The Wars of Afghanistan

Starred review from May 16, 2011
Ambassador and special envoy to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, Tomsen combines scholarship, analysis, and personal experience in an encyclopedic if disturbing history of post-WWII Afghanistan. Tomsen addresses not only America's ignorance of Afghanistan's complex tribal networks but every previous foreign invader who made that error. America's unique blunder, according to Tomsen, has been outsourcing Afghan policy to Pakistan. At Pakistan's insistence, beginning with the 1979 Soviet invasion, the U.S. funneled aid to the mujahideen through Pakistan's military, which was dominated by radical Islamists. Afghanistan lapsed into lawless warlordism after the Soviet 1989 withdrawal. Then the brutal, Pakistan-supported Taliban took control in 1996. Pakistan, happy at receiving an avalanche of aid after 9/11, says Tomsen, stood by as American-supported rebels routed the Taliban, but resumed support of the Taliban when America turned its attention to Iraq. Tomsen explains how to fix things by "genuine Afghanization and de-Americanization." Most important, we must take back control of Afghan policy, stop praising Pakistan for its cooperation, stop pouring in unconditional military aid, and insist that Pakistan must help stabilize Afghanistan. Readers will appreciate his expert, if discouraging, insights and wonder how he would add to his analysis following Osama bin Laden's death. Maps.

May 15, 2011

Former special presidential envoy to Afghanistan takes the long view of the political failures in that country and suggests a more hands-off U.S. approach, especially in checking neighboring bully, Pakistan.

After a distinguished career in foreign service, Tomsen served as President George H.W. Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, during a time of building an Afghan consensus following the Soviet withdrawal. Here, the author fashions an ambitious, wide-ranging, informed historical overview as well as a detailed record of his work, and the American failures since. Afghanistan has geographically operated as a "buffer" state between powerful, marauding empires, such as those by Alexander the Great, the Mongols, Mughals and Persians, creating what Tomsen calls a "shatter zone," isolating the nomadic tribes from global currents. Later, the British empire used the country for criss-crossing rather than colonizing, and Afghanistan remained factiously independent and resistant to repeated imperialist onslaughts. The author examines the Afghan tribal and religious makeup, especially the friction between Pashtunwali ("the way of the Pashtun," the dominant tribal group) and Sharia law, factors that have been misunderstood by foreign governments to their own peril. Tomsen jumps to the disastrous invasion by the Soviet Union in 1978, coinciding with the rise of a radical Wahhabi ideology in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan became the refuge of the Mujahidin, the "freedom fighters" largely supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia—and therein lay the problem, the author astutely asserts. The U.S. aid package to Pakistan's General Zia starting with the "Reagan Doctrine" of 1980 essentially funded an "unholy alliance" of Islamist extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the Taliban--all who have come back to haunt America in the wake of 9/11. Tomsen warns of the current dangers in continuing to "outsource" American Afghan policy to Pakistan, and instead sets forth a detailed, cogent plan involving tougher conditions to bolster a more autonomous Afghanistan.

Wise words from trial-and-error experience in the trenches.

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