Dog-tag Days Redux. . .

Steven Coll's book Ghost Wars is a must read for anyone who is interested in how the Taliban movement took shape in Afghanistan and the tribal territories of Pakistan. Coll, a former CIA officer, was in on the ground floor of supplying arms to militants to fight the Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan. But he notes that the CIA's relationship with the militants was never a love fest, and that it was born out of cold war policies, rather than any clear-headed evaluation of the fomenting civil strife in the region. He also traces the beginnings of bin Laden's influence, or in some cases, the lack thereof. Bin Laden had an "aid society" of sorts set up in Pakistan, very close to the CIA's offices (about which Coll gives a harrowing account of a siege orchestrated by protesters).

Coll traces the CIA's interest in bin Laden, which really became acute when bin Laden and company moved, in the early 1990s, to the Sudan. There was a group in the CIA that was assigned to monitor bin Laden, and they became known within the agency as the "Manson Family" due to the fact the group was composed of a male analyst and several female analysts. The moniker was also a reflection of their obsession with bin Laden and their impressions that he was, and would become even more so, a major player and organizer of attacks directed toward the West. The group's worries were dismissed, and in time, the analysts were disbanded and assigned to other tasks. Coll paints a really distressing portrait of the CIA's leadership being completely out of touch with the "people on the ground," the regional experts, linguists and analysts.

I heartily recommend this book. Although it is quite thick, it is an absolute page turner!