Afghanistan: How the West Lost Its Way

Feckless nation building snatched defeat from the jaws of a resounding military victory, argues this mordant retrospective of the 10-year conflict in Afghanistan. War historians Bird (King's College, London) and Marshall (University of Glasgow) focus on a lack of strategy: from the start of the invasion in 2001, the American government and its NATO allies had no clear idea of their goals in Afghanistan beyond skimping on soldiers and money. The result, the authors note, is a chronically undermanned occupation force unable to secure the countryside and overreliant on airstrikes that regularly kill civilians; trifling aid packages that leave Afghanistan's basic needs unmet; a lazy policy of backing both a corrupt central government and despotic rural warlords; an unpopular counternarcotics program that has failed to stem the booming heroin economy; and a resurgent Taliban due to inept Western counterinsurgency initiatives not improved by Obama's appointment of General McChrystal. None of these criticisms are new, but the authors integrate them into a telling panorama of clueless policy making. (In one vignette, British development experts reach out to baffled desert tribesmen with a nature documentary on whales.) Although they don't quite pinpoint the right strategy for Afghanistan, the authors present a lucid, devastating critique of the road taken. Photos. (June)