Afghanistan: The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower

Product Description

How did the horrendous situation in Afghanistan, with all its implications for recent events and the present time, come to pass? What was the role of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence in the creation of what became the Taliban? What are the implications for the future and lessons from the past for American forces today?

This highly controversial book reveals one of the greatest military, political and financial secrets of recent times. It is nothing less than the true, if fantastic, account of how Pakistan and the USA covertly controlled the largest guerrilla war of the 20th Century, dealing to the Soviet Russian presence in Afghanistan a military defeat that has come to be called ‘Russia’s Vietnam’.

This compelling book, put together with great skill by the military author, Mark Adkin, is essential reading for anyone interested in the truth behind the Soviets’ Vietnam, and the reasons why, to this day, the war in Afghanistan still drags on despite the victory that the Mujahideen were denied when the Soviets withdrew.

About the Author

Major Mark Adkin was commissioned into The Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment in 1956 and served with it and The Royal Anglian Regiment in Germany, Malaya, Mauritius and Aden. On leaving the British Army he joined the Overseas Civil Service and was posted to the Solomon Islands. Transferred to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, he was one of the last British District Officers anywhere in the world.

His final overseas post was as a contract officer for five years with the Barbados Defence Force, and it was as the Caribbean operations staff officer that he participated in the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. He now lives in Bedford.

Brigadier Mohammed Yousaf was born in 1937 and was commissioned as an infantry officer into the Frontier Defence Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army in 1961. Subsequently his career took him through the usual sequence of command and staff appointments, including active service against India. He also attended the Command and Staff College at Quetta and the National Defence College at Rawalpindi. While commanding and infantry bridge he was selected by the Director of the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to head its Afghan Bureau, a post he help from 1983 to 1987, until he resigned as a matter of principle and left the Army. During these four years he was responsible for training, and operational planning of the Mujahideen inside Afghanistan and later inside the Soviet Union.