US Failure Breeds a Stronger al-Qaeda

This is an edited excerpt from Ahmed Rashid's recently published Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Penguin Books, 2008 available from Amazon, US$18.45). Used with permission.

Seven years on, the US-led war on terrorism has left in its wake a far more unstable world than exis…