Directorate S

Winner of the the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction

Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age ... it is a classicEvening Standard
In the finest traditions of American investigative journalismThe Times
Spectacular ... makes Bourne movies pale in comparisonFinancial Times

From the Pulitzer Prize winning of the acclaimed Ghost Wars, this is the full story of Americas grim involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016. In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the C.I.A. scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associates. The C.I.A. had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. A tangle of assumptions, old contacts, favours and animosities were now reactivated. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Ladens successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATOs mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire which lasted many years.

At the heart of the problem lay Directorate S, a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state which had its own views on the Taliban and Afghanistans place in a wider competition for influence between Pakistan, India and China, and which assumed that the U.S.A. and its allies would soon be leaving.

Steve Colls remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong and of many lives lost.