Coll: U.S. lost initiative in Afghanistan

Steve Coll, managing editor of The Washington Post, discussed the developments in Central Asia that led to the 2001 terrorist attacks in Dodds Auditorium on Monday.

In a lecture titled "The Roots of September 11: America and Afghanistan," Coll dissected two decades of American involvement in the region, the roots of Islamic fundamentalism and the rise of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Coll, author of "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001," began his talk with a description of the complications involved in covert operations in the region, particularly with bin Laden.

In February of 1999, he noted, CIA-trained tribal leaders had located bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan.

Though alerted and ready to strike, U.S. authorities decided against assassinating the terrorist leader, fearing of repercussions at home and in the Arab world, Coll said.

Internal indecision later led U.S. intelligence to miss two more opportunities to take down the terrorist leader, he added.

"Risk and reward, enemy and friend . . . this has characterized the American experience in Afghanistan," he said.

But, he added, "Having these complications, losing these opportunities is not unusual in a government ruled by law."

Coll explained his view on the situation in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union had occupied the country, inflaming local nationalists.

When looked at from a purely military perspective, he said, the United States was justified in shipping arms to the Afghan resistance.

However, U.S. intelligence made the mistake of relinquishing political control of the covert war to the neighboring Pakistani military, Coll said.

"We had out-contracted the politics of Jihad to the Pakistan army," he said.

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The lack of American involvement in the region, Coll added, led to the rise of the Taliban regime — the Islamic fundamentalist government that harbored the Sept. 11 terrorists.

"In February 1989, when the last of [the] Soviet soldiers were leaving," he said, "we had asked ourselves, 'Does the U.S. have enough at stake in Afghanistan?'"

With no viable interest in reconstructing the region, the U.S. withdrew, creating a power vacuum that was later filled by Islamic radicals, Coll said.

The lecture, moderated by Wilson School professor Gary Bass, was delivered to a full house in Dodds Auditorium and is the first in a series titled "Journalists Writing the World."