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Afghanistan-Graveyard of Empires: A New History of the Borderland by David Isby New York: Pegasus Books, 2010 440 pages $28.95
Although the market for books on Afghanistan has not witnessed any dearth in quantity or in variegation of quality in the last ten years, this history by David Isby offers excellent value to this growing corpus of works. The author spent considerable time in Pakistan and Afghanistan since the Soviet-Afghan War. Isby has also testified before Congress as an independent expert, and he has appeared on a host of news media, including CNN and C-Span. He has authored three books and hundreds of articles on Afghanistan and national security topics. This book offers a comprehensive, candid, and timely insight on the prospects and costs of success or failure in South Asia. The author understands what is at stake in Afghanistan and he is sanguine about the effort succeeding. He does not, however, relent in his clear and cogent candor regarding the impediments and risks that jeopardize the prospects for success in the region. This reviewer would be remiss if he did not pillory the staleness and inaptness of the title. The graveyard of empires metaphor indeed belongs in the graveyard of clichés. The Coalition in Afghanistan is not some imperial conquest, is not the Soviets, and is not the Victorian British. Nor do the Afghans perceive it as such.
Isby postulates that the war in Afghanistan is still winnable if the...