Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Steve Coll Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

Overview

Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, bestselling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11

Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.

Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence.

Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking.

This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

The title of this taut audiobook refers to a small wing of the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the I.S.I., whose job it was to train and arm Taliban fighters to expand Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan after 9/11. The work of this directorate had a direct and negative effect on the United States’ ability to successfully prosecute a war that continues to this day. Narrator Malcolm Hillgartner delivers this audiobook in a deep authoritative voice that captures its mood and purpose. He doesn’t have an especially elastic voice, but he can vary his reading enough to keep the story moving. Hillgartner also mixes in some light character voices and superb pronunciations of Afghan and Pakistani names and places. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Andrew J. Bacevich

Steve Coll has written a book of surpassing excellence…The topic is important, the treatment compelling, the conclusions persuasive…Drawing on some 550 interviews, Coll describes in granular detail how senior officials, intelligence operatives, diplomats and military officers struggled to comprehend the problem at hand and to devise a solution…In each chapter of this very long but engrossing book, Coll takes a deep dive into some particular facet of the conflict. Readers will eavesdrop on contentious policy debates conducted at the highest levels in Washington. They will also accompany soldiers and spooks in the field.

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/18/2017
Coll (Private Empire), dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, picks up where his Pulitzer Prize–winning Ghost Wars left off, offering what is perhaps the most comprehensive work to date on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The book takes its title from the department, also known as “S Wing,” in Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) that is charged with undertaking illegal operations, including those related to Afghanistan. Based on hundreds of interviews and primary source documents, the work focuses on the secret struggle between the ISI and the CIA as both institutions sought to operate in the divergent interests of their countries, while simultaneously appearing to cooperate. Coll makes the crucial point that the success or failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan has always been inextricably tied to the success or failure of the U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Among the book’s many virtues, it avoids adopting a U.S.-centric view. The policies, interests, and important figures of the three nations and (to a lesser extent) the Taliban are all given appropriate weight. Coll’s vital work provides a factual and analytical foundation for all future work on the Afghan War and U.S. policy in Central Asia. Maps. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

Coll’s book is riveting.” —Richard Cohen, NY Daily News

“[A] journalistic masterpiece . . . Coll succeeds on all levels . . . Coll is masterful at plumbing the depths of agencies and sects within both Afghanistan and Pakistan . . . In this era of fake news, Coll remains above it all, this time delivering an impeccably researched history of "diplomacy at the highest levels of government in Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“With his evenhanded approach, gift for limning character, and dazzling reporting skills, he has created an essential work of contemporary history.” —Booklist (starred review)

“The most comprehensive work to date on the U.S. war in Afghanistan . . . Coll’s vital work provides a factual and analytical foundation for all future work on the Afghan War and U.S. policy in Central Asia.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Spellbinding . . . It does for America in Afghanistan what Michael Gordon and Tom Ricks did for the Iraq misadventure in Cobra II and Fiasco.” —Evening Standard

“This sequel to Ghost Wars might well become the definitive account of the CIA and America’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan . . . In the pages of Directorate S, the sequel to Coll’s Pulitzer prize-winning Ghost Wars, the story is delivered with a literary prowess that has been absent in previous western accounts of America’s longest running war. The dance of blame, with the US swaying at one moment towards Pakistan and the next towards Afghanistan, is a choreography familiar to CIA chiefs, US presidents and writers who have tackled the subject. Coll refuses to follow this tired tune, and the result is masterful.” —The Guardian

“Steve Coll’s Directorate S is the sequel to his magisterial Ghost Wars. Both books rest on a foundation of serious scholarship and Coll’s extraordinary access, to individual CIA officers mostly, but also to many others. These notably included members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, where Directorate S was the name given to the branch of the agency “devoted to secret operations in support of the Taliban, Kashmiri guerrillas, and other violent Islamic radicals”. Every assertion is carefully sourced and checked. This book is in the finest traditions of American investigative journalism. Coll is the thinking man’s Michael Wolff.” —Sherard Cowper-Coles, Times of London

“Coll draws on decades of experience in South Asia, nearly 600 interviews over a decade, and thousands of pages of documents to give the most balanced and comprehensive picture to date of the unraveling of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Few writers can match Coll’s length of time on the topic, range of contacts, or personal knowledge of realities on the ground . . . it is hard to imagine a more complete and thoughtful account of how the United States went wrong in Afghanistan.” —Task & Purpose

“A spectacular account of 15 years of secret CIA and US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the investigative journalist and academic Steve Coll . . . With impressive access to American, Afghan and Pakistani intelligence, Coll reveals the extent of the surveillance undertaken by all sides . . . Directorate S has a cast of characters that make Bourne movies pale in comparison—from type-A CIA officers and paramilitaries to cigar-smoking and whisky-drinking Pakistani generals to a dog nicknamed 'Lucky' because he was able to detect incoming missile strikes from drones before they hit.” —Financial Times

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

The title of this taut audiobook refers to a small wing of the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the I.S.I., whose job it was to train and arm Taliban fighters to expand Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan after 9/11. The work of this directorate had a direct and negative effect on the United States’ ability to successfully prosecute a war that continues to this day. Narrator Malcolm Hillgartner delivers this audiobook in a deep authoritative voice that captures its mood and purpose. He doesn’t have an especially elastic voice, but he can vary his reading enough to keep the story moving. Hillgartner also mixes in some light character voices and superb pronunciations of Afghan and Pakistani names and places. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-10-11
The acclaimed journalist delivers "a second volume" of the history he recounted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars (2004).Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of documents, New Yorker staff writer Coll's (Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, 2012, etc.) latest journalistic masterpiece "seeks to provide a thorough, reliable history of how the C.I.A., I.S.I., and Afghan intelligence agencies influenced the rise of a new war in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and how that war fostered a revival of Al Qaeda, allied terrorist networks, and eventually, branches of the Islamic state." Coll succeeds on all levels, and his prodigious research leads to only one conclusion: while the United States has won some battles in the so-called war on terror, it has unquestionably lost the war while feeding the radical fires of countless terrorists. The author demonstrates what he has suggested previously and what dozens of other authors have learned: that the U.S. has largely destroyed Afghanistan while trying to save it, similar to what occurred during the Vietnam War. The most prominent actor in this second volume is Pakistan. There are numerous examples of Pakistani factions promising to assist the American-led war on terror only to break promises while raking in billions of dollars in foreign aid. Whether the administration is that of George W. Bush or Barack Obama, the author's reporting demonstrates countless foolish decisions by the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. The State Department comes across as slightly less foolish but not devoid of criticism. Coll is masterful at plumbing the depths of agencies and sects within both Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the murderous groups that have become the main targets of the war on terror. The cast of characters at the beginning of the book will help readers keep track of all the players.In this era of fake news, Coll remains above it all, this time delivering an impeccably researched history of "diplomacy at the highest levels of government in Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170138098
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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