Ahmed Rashid is a pretty much Pakistan’s most widely read journalist. His latest essay, in the New York Review of Books, is fantastic. And now Viking’s released “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia,” the first major account of America’s post-9/11 war in Asia from a Pakistani perspective. The book’s huge (544 pages) and wonky, but it’s a must own volume for any political junky. Rashid lives in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital.
Viking’s PR copy reads:
While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East.
I don’t know that Pakistan-Afghanistan, where there’s no oil or major strategic interest, “pose a graver threat” than the Mid East, but certainly America has certainly failed to combat terrorism in Central Asia.
Rashid will be at the Asia Society in NYC on June 3rd, 6:30pm. 725 Park Ave, NY, NY.
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