''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
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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
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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
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