The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

90 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Still Ours to Lose e Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 Carlotta Gall, Houghton Mi in, 2014 $28.00/hardcover; $9.24/Kindle, 329 pages. R K M Among the plethora of books coming out on Afghanistan, Carlotta Gall’s stands out for two reasons. First is the length of time she has put into covering the story—starting just after 9/11 as a full-time New York Times journalist, but also in some ways going back another generation. Her father, Sandy, published Afghanistan—Travels with the Mujahideen in 1988 and gives credit “to my daughter Carlotta, who processed the words.” Carlotta’s under- standing of Afghanistan spans the better part of three decades, and she has stayed with the story while others have moved on, developing a true a ection and respect for the Afghan people while com- ing to terms with their contradictions and aws. Second is her emphasis on Pakistan. e book’s central thesis comes from a conversation with the late Ambas- sador Richard Holbrooke, who coined the phrase that is its title: “We may be ghting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.” Gall is not alone in stressing this point. Ambassador James Dobbins wrote in 2008 that unless Pakistan can be per- suaded to stand down from its militant meddling in Afghan a airs “there is little likelihood that Afghanistan will ever be capable of securing its own territory,” and Bing West covered similar ground in e Wrong War: Grit, Strategy and the Way Out of Afghanistan . Gall, however, uses her uncanny Gall’s understanding of Afghanistan spans the better part of three decades, and she has stayed with the story while others have moved on. BOOKS access to follow the story in detail back and forth across the border, making explicit the linkages that others have merely extrapolated. She appears to have spent almost as much time in Pakistan as Afghanistan, citing in very comprehen- sive detail how Islamabad has for decades sup- ported militant proxies in Afghanistan and India to keep its enemies o balance. is is the government, she writes, “that famously formed seven di erent Afghan mujahedeen parties to ght the Soviet Union, so that none dominated the resistance.” She delves into Pakistani politics with sensitivity and depth, outlining the trag- edy of missed opportunities to develop a true civilian government, capably led, and how the default of support for Islamic militancy played out, with frequent negative blowback for Pakistan itself. She writes of the sanctuary in the tribal areas, and how the Taliban recruited and pushed hundreds of young men to their deaths in Afghanistan while its leaders directed their a airs from vil- las in Peshawar. Gall doesn’t spare the coalition’s many missteps, reporting in painful detail the civilian casualties; the under- funding of the operation and the diver- sion of resources to Iraq; the cultural misunderstandings and miscommunica- tions; the support for the new Afghan army (late) without a parallel build- ing of capacity in the civil service and police; and meddling in elections. She also points out the “lost opportunity” when, just after the stunning collapse of the Taliban government in 2001, “many Taliban members could have been persuaded to rejoin Afghan society if they had not been pursued and arrested.” She adds, “Some of their leaders could have been used to bring the bulk of the Tali- ban movement to a negotiated peace.” It was a heavy read, and as an Afghan veteran I was looking forward to the end. But then, after the truly depress- ing story (when considered against the backdrop of Pakistani complicity) of the demise of Osama bin Laden, Gall takes an unexpected turn. In the nal chapter, she relates how whole Afghan districts turned against the Taliban in the spring of 2013, starting in Panjwayi, the move- ment’s birthplace. e now-functioning Afghan secu- rity forces were anchoring the shift in attitude that had been sparked in large measure by Taliban excesses, and the government was nally starting to work. “I had always believed the Afghans in southern Afghanistan did not want the Taliban and one day would stand up against them,” Gall writes, describing a Taliban movement that, as a result of the