Book Review: Descent Into Chaos

(A short and tweaked book review of Ahmed Rashid's brilliant book which first appeared in What's Hot, the Times of India's friday tabloid.)

After Taliban, veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid writes a comprehensive tome on the war on terror and its impact on South and Central Asian countries.  Descent into Chaos analyses every aspect of the war in totality; the circumstances, the individuals involved, the impact it would have and most importantly, its failure to curb Islamic extremism. To say that the book is an eye-opener is a mere understatement. Rashid provides a blow-by-blow account of how America used the war to buy and bully its way into Afghanistan. Central Asian countries were granted billions of dollars in aid in exchange for their air bases. Pakistan was threatened with international isolation. NATO, the United Nations and the European Union were completely sidelined. And the 'neocons' and CIA sidelined their own State Department to dictate foreign policy. The message was clear; America was going it alone. So obsessed were Bush and his men about the war, that they weren't even interested in restoring democracy in the country (Apparently, nation building was not on Defense Secy. Rumsfeld's "agenda"). And when they realised that bin Laden was out of their reach, they looked towards Iraq. Ultimately, it was a lost cause and the only people who benefitted were the original targets; the Taliban and bin Laden. Overall, Descent into Chaos is a rivetting tome, which questions the need for such a war and provides an in-indepth perspective on the 'black hole' of the world: Afghanistan