The Afghan - Review

I had been a very close follower of the global terrorism scene long before even 9/11 happened. I still remember the days while watching "The World This Week" program on TV, showing the Taliban tanks rolling into Kabul in 1996. I also could not forget the day Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan Nothern Alliance warlord, was assassinated on Sept 9th 2001, two days before 9/11. I still vividly recall thinking "this is very bad". For someone who follows terrorism so closely, I was extremely happy when I could get my hands on a copy of The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth.The novel was very gripping, and is styled like a documentary. It given a very interesting bird's eye view into the global war on terror, not to mention giving glimpses of the Soviet-Afghan war, the resulting Civil War and the NATO Invasion post 9/11.

The Afghan starts out with the MI5 and CIA getting a lead about something major being cooked up by "The Sheik" (as Osama Bin Laden is reportedly called), and then it proceeds into a gripping tale about the guts of a terrorist operation, styled on the lines of the USS Cole Incident - only on a much grander scale. The CIA & MI5 try to infiltrate the Al Queda using a SAS operative. The novel is very well laid out, albeit for one minor sequence of events where a Fighter Jet crashes into a log cabin in the woods, setting free a prisinor in highly improbable circumstances. Other than this one incident, the entire novel was very good. Four Stars!