Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan Hardcover – February 6, 2018

According to General Sir Frank Kitson, "Insurgents start with nothing but a cause and grow to strength, while the counter-insurgents start with everything but a cause and gradually decline in strength and grow to weakness" ("Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping"). That 1971-era aphorism has repeatedly been proven correct and the US "Coalition" effort in Afghanistan demonstrates its accuracy yet again. After nearly two decades and around 1 trillion dollars spent so far, a bloody and very tenuous equilibrium exists between Taliban insurgents and supporters of the Afghan government. The war from its inception to the present time is comprehensively researched and compellingly presented in Steve Coll's two books, "Ghost Wars" and "Directorate S". Unfortunately, with no end to the conflict in sight, a third volume may eventually be needed to update the story.

Despite the narrow focus implied by the title, "Directorate S" does not focus either exclusively nor primarily on that branch of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). The CIA was the focus of "Ghost Wars". The much more obscure Pakistani analogue, ISI Directorate S (charged - at least in part - with providing guidance, logistic, intelligence, material and occasionally directed support for Islamist insurgent/terrorist groups operating against Indian influence and Coalition forces in Afghanistan) has a background – but baleful - position in "Directorate S".

Coll's history begins where "Ghost Wars" left off, i.e., the conclusion of the 1979-1989 battle of Afghani and allied Islamist groups against the Soviet Union. The USSR was defeated by CIA and Saudi supported insurgents. This occurred despite “all out” efforts by a modern and generally ruthless military directed against a “ragtag” constellation of tribes lacking an air force, armored vehicles and other accouterments possessed by the Red Army. The Soviet defeat ought to have been an object lesson for successors, but it wasn’t.

Of course, the inevitability of dramatic and overwhelming US action against al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts after September 11 was obvious and perhaps justifiable at the time. What wasn’t thought out though was the consequence of military action, that being a long-term and interminable involvement in a conflict that would result in (at the very best) a costly and unsustainable stalemate. Pham Van Dong, (North Vietnamese premier and Ho Chi Minh’s close aide and successor) presciently commented to French war historian Bernard Fall in 1962, “Americans do not like long, inconclusive wars—and this is going to be a long, inconclusive war" and that was 3 years before we ramped up involvement.

If, as Henry Kissinger remarked, "The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins" (Washington Post, March, 2014), we've failed utterly and completely in Afghanistan. As even a casual reading of counterinsurgency literature shows, the prospect of prevailing against an insurgency in territory adjoining a supportive state approximates zero. A quick glance at a map shows such a state (Pakistan) and a cursory glance at any news source reported since about 1947 gives insight into the ineradicable antagonism (religious, geostrategic) between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Afghanistan isn't known as "The Graveyard of Empires" for nothing. The debacles outsiders suffered there are well known and the stuff of legends and fiction. Consider George MacDonald Fraser's anti-hero Harry Paget Flashman's adventures in the First Anglo-Afghan War. While our military leadership isn't as inept as that of Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone (whose disastrous retreat from Kabul harkens to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow) and we've yet to suffer other ignominies of First Anglo-Afghan War such as the Last Stand at the Battle of Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad, we aren't winning, either.

“Directorate S” details all the problems associated with porous borders, semi-autonomous (i.e., largely ungoverned) tribal regions, endemic corruption of historical proportions (the Karzai government), warlords, weak central government lacking legitimacy (parallels between Karzai and Diem in Vietnam come to mind?), opium, factionalism (in the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan), conflicting priorities (the Petraeus school v the Abizaid approach), lack of a coordinated strategy (CIA v. DEA v. JSOC, etc., etc), heavy-handed tactics (drone strikes killing civilians), the always inimical influence of religion (especially militant Islam) and competing/conflicting interests of India, Pakistan, Iran. A particularly ill-advised decision was made with the US invasion of Iraq.

The real irony of our involvement in Afghanistan is this: “Pakistan is 50 times more important than Afghanistan for the United States”, a candid remark made directly to President Hamid Karzi in the Arg Palace by Vice President Joe Biden. Karzai had repeatedly warned of ISI/Directorate S involvement in his country and the Americans were already well aware of it. We knew that ISI was directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of many Americans and the Taliban likely wouldn’t be effective absent Pakistan’s support. In short, we knew we were facing rats in Pakistan’s ISI: “Pakrats” and there was precious little we could do about it.

Sooner or later, the “endless money that forms the sinews of war” (per Cicero) from the US and Coalition forces will end. The casualties will exhaust us. We will leave. Whether India will allow Pakistani suzerainty in Afghanistan is anybody’s guess. As Steve Coll so well demonstrates, a major contributor to whatever happens next is Directorate S, “Pakrats” indeed and in fact.

This is a serious scholarly study of two national complexities supported with 37 pages of footnotes in tiny print.

Overall, it's not an easy read. But conversely it's virtually pointless to try to understand regional conflicts without a close read. Studying Directorate S will not make one an overnight expert, but it will teach one to avoid others who claim to be without years of specialized training and on-site experience. Perhaps the strongest message is that no outsider can appreciate the complexities of ancient and modern tribal, ethnic, cultural, and religious rivalries, beyond a few with high security clearances and impeccable integrity.

Coll doesn't do much undocumented editorializing, except for his contempt for how we stumbled into a war we could not win nor a peace we couldn't impose.

"No small part of N.A.T.O.'s failure to stabilize Afghanistan flowed from the disasterous decision by George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003. The war inflamed and mobilized deeper resistance to American counterterrorism policy and warfare in the Muslim world." (pg 664)

Those seeking context--who have seen the elephant or seek more understanding of this old expression--should turn first to Chapter 26, Lives and Limbs. The book may be mostly political, but there's a human side too, described indelibly on a human scale. Best I've ever read.

Steven Coll, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism vividly describes our involvement on Afghanistan from 2000 until the beginning of the Trump Presidency. The beauty of Coll’s work is his clear analysis of the various factions of the CIA, the Military and the State Department, showing how their interpretations of events in Afghanistan affected the course of the war. The journalist demonstrates his in-depth knowledge of the ethnic divisions in the country and how they play out with class and economic disparity. He introduces the Taliban players in the Afghan War chronologically, builds up suspense as he describes what US decision makers favored a military rout out and who wanted a peaceful negotiation with tribal Islamists. We learn who the characters are who represent the north or south of Afghanistan, who trusts Pakistan and who view the Pakistani Secret Service as the source of Al Qaeda operatives who filter down into Kandahar to plant IED’s. The known events like 9/11, Holbrook’s sudden death, or the perceived success of General Petraeus’ successful ‘Surge’ act as pillars of pivotal changes. Finally Coll summarizes the the 16 years of war and hypothesizing on why we are still fighting this war, sixteen years later.