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    Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
    Unavailable
    Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
    Unavailable
    Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
    Audiobook19 hours

    Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

    Written by Ahmed Rashid

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Ahmed Rashid is the voice of reason amid the chaos of Central Asia today. His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate. In Descent Into Chaos, Rashid reviews the regional conditions since 9/11 and the catastrophic aftermath of America's failed war on terror. The underlying theme is clear, devastating and deeply critical of current U.S. foreign policy. Iraq is essentially a sideshow. Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the war really began. Pakistan remains the crucial resource and key player, and Afghanistan is where the fight against Islamic insurgency is eventually going to be played out.

    Rashid also brings into clear focus the regional issues of Central Asia that few in our country seem to understand and yet are having a crucial impact on our own security and conduct. Seven years after 9/11, despite the thousands of lives and billions of dollars that have been spent in the region, it is in chaos. Pakistan, unstable and armed with nuclear weapons, has become terrorism central. The Taliban is resurging and reconquering land, and al Qaeda is stronger than ever. And at the heart of these calamities is the United States' refusal to accept its responsibility for statecraft and nation building and its utter failure to understand the region. Rashid's blistering critique of American policy is also a warning and an impassioned call to correct our failed strategies. There is no more urgent global task.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 3, 2008
    ISBN9781423368106
    Unavailable
    Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

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    Reviews for Descent into Chaos

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Required reading for anyone who wishes to have an informed opinion on the Afghan war.Rashid's earlier book on the Taliban was a real bolt from the blue. _Taliban_ did more than any other book to dispel the mystery around the movement and make it clear who they were and are.In this book he is more concerned with events that have been transpiring in plain sight, so to speak, so it does not quite have the same oomph. But it is a comprehensive and trustworthy guide to the complexities of the Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship from which has come so much of the present struggle.Rashid is forthright about his friendship with Hamid Karzai, a relationship that does not seem to keep him from levelling the odd criticism. I think it fair to say that this insider status has expanded rather than limited this book's perspective.
    • 5/5
      An excellent books, as are all of Rashid's works, I read it in two days and found it rich with detail and useful information about the region, personalities from the region and decisions made by all the players.
    • 4/5
      An important book - the first to document the "war on terror", its successes (or in this case its failures) in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Rashid chronicles, this area was woefully neglected at the expense of the Bush administration's Iraq adventure and this neglect is now coming back to haunt the world.Rashid spares few in this work. There's plenty of blame to be apportioned. Of particular interest is the hash that the Musharraf regime made of its Taliban/Jihadi policy, trying to carry out a balancing act of cracking down on Al-Qaeda while supporting the Taliban and the Pakistani military's hand-reared Jihadi groups - a policy that blew up (pardon the macabre pun) in the military regime's faces in 2006-07.Ahmed Rashid has been one of the foremost commentators on the Taliban for years. I find this an informative and important work, but at the same time somewhat limited. He is a good reporter, but as an analyst he sometimes doesn't seem to follow things through. For example he views the removal of Musharraf and the introduction of a democratic government as a key step in combating militant Islamism in Pakistan-Afghanistan. But he doesn't delve into the mechanics of how this would happen, particularly when, as he himself chronicles, the military establishment's involvement with Jihadi groups is so entrenched.Furthermore he repeatedly stresses the need for Hamid Karzai to side with the reformers in the Afghan government against the warlords, but I suspect the division of reformer/warlord is not as clear-cut as he makes it out to be.Despite these, and other misgivings, this is the best book on this particular subject matter out there and needs to be widely read and its contents and conclusions thoroughly debated.