Little America by Rajiv Chandrasekaran: review The conclusions echo those of Sherard Cowper-Coles in last year's Cables from Kabul: too much influence by the generals on Afghan policy; a missed opportunity to start negotiating an end to the war with the Taliban while Nato had the upper hand militarily; and a poorly executed military campaign in the wrong places, combined with wasteful and disjointed diplomatic and aid agency efforts. The formulation of US Afghan strategy was riven by the personal rivalries raging among Obama's key advisers. They were ill-served by the civilian agencies on the ground in Afghanistan - most diplomats are on short-term posts and hunkered down in the Kabul embassy where, subjected to a dire stream of daily security warnings, they rarely venture outside, seeking solace instead in the embassy's "Duck and Cover" bar. The USAID workers take pride in a monthly "burn rate" of $340million as a sign of development "progress," despite little to show on the ground for it after the depredations of waste and corruption. The book's strongest condemnation is reserved for the US Army, led by General Petraeus, which pushed Obama into an expanded counter-insurgency and nation-building programme rather than a narrower focus on the destruction of al-Qaeda and a negotiated end to the conflict. The tragic result was the unleashing of US forces to such strategically insignificant places in the south that in one village the inhabitants addressed them in Russian, not knowing that the Russians had long left, when the forces would have been better deployed in the restive east adjacent to the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. The policy has also produced a terrible roster of pointlessly lost limbs and lives, often among the abandoned irrigation ditches and remains of "Little America." The author, echoing many in the American military, is disparaging of the operational performance of the British Army in Helmand, in contrast with the hard-charging US Marine Corps which took over many parts of the province during the surge. However, little mistakes like his use of the non-existent British rank of "Brigadier General" are symptomatic of a less thorough account of the British side of the story. Now that Obama has belatedly decided that "it's time to focus on nation-building at home," and following the signing of a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan that curtails the US military's expansionist dreams, perhaps there is hope that the country can be left to develop without the distortions of heavy foreign involvement. As I saw when I visited the country recently, there are modest signs - with a population largely under 25 which is increasingly connected to the world via mobile communications, Bollywood films and Western fashions, and expanding private enterprises in the country - that there may be grounds for such hope. Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan Rajiv Chandrasekaran Bloomsbury, £16.99, 368pp