WHEN I first saw ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ on the bookshelf in our host’s living room in Toronto a couple of years ago, the name immediately rang a bell. I remembered meeting a slim, tall Texan in our embassy in Washington in 1990. He stuck in my mind because he was dressed in white, with a big Stetson hat and calf-high leather boots. I thought at the time that was an odd outfit to wear for a meeting with our ambassador. But after a brief introduction, the only other thing that stayed in my mind at that point was that Charlie Wilson had been a key figure in channelling US aid and arms to the Afghan mujahideen. Fast forward to 2008. Currently, the movie ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ is the biggest money-maker on the London screens. Nominated for an Oscar, it has been pulling in the crowds with its cocktail of Washington politics, sex, Cold War, Soviet cruelty and Afghan resistance. But above all, it is Tom Hanks who, as a hard-drinking, womanising Charlie Wilson, has been packing them in.

Julia Roberts as the Texan socialite Joanne Herring is utterly believable. Again, when I read the book, I recalled her name as Pakistan’s honorary consul in Houston during my brief stint at our Washington embassy. The rumour then was that she had been given this position by General Zia in gratitude for managing his real estate in Texas. The truth was even more fascinating: the Houston millionaire was a key figure in putting together a team that eventually drove up the CIA covert action budget in Afghanistan from $5 million to a billion dollars.

The movie is especially relevant in a post-9/11 world where the seeds of Islamic militancy planted during the anti-Soviet jihad have grown into a deadly cancer that threatens us all.

In George Crile’s fascinating book, Herring persuaded Charlie Wilson, a junior Congressman from a small Texan town, to galvanise the CIA operation to drive out the Soviets from Afghanistan. Of course, her method of ‘persuading’ Wilson was a great deal sexier than this dry narrative suggests.

The third principal character in this story is Gust Avrakatos, the out-of-control, foul-mouthed Greek CIA agent who was in charge of the covert American campaign. Brilliantly played by Philip Hoffman, he is totally convincing as the hard-driving, brash spy who puts together an implausible but effective anti-Soviet alliance.

First, he convinces the Saudi government to match every American dollar with a dollar from the royal coffers. Then, he talks the Israelis into selling Soviet-made arms captured from the Egyptians so the American fingerprint would not appear on any weapons used by the mujahideen. And as Egyptian factories were still churning out Soviet-designed arms, Avrakatos charms the minister concerned to sell them to the Afghan freedom fighters. In a memorable scene, the minister is almost dragged away by a belly-dancer in Cairo. If the book had been written as fiction, I doubt if many people would have thought the story even remotely plausible.

When Wilson first meets General Zia (played by Om Puri; I am sure the remains of the dead dictator are turning in their grave at being played by a Hindu), the Pakistani president sends him to a refugee camp where the Congressman is converted by the plight of the Afghans. But Puri’s earnest portrayal of Zia lacks that oily, smarmy presence the late dictator was infamous for.

While the film is entertaining and even instructive, it does not answer the question it raises: how does a minor congressman transform American policy in Afghanistan? How does he manage not only to get vastly more funding for the operation, but also convince the Pentagon to send the deadly, portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to a chaotic battle-zone like Afghanistan, where they risked falling into Soviet hands?

The moviemakers cannot really answer this question because by the very nature of the genre, they have had to compress much of the book into 92 minutes of entertainment. However, in his fascinating account, Crile focuses on the power of the pro-Israel lobby, and how it secured repeated re-elections for Charlie Wilson to the US House of Representatives. In return, the Congressman voted in favour of the bills the lobby wanted passed. And this is despite the fact that there were hardly any Jews in Wilson’s constituency.

So when Joanne Herring ‘persuaded’ Wilson to join her crusade, he turned to his Zionist friends for support. Ironically, had the facts emerged at the time, there would have been a huge political fall-out in Pakistan, Israel and Egypt. Yet, behind the scenes, they cooperated to defeat the Soviets.

In great detail, Crile guides the reader through the intricacies of the budget-making process in Washington. Wilson is on two crucial sub-committees that scrutinise the budgets for the Pentagon and the CIA respectively, and makes recommendation to the House. He is thus in a position to oblige colleagues who are pushing certain projects in their constituencies, and can demand favours in return. Indeed, this kind of deal-making is at the heart of the American system, and explains how Wilson succeeded in building such a successful coalition, virtually on his own. For me, it was this aspect of the story that was the most fascinating and instructive. This account of the inner working of the US system should be required reading for our diplomats and policy makers. The way millions of dollars can be diverted from one head to another is an eye-opener for an ex-bureaucrat like me.

As we look in dismay at the legacy of the anti-Soviet jihad in the form of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their many offshoots, we are entitled to ask if things could have been done differently. In a poignant scene at the very end of the movie, Wilson requests funds for Afghan schools after the Soviets have pulled out. His colleagues laugh and say their goals have been achieved, and ask what’s the point of spending any more money in Afghanistan?

In an epilogue for the Afghan war and most other conflicts, Wilson is quoted after the Afghan victory as saying, in effect: “It was a bright, wonderful moment. But we ... up the end-game.”