Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Steve Coll
Penguin Press

Afghanistan, March 2002: Al Qaeda has been largely defeated and dispersed; the Taliban regime has fallen and its leadership wants to talk; and the international community has come in strongly behind the United States, promising aid and installing Hamid Karzai as interim head of a new Afghan government, pending a new constitution and elections. US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is unequivocal: “The war is over.”