The power and the inglory

Power Struggle over Afghanistan by Kai Eide

Somehow I missed it. Maybe because it wasn't from the biggest press on the planet? Or because the cover wasn't flashy or highly stylized? Or maybe the author's Norwegian reserve had the effect of cloaking the book in an air of inconspicuousness? I just don't know.

Whatever the reason, I failed to hear advance word of Kai Eide's Power Struggle over Afghanistan. Only after a close friend and longtime Afghan hand told me she had read the book and it was not to be missed did I get hold of a copy. As usual, she was right.

One day, when the first big, retrospective history of the US war in Afghanistan is being written, that author is going to need to profile Afghan President Hamid Karzai. There will be distinct pressure to conform to the vision of Karzai we've been spoon-fed by the Western press for years on end: that Karzai is erratic, isolated from reality, or out of control. That future author may eventually decide to paint that portrait, but it will mean dismissing the word of the foreign official who has probably spent the most time with Karzai in recent years - the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010, Kai Eide.

The fact that a man who worked in Afghanistan for just two years of a decade-plus-long war may hold such a title is telling in itself. It's also a neon sign pointing toward what's most important about Eide's book - his pulling back the curtain on the war at the highest levels.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NC17Df01.html