Book description
Since 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, the West
has been fighting a War on Terror , through force and through the
building of new societies in the region. In this clear and devastating
account, with unparalleled access and intimate knowledge of the
political players, Descent into Chaos chronicles our failure.
Having reported from central Asia for a quarter of a century, Ahmed
Rashid shows clearly why the war in Iraq is just a sideshow to the
main event. Rather, it is Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the five Central
Asian states that make up the crisis zone, for it is here that
terrorism and Islamic extremism are growing stronger.
Documenting with precision how intimately linked Pakistan is with
the Taliban and other extremist movements, while remaining the US s
main ally in the region, Rashid brings into focus the role of many
regional issues in supporting extremism, from nuclear programmes to
local rivalries, ineffectual peace-keeping to tyrannical rulers. For
Rashid, at the heart of the failure in Iraq is the US s refusal to
accept the need to build nations.
Ambitious and urgent, analyzing events, policies and personalities
across the largest landmass in the world, Descent into Chaos
chronicles with chilling accuracy why Islamic extremism is now
stronger than ever.
Ahmed Rashid is Pakistan's premiere journalist, an expert on
Central Asia, on jihad and Muslim extremists movements, on the Taliban
and Al Qaeda, on insurgency, and on the catastrophe of US policy in
this region, on which he has reported for 25 years. Author of three
books, his work Taliban was a huge international bestseller,
widely recognised as the definitive account. He has personally met and
interviewed many of the key players in Central Asia and has travelled
extensively for this book. He writes regularly for The Daily
Telegraph, The Washington Post, The International
Herald Tribune, BBC Online and many other European and
American dailies and websites.
A scholar of the Davos World Economic Forum and a consultant for
Human Rights Watch, he is currently on the Board of Advisers to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2002 he established the
'Open Media Fund for Afghanistan' (OMFA), which gives cash grants to
newly starting independent print media in Afghanistan. So far it has
distributed over 0,000 to over two dozen newspaper and magazine start
ups all over Afghanistan publishing in Dari, Pushto and Uzbek.
