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The story of Massoud — “Ahmed Shah, Badshah”, as his men called him when he marched them into Kabul in April 1992 — is actually the counterpoint to the main theme of this excellent book by Roy Gutman, a journalist specialising in “small wars”, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reportage on the Balkan conflict. Gutman’s central argument is that by the spring of 1999 Al Qaeda had hijacked Afghanistan; that, in effect, Osama bin Laden, had become the “terrorist sponsor of a state.” Country experts in the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency were aware at the time that this strategic shift had occurred. But their assessments never impacted with sufficient force on the awareness of those occupying higher posts in the administration, Congress or the media. Gutman has put in enormous effort to retrieve a story that was missed in real time. In the process he also provides an explanation of how it came to be missed.

Gutman argues convincingly that the fundamental defect in the U.S approach to Afghanistan in the years immediately preceding 9/11 was its penchant to see Al Qaeda and the Taliban as two distinct entities. Four months after bin Laden landed in Afghanistan to set up his base in May 1996, he declared jihad against the U.S. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. In October 2000, another cell carried out a suicide bombing attack on the destroyer USS Cole. Over all this time — the period when Bill Clinton was President — such diplomatic effort as the U.S. did expend was devoted towards persuading the Taliban to extradite bin Laden and his closest associates.

Even as Washington was issuing demarche after useless demarche, bin Laden was worming himself deeper into the confidence of the Taliban and its giant, illiterate, one-eyed village cleric leader Mullah Omar. The Al Qaeda leader had initially got into the good books of the so-called “Commander of the Faithful” by despatching his better trained Arab and Chechen Al Qaeda men to fight alongside the Taliban’s army of novices against Massoud, Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan. Deluded by bin Laden’s promise to make him the head of a new Caliphate that would stretch from Central Asia westwards, Mullah Omar allowed Al Qaeda to become the ideological overseer of the Taliban regime. That Afghanistan in this period became the haven for Islamic militants from all over the world is widely known now. What is less known but is brought out by this book is the extent to which the Al Qaeda-linked Arabs had become the economic power and the cultural overlords in Kabul. Apparently, even some of the Afghan leaders of the theocratic regime were appalled when Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas at the instigation of the Arabs.

Gutman’s focus, understandably enough, is on the failures of all branches of the U.S. government and the punditocracy in that country to recognise the emergence and growth of this malevolent force. But the book also reflects a strong awareness of the contribution to evil made by Pakistan’s military, especially the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). As is often the case with the work of the ISI, proof is hard to come by. But evidence is relevant only to a court of law. Diplomats and strategists are supposed to decide and act on the basis of their reading of subtle trends. Policy-makers in the U.S. failed to fulfil this responsibility. This was partly due to the fact that Afghanistan was too remote a country to attract much attention when there were other compelling issues in the Balkans and West Asia. However, Gutman makes no bones about the fact that this wilful blindness was also attributable to the U.S. habit of outsourcing Afghan policy to Islamabad. Among the many who must take the blame for this practice, Robin Raphael (Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, 1993-96) is probably the foremost.

The one drawback in Gutman’s book is that he appears to have sourced almost the entirety of his material from Afghan, American and Pakistani dramatis personae. This is difficult to understand because there is a speculative “what if” that threads its way right through the book. Could the Taliban/Al Qaeda combine been crushed at birth or throttled once it grew to menacing proportions if a strong ally had come to the aid of Massoud? Three countries actually did — Iran, Russia and India. The author would surely have benefited if he had spoken to a few Indians who were involved — one Ambassador and two military attaches who opened the connection with Massoud, and another diplomat who made an intrepid journey to revive the links after the Commander was driven out of Kabul, are a few who readily come to mind.

Meanwhile, as far as this reviewer knows, the definitive book on the Lion of the Panjshir has yet to be written. Unless one of the Frenchmen who were great admirers of Massoud has already done this, it is time for Anthony Davis to step forward.

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