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Directorate S
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  • Published: 19 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9780718194499
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $50.00
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Directorate S

The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001–2016

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Feb 2018
Audiobook
6 Feb 2018
Paperback
19 Feb 2019
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The international bestselling account of America's 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. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden's successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO's mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire which has now 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 Afghanistan's 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 Coll's remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong and of many lives lost.
  • Published: 19 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9780718194499
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $50.00
Categories:

About the author

Steve Coll

Steve Coll is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ghost Wars and dean emeritus of the Columbia Journalism School, and from 2007 to 2013 was president of New America, a public policy institute in Washington, DC. He is an editor at The Economist in London, was a staff writer at The New Yorker for nearly two decades, and before that was a writer and editor at The Washington Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1990. He is the author of nine books, including The Bin Ladens, Private Empire, Directorate S, and The Achilles Trap.
portrait photo of Steve Coll

Also by Steve Coll

The Achilles Trap
Private Empire
The Bin Ladens
Ghost Wars: The Secret History Of The Cia, Afghanistan And Bin Laden, From The Soviet Invasion To September 10, 2001
See all

Praise for Directorate S

Spectacular ... Directorate S has a cast of characters that makes Bourne movies pale in comparison

Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times

Every assertion is carefully sourced and checked. This book is in the finest traditions of American investigative journalism. Coll is the thinking man's Michael Wolff.

Sherard Cowper-Coles, The Times

A masterful and entertaining account ... the story is delivered with a literary prowess that has been absent in previous western accounts of America's longest running war

Rafia Zakaria, Guardian

Impressively detailed, stylishly crafted and authoritative... as gloomy as it is compelling

Economist