Book Review, 24 July 2008
Reviewed by Simon Scott Plummer

Flourishing conditions for terror

Descent into Chaos: how the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid
Allen Lane, £25
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 Tel 01420 592974

The partition of India in 1947 created a Muslim state in awe of its giant, multiconfessional neighbour. Three wars since then, the last resulting in the loss of its eastern wing, have deepened Pakistan's sense of insecurity. To counter Indian influence, it turned east to Asia's other great power, China, which helped it acquire a nuclear arsenal. American backing for the mujahideen after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 gave it new leverage to the north. The goal of General Zia ul-Haq was to install a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul and from there proceed to islamicise central Asia, thus providing strategic depth in the confrontation with India. That policy has been maintained by subsequent governments, or rather by the military and intelligence community whose prerogative it is.

The result has been to turn Pakistan into what has been termed "the epicentre of global instability". The state is threatened by the Islamic extremism which it has nurtured for decades north of the border. The uneasy stalemate with India over Kashmir persists. And the survival of Hamid Karzai's regime in Kabul is threatened by a Taliban resurgence which prevents reconstruction and by the corrupting effect of rampant opium trafficking. The partition of India has proved the most lethal legacy of the British Empire.

To chart how Pakistan came to this pass, there could no better guide than Ahmed Rashid. Based in Lahore, he has for long reported on the region covered by Descent into Chaos for newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and The Washington Post. In 2000 he published a best-selling book on the Taliban. But he has also been an actor in the events he describes, offering counsel to Karzai and members of the Bush administration and, in a more formal capacity, being part of a working group which advised Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan. Rashid has lived through the events he describes and that gives weight to what he has to say. I am thinking in particular of his bursting into tears at the sight of people patiently queuing to vote in the Afghan presidential election of 2004. "After 25 years of covering the bloodshed and chaos of Afghanistan's wars, it was the most moving and memorable day of my life," he writes. "I felt as if a vast black blanket of despair that had covered the country and the people had suddenly been lifted and sunlight was pouring through."

The title of his latest book is a measure of how those hopes have been dashed. The principal actors in that tragedy have been President Pervez Musharraf and his security services, members of Nato, President Karzai and the combined forces of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Rashid portrays Musharraf as a duplicitous character who presents a bluff, moderate face to the outside world but, in his sympathy for militants in Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan, is in fact deeply reactionary. His dictatorship boosted the electoral fortunes of the Islamic parties, whose success in the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan facilitated the revival of the Taliban and al-Qaida. The notorious Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), over which Musharraf presides, has promoted the revival of the Taliban by supplying them with arms and money, and granting asylum to their leaders, whether in the province of Balochistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); the latter have succeeded Iraq as the headquarters of global Islamic terrorism. These bolt-holes make well-nigh impossible the attempt by Nato to pacify the southern provinces so that reconstruction can take place.

The alliance itself, and notably its most powerful member, the United States, has made grave mistakes. The goal of the invasion in 2001, to oust the Taliban government with the help of the Northern Alliance, was soon accomplished. But, as in Iraq two years later, military success was not complemented by a coherent, long-term plan for the creation of a stable, democratic state. In their preoccupation with Saddam Hussein, the Americans took their eyes off Afghanistan, where, in the vacuum created by the fall of a savagely repressive regime, no one figure had the authority to impose his will on the country. Indeed, Washington compounded the problem by supporting the warlords, thus undermining Karzai's democratic mandate.

The Afghan president is the most sympathetic member of Rashid's cast. His return to fight the Taliban was courageous, and he comes over as a decent man trying in extraordinarily difficult circumstances to hold Afghanistan together. Rashid is less indulgent, however. He takes Karzai to task for a tendency to dither, tolerance of warlords and a refusal to form a political party which could transcend the old tribal alliances.

Nearly seven years after the invasion of Afghanistan, Nato finds itself fighting an unwinnable campaign which is threatening its very existence. Pakistan may have resuscitated the Taliban, its favourite lever against Indian influence north of the border, but that has not stopped New Delhi from investing more than US$750 million in the country. Much more serious for Islamabad, the ISI's nurturing of the Afghan Taliban has created a home-grown version of the movement which is now threatening the Pakistani state. The revival of extremism has supplied the water in which the al-Qaida fish can again swim, joined by other jihadis from central Asia, where corrupt, authoritarian rule is fostering Islamic militancy.

The key to reversing what Rashid describes as a descent into chaos lies in peace between India and Pakistan. The author acknowledges this without going into details of how it might come about. As a journalist rather than policymaker, he sees his task as tracing what has gone wrong in the past seven years, in the hope that this knowledge will help to put it right. In this, given the dangerous country in which he lives, he has shown considerable courage.

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