Photo Credit: by Gary Raynaldo / Author/Journalist Steve Coll Speaks At Columbia University School Of International Affairs in New York City Dec. 4, 2018 on the war in Afghanistan. 

By Gary Raynaldo   DIPLOMATIC TIMES

(NEW YORK)   According to Steve Coll, author and former Washington Post reporter, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, prior to 9/11, ostensibly in cooperation, although in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani Intelligence Agency.  Coll, who is also staff writer at The New Yorker, and Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, makes this argument in his newly published book: “Directorate S”:The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”  Coll spoke about his book at a panel discussion held at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) Tuesday Dec. 4, 2018. Coll’s book makes the case that:

‘…while the U.S. 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.’    

“Directorate S”  by Steve Coll

Coll writes that the war in Afghanistan is a “sprawling American tragedy.” The author asserts that 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.”  Coll maintains that this was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historical proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, including multiple secret intelligence agencies, dozens of players, including the most prominent military and political figures.  Despite President George W. Bush’s famous 2003 faux pas declaring  the war in Iraq as “Mission Accomplished” neither that military venture nor the war in Afghanistan are anywhere near over. As the NY Times observed:

“Yet mission accomplishment remains nowhere in sight. Over the past year, the Taliban have increased the amount of territory they control. Opium production has reached an all-time high. And corruption continues to plague an Afghan government of doubtful legitimacy and effectiveness. For a war now in its 17th year, the United States has precious little to show, despite having lost over 2,400 of its own soldiers and expending an estimated trillion dollars,”   New York Times.  , Jan.  31, 2018. 

“This Is Not A War That Can Be Won On The Battlefield, But By Political Negotiation: Steve Coll 

Credit: Photo by Gary Raynaldo / Author and Dean of the School of Journalism, Columbia University Steve Coll at panel discussion on war in Afghanistan. 

Coll stated at the Columbia University panel that in his interviews with several U.S. Army Generals from the Bush administration through Obama’s, they said “time and time again this is a war that can’t be won on the battlefield, that you can’t win through military action, that you can not defeat the Taliban militarily.”  Coll said they concluded that the war could only be won through political negotiation.   Coll said his book addresses why did the U.S. and NATO failed in their goals for Afghanistan. He said part of the problem was that the goals were never clearly defined in the first place as to why U.S troops were involved. “Why are we here? What truly vital national interests justified asking young American men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice on the Afghan battlefield,” Coll said were questions with no clear cut answers.  He questioned if the defeat of the Taliban was really a vital interest of the United States. Coll also stated that “politics” played a role in the failed U.S.-NATO military intervention, particularly with regard to Hamid Karzai  the leader of Afghanistan from 22 December 2001 to 29 September 2014.  “It took the Bush Administration awhile to realize that its relationship with Karzai and the U.S. had fallen apart,” Coll said. It is well known that Karzai was the ‘darling’ of the U.S. in the beginning of the military intervention in 2001, but Karzai later turned on his Western benefactors, and became increasingly paranoid that the West was out to get him,  so to speak.

Credit: Photo by Gary Raynaldo  / Author Steve Coll with (left) Dipali Mukhopadhyay, assistant professor, School of International Public Affairs (right) Richard Betts, Director, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace, and Stephen Biddle, professor of International and Public Affairs,  at Columbia University School Of International Affairs’ panel discussion Dec. 4, 2018.

Coll is the author of eight books of non-fiction, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Between 1985 and 2005, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. There he covered Wall Street, served as the paper’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and was the Post’s first international investigative correspondent based in London. He served as managing editor of the  Post between 1988 and 2004. The following year, he joined The New Yorker, where he has written on international politics, American politics and national security, intelligence controversies and the media. Coll is also the author of “Ghost Wars: The secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Ben Laden.