Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan 2001-
2016. By Steve Coll. London: Allen Lane. 2018. 784pp. £25.00. ISBN 978 1 84614 660
2. Available as e-book.
“Can someone remind me why we are in Afghanistan?” asked Condoleezza Rice, the US
Secretary of State, during her trip to London in February 2008. It was doubtless meant as a
rhetorical device to get the official discussions underway but it led to some contorted
explanations. It did not feel convincing.
Few books have left me feeling as uncomfortable as Steve Coll’s “Directorate S”. For this is
an account of lost opportunities. It is a “humbling case study of the limits of American
power” (p.666) but, more than this, it is a story of courage and dedication mixed with folly,
vanity, deceit and duplicity.
As someone involved in Afghanistan since 1993 I approached Coll’s weighty tome with
some scepticism. In the early chapters I noticed some errors of fact and a few notable
omissions (such as the escape of Taliban fighters from Kunduz in November 2001) but also
obscurity on sourcing. Too often the footnotes relate to undated interviews. I am also
suspicious of passages inside quotation marks based on participants’ recollections. It helps
give the book the buzz of a Tom Clancy novel but is ethically questionable.
However, as I progressed into the middle chapters, I recognised that Coll provides an
accurate and enthralling account of the Afghan imbroglio. In particular I recognised the
personalities of some of the key players such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the
Pakistani Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani. Furthermore Coll capably describes the extraordinary
complexity of the issues with which the US and its allies wrestled and, for the most part,
failed to solve.
The title “Directorate S” is taken from the most secret department of Pakistan’s Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI). This is the Directorate which is credited with mounting covert insurgencies
into Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India (p.24). Coll contends that the West’s failure to
recognise and prevent Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban cost it the war. This is
substantially true. However, to be fair to the Pakistanis, their policy never changed. It was
always to prevent India gaining a foothold in Afghanistan through its relationship with the
Afghan Northern Alliance. The Americans and British deceived themselves that they could
change Pakistan’s mind even though it was obvious that NATO would not be staying in
Afghanistan forever.
The book is as much about the CIA as ISI. Coll managed to interview senior officers but few
emerge from these pages with enhanced reputations. The tragedy is that these were genuine
patriots who volunteered (some of them past retirement age) to serve in Afghanistan in the
days after the 9/11 attacks. Anger is a bad emotion to bring to big decisions and a senior
officer is quoted as having “a burning need for retribution rooted in a shameful violation”
(p.86). The Counter Terrorist Centre (CTC) of CIA was led by a “theatrical and self-
dramatising” leader (p.27). It was bent on revenge and espoused an “aggressive philistinism”
(p.90). CIA tended to regard the US military with “barely disguised condescension” (p.156).
British MI6 officers were regarded as “cerebral and even effete” (p.237).
President Karzai features prominently throughout. I knew him as a courteous, gentle man. I
was impressed when he took up arms himself in 2001 but concerned when he became the
Transitional President. I wondered about his resilience. Only six years later Karzai had
changed; he was bitter, given to wild rages, and even paranoia. Partly it was because he was
cooped up in the Palace all day but also because the West treated him as a stooge; sometimes
only remembering to inform him of events “post-facto”. He understandably railed at the
excessive civilian casualties but he was in denial about the illicit activities of his brother in
Kandahar.
When he stole the 2009 election he placed his Western allies in an impossible position. He
also repeatedly sabotaged attempts at reconciliation with the Taliban. Coll focuses at length
on the painful attempts from 2009-12 to set up a Taliban office in Doha. But he ignores the
damaging case in December 2007 when Karzai consciously undermined a promising line of
work driven by the Irish expert on the Taliban, Michael Semple. It is a pity that the
Americans failed to support this effort at the time only to discover the merits of reconciliation
two years later.
There is no gratification in these pages for the British reader. Just as in Bob Woodward’s
“Obama’s Wars” (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010) Britain barely gets a mention. For all
Whitehall’s claim to think strategically, its inter-departmental cooperation, and some
important niche capabilities, Britain’s military ability to support its US ally has fallen below
critical mass.
Coll identifies many of the West’s shortcomings in Afghanistan; notably the failure to define
clear objectives in spite of “decks of Power Point slides”. It went to destroy an international
terrorist group, AQ, but ended up fighting a regional militia, the Taliban. The battle against
AQ took place in Pakistan and was predominantly successful, thanks to CIA with some ISI
assistance. By contrast the ISI’s support for the Taliban helped ensure the failure of NATO’s
Afghan campaign. There were other reasons too; a confused Western command structure, a
lack of coordination in Washington and Kabul, a failure to marry soft and hard power, a
corrupt society which Western aid money only exacerbated, and an Iraq war which diverted
attention and resources. The failure cannot be laid entirely at the door of Directorate S.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey of King’s College, London and formerly FCO, UK.
