Abstract
“The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001-2014’ presents the history of Afghanistan and the portrait of a Hamid Karzai who is unable to lead and take practical decisions in a land devastated by ethnic turmoil, foreign occupation and civil war. The book was written before the Afghan Presidential Elections of 2014 so it attempts to analyze and answer some questions like how much better off Afghanistan was likely to be today and what could be the future outlook for it as the United States (US) and its NATO allies withdraw? The author like the general lot of Western writers adamantly pursues the rant that Pakistani governments have followed a ‘duplicitous‘ policy in the war on terror overtly standing with the US but inwardly supporting the Taliban and using them to manipulate events in Afghanistan and exercise control over its government in Kabul. Thus it is Pakistan which is ‘the enemy‘ and not Afghanistan. The burden of her argument is spent on establishing the myth popularized by Western and Indian observers that the ISI is the real power in Pakistan. Ms. Gall holds that the Taliban wanted to create an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan which is not wrong but she further claims that the purpose of the emirate was to continue its guerilla war against the US and its Western allies. Quite naively she thinks the goal for the Pakistani government was to continue to employ proxy forces, Afghan mujahideen and Taliban in Afghanistan, and Kashmiri militants in India to project its influence beyond its border (p.21).