Ghost Wars
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''Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001'', abbreviated as ''Ghost Wars'', is a book written by Steve Coll, published in 2004 by
Penguin Press Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initiall ...
. It won the 2005
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published du ...
.


Summary

The book provides an in-depth account of
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
activity in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion to the aftermath of attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Coll particularly notes the interplay between the CIA and its counterpart in Pakistan,
Inter-Services Intelligence The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is the premier Pakistani Intelligence community, intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant t ...
, which used CIA and Saudi Arabian funding to build militant
Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...
training camps along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border in an effort to create radicalized, militant fighters sourced from many Arab countries to attack the Soviet occupation. Invariably, as Coll shows, this decision had long-lasting effects on the region.


Expanded edition and follow-up

* * Penguin published a slightly expanded edition in 2005 that added the work of the 9/11 Commission. In 2011, Coll announced a follow-up to ''Ghost Wars''. When asked about a release date for the book, Coll said "It will take a while. ... I'd like the second volume to hold up over time."


Awards

Steve Coll won the 2004 Lionel Gelber Prize for ''Ghost Wars''. The work also received the 2005
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
for General Nonfiction.


See also

*'' Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History''


References


External links

* *
Steve Coll discusses ''Ghost Wars''
at the
Pritzker Military Museum & Library The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and research library for the study of military history located in a state-of-the art facility in Kenosha, WI. The institution was founded in 2003, ...
2004 non-fiction books American history books History books about Afghanistan Books about intelligence analysis Books about the War on Terror Non-fiction books about the Central Intelligence Agency 21st-century history books Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction–winning works Books about the Soviet–Afghan War {{US-int-book-stub