it has used other groups to fight proxy wars in Africa and Asia, colonial wars it labelled wars against communism.

The US state intervened first in Afghanistan. On 3 July 1979, President Carter signed a secret directive authorising covert aid to the mujehadin. The CIA promoted drug traffic in the Golden Crescent to raise funds for them. The Egyptian, Saudi, British, French and Israeli Governments all sold them arms. The CIA supported their sabotage and guerrilla operations inside the Soviet Union. Only in December 1979, five months after the US intervention, did Soviet troops enter Afghanistan.

The war's effects on Afghanistan have been terrible: four million refugees, the land in ruins, continued strife even after the Soviet Union withdrew its troops, the Taliban dominating vast areas of the country. Further afield, the US-created mercenaries have destabilised Algeria, Chechenya, and the former Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union, among others. Some of them tried to create a separatist `Eastern Turkestan' in China's Western region of Xinjiang. However, China has defeated these efforts, and the Algerian Government succeeded in quelling the reactionary forces trying to overthrow it.

In this book, Cooley portrays the US state as a good sorcerer, who mistakenly released shadowy yet invincible forces, which it is now trying to crush. He pretends that the mercenaries are now separate from and opposed to the US state. In fact, the mercenaries are doing just what the US state wants, trying to destabilise any Government in the world that shows any sign of independence. So Cooley's book both prettifies the US's real foreign policy, and tries to legitimise its globocop role.

Prior to September 11, most Americans knew (or cared) little about Afghani politics, but today it seems imperative for us to learn all we can about the history, culture, and politics of this exotic but troubled nation. In *Unholy Wars*, reporter John Cooley has provided a wealth of information about Afghanistan and its geopolitical importance over the past quarter-century, including the 1979 Soviet invasion, the U.S.-supported campaign by the *mujahedin* to expel the Soviets, and the subsequent transformation of the most militant *mujahedin* into the Al-Qaida terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden.

Cooley succeeds in providing an admirably detailed account of the origin of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, including excerpts from the now-infamous 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski published in a French publication in which he boasted about having entrapped the Soviets into invading so that they would experience their own Viet Nam-type military disaster. The involvement of the CIA, along with Pakistan's ISI, in supporting and supplying the *mujahedin* is laid out clearly, and Cooley even devotes a chapter to the significance of the opium trade as a source of funding for Islamist armies both during and after the campaign against the Soviets.

Other chapters discuss how the multi-national Islamist "freedom fighters" dispersed after 1989 to spread their gospel of militant Islam and their terrorist tactics to Egypt, Algeria, Chechenya, the Philippines, and ultimately, the United States. The book was completed prior to the events of September 11, 2001, but the material dealing with previous Al-Qaida attacks in the U.S., including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, is vital reading for people interested in historical background to the current crisis.

The main problem with this book is that whereas Cooley presents a veritable blizzard of "facts," there is very little accompanying analysis. The presentation reads like a first draft, a mass of semi-digested material in dire need of editing and refining. Particularly in the chapters pertaining to recent terrorist activities in nations outside of Afghanistan, the endless parade of names, dates, places, factions and parties will make even the most resolute reader's head spin.

Overall, the book seems to have been thrown together way too quickly, as evidenced by an appalling lack of careful proofreading or fact-checking. Examples of gaffes that should never have made it to the final galleys include the claim that California's Chico State University is located in Nevada, the declaration that the time period between 1956 and 1970 constituted 24 years, and a reference to the "two 110-foot towers" of the World Trade Center. Whoops! Aside from the obvious sloppiness evidenced here, the inclusion of these kinds of careless errors cannot help but cast doubt on the overall accuracy of Cooley's reporting in this book.

Given that so far there is but a handful of books in English that provide historical background pertaining to Al Qaida and international terrorism generally, I would say that Unholy Wars is definitely worth reading. We can only hope, however, that a more analytical and carefully written work on these subjects will emerge soon.

This book discloses the historical facts behind the rumors that the CIA did train people like Osama bin Laden as Muslim rebels to fight off the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late seventies and eighties. Well apparently it is all true. Given the author in depth research and documentation, this story appears credible enough to become part of history. This is an incredibly interesting book for both its shock value and historical documentation.

The book main two themes are:

a) that a U.S. foreign policy in the eighties aimed at fighting back the Soviets in Afghanistan resulted in the acceleration of the formation of Muslim terrorist networks such as al-Qaida; and

b) that in the nineties, the U.S. supported the advent of the Taliban in the hope of stabilizing the Afghan government. This was to facilitate the building of a Trans-Afghan pipeline to be developed by U.S. oil companies.

As part of a Cold War strategy, since 1979 and onward, the U.S. provided support and trained Muslim warriors who built up a resistance to the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government. The Soviets soon decided to invade Afghanistan to crush this Muslim resistance movement and control the U.S. rising influence in the region. At this stage, the U.S. renewed their efforts and enlisted, trained, and funded more and more warriors or moujahidin. The CIA turned to many Muslim charities and religious groups around the World and the U.S. for recruiting. Pretty soon the funding and arm supplies came not only from the U.S., but also from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries. At the same time, Osama bin Laden also found his way in Afghanistan and joined the fight against the Russian. Osama success in fighting the Soviets, gave him the leadership and momentum to build his budding organization al-Qaida.

After the retreat of the Soviets during the early nineties, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, and the U.S. all favored the advent of the Taliban in Afghanistan. For the U.S. and Pakistan, the idea was to create an independent, strong, and stable Pushtun state in Afghanistan. In turn, this reliable Afghan government could provide the stability needed to allow U.S. oil companies to complete their plans for a trans Afghan pipeline that would deliver oil from Central Asia to Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. For Osama bin Laden, the Taliban created an alliance and a haven for his terrorist network al Qaida, since bin Laden had lost his Saudi Arabian citizenship. This was because he supported Saudi opposition groups against the royal family. He did that because of the Saudi government letting U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia in the 1990 Gulf War.

Also, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, many Muslim moujahidin joined al Qaida and other terrorist networks. As a result, Osama and his colleagues started exporting terrorism literally Worldwide and causing havoc in Africa, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Chechnya and many other places. Ever since terrorism has escalated in violence, ruthlessness (killing increasingly civilians, tourists), and capability (both from a weapon and strategic standpoint).

With 20/20 hindsight, one can only wonder what would have happen if the U.S. had never gotten involved in the affairs of the Afghan Soviet supported government in the late seventies and eighties. Would al-Qaida ever got off the ground? Would the clash of civilization between the U.S. and Islam be as intense? Would the 9/11 events never have occurred? Would the Cold War be over? And, would the Soviet Union still exist? This book will definitely make you think.

In this impressively detailed and exhaustively documented book, John K. Cooley gets to the roots of the international terrorist organizations that are striking fear and violence into the world’s populations. Beginning with surprising revelations about U.S. and Soviet actions in Afghanistan during the Cold War, Cooley traces the origins of today’s terror back to the West’s strategy of creating an army of fanatical Muslim warriors to mire the USSR in its own Vietnam. While that plan was successful, it gave birth to the terrorist violence we face today, and Cooley deftly explains how. (...) strongly recommend this book to all readers for the historic context lacking in mainstream media coverage of the war on terrorism.

Short and to the point:

The writing is often textbook-dry, the facts and details - many of which surely could have been moved to footnotes - sometimes so thick it's hard to keep track of the events the author is describing.

Read it anyway. The information is too important to let the stilted style stand in the way.