Ghost Wars: The Maps

Throughout the book there are maps placed that each show a different place and a different thing on them. There are 4 main important ones that have to do with information the United States got and did not act on. The first map is labeled as “The Birth of Modern Saudi Arabia” which shows Saudi Arabia at the close of World War 2. It gives you the 1945 boundaries which gave Saudi Arabia more land and room over all of the neighboring countries. But it also gives the modern boundaries which close down on some of the land that they got back in 1945. It makes the whole country itself smaller which gave them less power. The second map they have is labeled “Massoud at War 1983-1985” which shows Afghanistan and the land around it and where Massoud and his men were. It shows the hills that Massoud and his men went down to attack convoys of Soviet troops that were there. They would come out of the shadows and attack the convoys then disappear until they were alone and took the scrap metal, weapons, and pieces of tanks and other weapons and then bring them back on horseback to Panjshir where they would have mechanics that would put them back together for future rebel use. The third map that they have labeled in this book is called “Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm” which is a bird’s eye view shot of Osama’s farm from satellites. It shows how close his training facility was to the airport and how it had a direct road to the airport leading from it. There was a 10 foot wall surrounding the entire farm, a six story office building that ended up being bombed out in 2001, and about 80 living structures were inside of these walls. They went back and forth on whether they should raid the place or not because they did not know which building he was in or if they went into the wrong building if he was in the one next to that one. They also did not know what to do with all of the collateral damage that would occur. How they would explain this whole situation to people and other countries and governments that would be wondering what is going on. The final map that they have labeled as “The CIA in the Panjshir, 1997-2000” which shows the routes of flights and driving paths that many of them took to complete these special missions they had to do. They give you arrows from where the journey started which was sometimes up to 770 miles away but also sometimes as close as 230 miles away from the target place. All they were trying to do was to establish a renewed counterterrorism liaison by giving Massoud more cash, more secure communications, listening devices, and other nonlethal spy gear.