Soldiers of God was suggested to me by a friend when I expressed a great deal of confusion over the tribal groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I kept reading about in the news. I found this book quite helpful in sorting out the who's who when it came to the major players over there.
Although this book was written originally in 1990, the author added a final chapter and republished it in 2000. The information in this book serves as a great stepping stone to bringing some understanding to light about the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. You might think it is too old to be pertinent to today's events, but this is not the case at all.
You will follow the author as he travels back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, not by car, plane or helicopter, but on foot alongside the Mujahidin or "soldiers of God" during the 1980's.
A time when the Afghanistan people were fighting to throw the Soviets out of their country.
If you have been following any of the happenings in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade, or even for the past several years, names from before 9/11 will jump out at you! Hekmatyar, Hamid Karzai, ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Service), Musharraf, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency- U.S.) and Massoud to name a few.
Tribal loyalties, power struggles between and among the tribes, the day to day struggle to survive in a country that can only be called primitive at best are brought to light. You quickly see how tenacious the people are in their fight against the Soviets yet divided by their own ethnic and religious differences.
"In 1987, the Soviets carpet bombed Kandahar for months on end. After reducing part of the city center and almost all of the surrounding streets to rubble, they bulldozed a grid of roads to enable tanks and armored cars to patrol the city....."
"They peppered the surrounding desert with tens of thousands of land mines, which they usually dropped from the air but sometimes shot from mortars. The villages around Kandahar became lifeless."
"But the Kandahari mujahidin were every bit as hell-bent as the Soviets. They zigzagged through minefields on the dust-packed, gravelly wastes with double-barreled 23 mm antiaircraft guns mounted on the backs of their pickup trucks, firing away at anything that moved in the sky."
When Robert Kaplan traveled between the two countries, the press was not interested in reporting on the happenings in Afghanistan but focused instead on South Korea, South Africa and other countries that were 'more civilized.'
"If there wasn't a satellite station nearby, or if the phones didn't work, or if the electricity wasn't dependable, you just reported less or nothing at all about the place."
You will see how the Soviets leave, how in the spring of 1994 the Taliban become filled with "shadowy quiet newcomers" who take control of the movement, and the days leading up to 9/11 become more clear.
I would strongly suggest Soldiers of God as a book to start building an understanding of the people who inhabit Afghanistan and Pakistan. I say start, because it will take years and years of study to understand this complex life led by people living in such a primitive country. Primitive with a modern mix thrown in. Cell phones and illiteracy. Primitive fighters using high tech weapons. Definitely a worthy book to add to your library!
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