The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan

by Lucy Morgan Edwards (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0956844903

ISBN-10: 0956844901

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October 7, 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the Afghan war, and this explosive book exposes how the West lost it's chance to rout the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan.

In late 2001, a group of Afghan tribal leaders met to plan how to topple the Taliban. Within weeks, the plan was in tatters, thwarted by the West and its leader, Abdul Haq, assassinated by the Taliban. Lucy Morgan Edwards's investigation into Haq's tragic mission led her to Taliban Ministers, warlords, spies, and two American Republican brothers who financed Haq's venture.

Based on the author's own experience of the war in Afghanistan, this book reveals how a solution to the war was lost and why it matters today.

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Editorial Reviews

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“Edwards' perspective is shaped by her experience living in Afghanistan for the better part of six years as an aid worker during the height of the Taliban regime, an election monitor, a political adviser to the EU Ambassador in Kabul and as a freelance journalist. Some of the most captivating scenes in her book come from the months she spent living in Eastern Afghanistan with Abdul Haq's well-respected family -- the Arsalas -- a khan khel (chief clan) within the Ahmadzai tribe of the Ghilzai Pashtuns. There she receives a real world education on Afghanistan's resilient tribal structure, which the Western alliance has tried to replace with ‘modern’ governing models.” -- Michael Hughes, Huffington Post

"An important and revealing book. Lucy Morgan Edwards has written a rich and compelling account of how Abdul Haq might have saved Afghanistan – and what the West can still learn from his singular vision of a post-Taliban nation." - David Zucchino, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, The Los Angeles Times

"This insightful, animated volume ... draws on previously unpublished, uniquely qualified Afghan and foreign sources to tell the story of Abdul Haq’s tragic death, the legacy he has left behind, and its applicability to the present and to the future." - Peter Tomsen, author of The Wars of Afghanistan and former US Ambassador to the Afghan resistance, 1989-92

"A deeply-reported, well-argued and deftly-written account of the opportunities not taken ... based on the author's own deep knowledge of Afghanistan." – Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War: The Enduring War Between America and Al Qaeda

"I was in direct contact with Abdul Haq in the days immediately following 9/11. His tragic story is a microcosm of where we have gone wrong in Afghanistan." – Lord Paddy Ashdown, Liberal Democrat leader 1988 - 1999

"Vital reading for everyone who truly wants to understand this tragic conflict." – Peter Oborne, Political Editor, Daily Telegraph

"A devastating indictment of the intelligence and strategic failures that have led us into the current tragedy in Afghanistan." – William Pfaff

"By far the best account of Afghanistan during the period that I have read. It combines the pace of a page-gripping thriller with the insights of a piece of travel writing and political journalism at their best." – Conor Foley, author of The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism went to War

"Whatever might have been achieved against al-Qaida with minimal force in 2001 – on which I recommend Lucy Morgan Edwards' book The Afghan Solution – is past history." - Simon Jenkins in The Guardian

About the Author

Lucy Morgan Edwards is a former Political Advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul with responsibility for civil military affairs, narcotics and security sector reform. During her seven years in the region she worked for the UN in Kandahar at the height of the Taliban regime (supervising community and urban water supply projects), was an election monitor and a correspondent for the Economist and Daily Telegraph and the initial researcher for the International Crisis Group on Transitional Justice Issues. She also spent many months in Jalalabad, Eastern Afghanistan, with a leading tribal family (that of Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadir), whereby she developed an insight into the post-9/11 political situation in the dis-enfranchised Pashtun areas of the East. Her final job was Country Expert to the EU Monitors of the 2005 Afghan Parliamentary Elections. She has written several academic papers on the post-9/11 Afghan intervention and state-building process, including "State-building in Afghanistan - a case showing the Limits?" for the International Review of the Red Cross special issue on "Conflict in Afghanistan" and "Defence, Diplomacy and Development - '3D': Rhetoric or reality?" for the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. She is author of The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan,and shehas presented papers on Afghanistan at Chatham House,the Royal Society of Asia Affairs, and the Frontline club in London. She currently lives in Geneva.

Product details

Publisher : Pluto Press (October 15, 2011)
Language : English
Hardcover : 368 pages
ISBN-10 : 0956844901
ISBN-13 : 978-0956844903
Item Weight : 1.76 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 10 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,030,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,192 in Afghan War Military History
- #2,249 in Middle Eastern History (Books)
- #3,628 in Intelligence & Espionage History

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M. Kelsey

An important book

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2014

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Ms Morgan makes the (well-documented) case that an Afghan man, Abdul Haq, had the means to bring down the Taliban gov't in Kabul had he been given the support he needed from the US gov't. We'll never know because the moment has passed and Mr. Haq was assassinated, but this book outlines the situation of that time in fascinating detail. The Afghan Solution is important, whether or not you believe that Abdul Haq could have brought the Taliban down or not, because it gives a credible alternative narrative to the story that the US attack of Afghanistan was necessary to bring down the Taliban, liberate women and deprive Al Queda of a staging ground.

2 people found this helpful

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Stephen Galvin

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2018

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Good thank you

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Greg Waggett

A screw-up before the first bomb was dropped - and here's the evidence

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2011

The British and American secret services won't like this book - if anyone in those two agencies cares to read it. Given their apparent ignorance and obduracy over how they went about their business in Afghanistan after 9/11, I suppose it is unlikely. A pity. Key executives of the FCO should read it. So should those in the US Department of State. Actually, they should read it twice.

Written by a woman of considerable courage who has travelled extensively through one of the most dangerous countries in the world to collect information on the lead-up to the prosecution of the war in its early days, this book is a shocking exposé of how MI6 and the CIA evaluated intelligence material - of which there was less of a shortage than might be imagined. The consequences are there for everyone to see today.

One of the reasons that I was drawn to the book is because I know Afghanistan a bit and I know two of the characters mentioned, one a British former cameraman during the Soviet occupation, and the other an Afghan friend who introduced me to Ahmad Shah Massoud's family in the Panjshir Valley.

The central character, Abdul Haq, was probably the greatest strategist the Afghan mujahideen campaign produced. He also comes across as civilized, a modest patriot and a nationalist who was far more concerned with the country as a whole rather than narrow factional interests. His integrity, expertise in asymmetrical warfare during the Soviet occupation, even-handedness, and encyclopedic knowledge of the personalities and dynamics, however, did little to convince the British and Americans. It seems that they preferred shallow, shiny, glib people of spurious charisma who spoke good English. In essence, Haq's case was that in 2001 support for the Taliban was getting shakier by the day. The majority of senior Talib commanders, some who had fought the Russians, were ready to throw their lot in with him. All he needed was a month at most. But the retaliatory bombing against al Qaeda bases proposed by the Americans after the twin-towers atrocity threatened to throw the process out of kilter by re-kindling support for the Taliban. Despite impressive backing, Haq's pleas were ignored at the highest level in the US because of subjectivity and muddled thinking. Emotions after 9/11 were running amok, too. And the British government toed the line. Very foolish of them. The bombing went ahead.

Frantic to rescue the situation from this precipitate response, Abdul Haq, his position now precarious, rushed back to Afghanistan and was captured in the mountains by a hostile Taliban patrol. He was then shot virtually out of hand, a tragic loss to his country and a miserable death for a man of such stature whose wife and son had already been murdered through the fiendish scheming of the Pakistan secret service, the machiavellian ISI.

The first third of the book paints the scene vividly and draws together a mix of threads so as to make a complex story comprehensible. Not an easy task. It is the next part of the book that holds the reader glued to the pages. The author interviews James Ritchie, one of two American brothers who had been brought up in Afghanistan and then made a fortune on the money markets in America. An irascible philanthropist, James Ritchie then devoted himself to Haq's cause. In so doing he had access to the CIA and senior figures in the American administration - including Bud McFarlane, former US national security advisor under President Reagan. The details of the interview left me aghast.

Then she interviews Sir John Gunston, a baronet, formerly Irish Guards, and erstwhile photojournalist in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation. He also had access to high-level British and Afghan politicians, and SIS operatives. Like James Ritchie, Sir John was another stalwart who took up Haq's cause with a combination of energy and desperation. Their meeting took place in the Special Forces Club in London and what he told her was both riveting and appalling. Moreover, he mentioned that the British and Americans seemed hell-bent on doing precisely the opposite of what was being implored. One of the more insidious effects was the rapid expansion of warlordism which has created further distortion for society in some parts of the country.

Another account that beggars belief is how the poppy eradication program was handled with risible naivety. It made not a cent's worth of difference to the production of opium and nearly all the money ($70,000,000) went into the coffers of one warlord who was linked to the ISI and absconded to Pakistan with his booty. The cash was meant to be compensation for the farmers who had been persuaded to destroy their poppy crops. When it wasn't forthcoming they naturally were furious with the doubtless well-intentioned British NGO administering the scheme. Who hires these people who have probably got more degrees than you can shake a stick at?

The final third of the book deals with various events and the implications of Haq's plan had it been implemented. The author holds that much of the detail of his plan which reflects eminent good sense remains of incalculable value if only it can be studied and applied properly. I hope she is right because these splendid people, many of whom live unrelentingly hard lives, badly need fortune to favor them and their country is owed a rebalancing to counter a dreadful catalogue of errors by those powers whose democracies now seem to care little.

Abdul Haq's Afghan solution looked like it was the best one. But we screwed up. Again. It cost him his life. And many more.

If you are interested in what is going on in Afghanistan, I suggest that this is an important book - however much you may already know.

As an aside, I daresay this excellent book would make a very good film.

2 people found this helpful

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William H. Bache

The blind leading the blind - Britain joins America in Afghanistan

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2011

The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan shines light on people and events relating to the ongoing fiasco of Western military intervention in Afghanistan. How British and American hubris blinded intelligence officials and politicians to go for a quick fix blended military (Afghan mercenaries, CIA teams, Special Forces and B-52s) victory over the Taliban in revenge for the 9/11 attacks is of great historical interest.

Western intelligence personnel appeared not to understand the internal dynamics of the Taliban alliance and opposition, probably because they were isolated in Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war and had been conditioned to the Pakistani ISI world view for two decades.

The Taliban alliance was fragile and ripe for defections to Abdul Haq in 2001, a genuine indigenous leader that could have rallied a broad cross spectrum of Afghan groups to overthrow the Taliban without Western intervention. The Bush Administration ignored the opportunity for an internal Afghan solution to the Taliban problem.

Edwards shows how they instead went for a quick and cheap victory over the Taliban and Al Qaeda by buying an alliance with Tajik and Uzbek war lords. The subsequent ten years of occupation by the USA and NATO tells us that it was not a quick and cheap victory.

Edwards points to a formative event in June 2002, when the American Ambassador Zulmay Khalilzad facilitated `war lords' such as Fahim and Dostum, considered by many Afghans to be `war criminals' for their destructive role in the post Najibullah government civil war, to the front rows of the Loyal Jirga. They symbolically were placed in front of the leaders of the people who had come to express their desire for a peaceful and just post-Taliban nation.

The people didn't matter; the Americans wanted the War Lords to provide security on the cheap. They were given control of the NDS - the secret police, the Afghan Army and Police with U.S. training and assistance. It was an economy of force operation for President Bush who had already decided he would attack Iraq and needed to reposition US assets for the coming invasion.

Supporting the War Lords was considered a cheap way to rule Afghanistan. Just give them control over the security services and some money and guns. Expect them to help Special Forces hunt down Al Qaida remnants. Ignore their drug running, corruption, incompetence and abuse of the people.

The failure to work with Abdul Haq, a man who could have rallied the Pashtuns and other ethnic groups, left the Anglo-American effort with very little indigenous support in the southern and eastern sections of Afghanistan. The CIA had to buy friends, such as President Karzai's infamous power broker brother in Kandahar who not only was their asset, but a drug lord, security services contractor for ISAF and head of the Provincial Advisory Council.

Many of us, who have worked in Afghanistan, are frustrated with the collective failure of our governments to understand the critical need for Afghan tribal leaders and people to decide their own future. Anglo-American efforts in Afghanistan never had a serious chance to support justice, good governance, and security sector reform because of the early decisions to forcefully intervene instead of relying on Afghan solutions to Afghan problems.

Edwards illuminates a dark and sad period in Anglo-American cooperation. Politicians, diplomats, national security policy people, academics, students, soldiers and spooks all need to read the book for insights on how to allow the Afghans to resolve their own problems and never again make similar ignorant mistakes.

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Bashir Sakhawarz

The Truth

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2012

The author in this book has shown in depth knowledge of Afghanistan, its local politics and international politics affecting Afghanistan. The book is very specific referring to places and characters that the author personally had been and associated with. The book once more draws attention to the fact that beside the big players such as the West and the UN, the Afghans were also looking for a way to end years of conflict. Perhaps if the Afghans themselves succeeded to come to some kind of resolution, Afghanistan would have been peaceful today. The book is not a result of a quick research and it shows that the author has spent many years in unsafe Afghanistan to write a book which tell us the truth.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

velema

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

Excellent book

William Podmore

Over-optimistic view of the war in Afghanistan

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2015

Verified Purchase

Lucy Edwards worked in Afghanistan from 2000 to 2006 as a journalist, aid worker and EU diplomat. She was a guest of the Haq family for much of this time, and has written an account of Abdul Haq’s career.

Haq was an anti-Soviet tribal landlord and warlord. He was a leader in the war of the 1980s against the only progressive government Afghanistan has ever had. In 1986 he led a delegation of Afghans to meet a very supportive Margaret Thatcher.

In the 1990s, Haq aspired to lead Afghanistan. He was backed by two US Republican brothers, who were Chicago options traders, by the former head of Britain’s Special Boat Service, by Lord Ashdown and by elements in the CIA and MI6. The Taliban killed Haq in October 2001. Edwards laments his loss and claims that his death ended any chance of peace in Afghanistan.

Blair backed the US-led war against Afghanistan, despite Haq’s warning that an attack would only halt the ousting of the Taliban. Haq was wrong on that.

After the Taliban had been kicked out, Blair then insisted that the troops stay to rebuild the country. Edwards clearly shares Blair’s illusion that the West could rebuild countries that his wars had shattered. As a result of Blair’s policy, NATO was ‘committing itself to an unwinnable war in Afghanistan and assisting the wider region to become a crucible of fundamentalist chaos’.

The US-British war was indeed not winnable even when there were 200,000 coalition troops and 100,000 ‘military contractors’ – mercenaries - in Afghanistan. The US-British intervention relied on warlords and bombing. What is this if not terrorism?

NGOs and private security companies worked hand in glove with the NATO forces. This militarisation of aid identified development with foreign aggression.

The US-British intervention backed the warlords against the Taliban and therefore built up anti-democratic fundamentalist groups. But to take sides in another country’s civil war generally, to arm one faction against another, was no solution. Far from imposing democracy, the NATO aggression has imposed one armed faction, the corrupt Karzai regime, to rule over all. The EU’s Chief Election Observer Emma Bonino deemed the 2005 elections ‘free and fair’ despite all the evidence of intimidation of candidates, of vote rigging on the day and of fraud in the count.

Likewise, in Somalia, the US backed Somalia’s traditional enemy Ethiopia to attack Somalia to oust the ‘Union of Islamic Courts’. The result? A far more fundamentalist regime, al Shahab, which gives al Qaeda a safe haven.

Edwards claims that Western hubris lost Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is not ‘ours’ to win or lose. She is promoting the myth that there was a different solution that the West could and should have backed, that there is a viable way for NATO to interfere to build a state that would serve the West’s interests.

But in the real world, state-building by outside forces is illegal, immoral and futile. Imperial nation-building is a contradiction in terms. Empires destroy, not build, nations.

2 people found this helpful

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The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan

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