Download or read book Night Letters written by Chris Sands and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, several young men met on a rainy night in Kabul to form an Islamist student group. Their aim was laid out in a simple typewritten statement: to halt the spread of Soviet and American influence in Afghanistan. They went on to change the world. Night Letters tells the extraordinary story of the group's most notorious member, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the guerrilla organzation he came to lead, Hizb-e Islami. By the late 1980s, tens of thousands were drawn to Hekmatyar's vision of a radical Islamic state that would sow unrest from Kashmir to Jerusalem. His doctrine of violent global jihad culminated in 9/11 and the birth of ISIS, yet he never achieved his dream of ruling Afghanistan. The peace deal he signed with Kabul in 2016 was yet another controversial twist in an astonishing life. Sands and Qazizai delve into the secret history of Hekmatyar and Hizb-e Islami: their wars against Russian and American troops, and their bloody and bitter feuds with domestic enemies. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews carried out across the region and beyond, this is the definitive account of the most important, yet poorly understood, international Islamist movement of the last fifty years.

Download or read book Letter from Kabul written by Hamid Karzai and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan′s president speaks to the West about his country′s ongoing struggle to achieve peace, prosperity, and democracy In this important book, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai writes passionately about his country in an attempt to build a bridge of understanding with America, the West, and the world at large. From the perspective of his personal and political life, he illuminates what Afghanistan has gone through to achieve today′s fledgling democracy, why the defeat of the Taliban was important, what the process of democratization has meant for Afghanistan, why long-term international support is needed for further progress, and what the experience of Afghanistan teaches us about the struggle for peace and stability in the wider world, including the Middle East. President Karzai addresses his ongoing efforts to disarm and demobilize Afghan warlords and his proposals to address poppy cultivation and combat the heroin trade. He discusses the progress Afghanistan has made as well as the areas that are still lacking, such as security, electricity, clean water, and proper health care. The struggle to build a fully healthy and democratic Afghanistan is far from over, Karzai warns, and stresses that aid, support, and understanding from the West is more crucial than ever. Hamid Karzai (Kabul, Afghanistan) is descended from a distinguished family of Afghan tribal leaders. He played key roles in the jihad against the USSR and the fight to oust the Taliban. He became Afghanistan′s first elected president in 2004. Nick Mills (Cumberland, ME) is a Boston University journalism professor and international media trainer. He first met Mr. Karzai in 1987 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and later worked in President Karzai′s press office in Kabul.

Download or read book Letters from Kabul 1966 1968 written by Janice Minott and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters from Kabul is a unique page-turning memoir. Janice Minott paints an intimate portrait of an everyday Afghanistan just entering the twentieth century, its peace soon to be shattered by decades of military conflict. The author's humorous and reflective letters make us privy to what the Muslim culture teaches one ordinary American family. Her poignant details of a culture vastly different from our own promise to awaken us to new perspectives as well. The lilting rhythms of Janice's days draw us into Kabul with both zest and profundity. From picking up a family and moving them halfway around the world to acclimating to a world apart, from ventures into the maze of Kabul's Old City bazaars to bone-rattling jeep rides into the Hindu Kush, from an on-the-fly encounter with a friendly smuggler to the heart-warming hospitality of Afghan neighbors: if you've ever fantasized about the reality of living in the mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan. Letters from Kabul offers you an open ticket. Janice writes generously from her unique vantage point as a revolutionary New Englander. Teaching English to a class of adult Afghan women is her passport out of the stifling world of Foreign Service teas and coffees. While her husband oversees the nationwide Peace Corps volunteers, Janice undergoes vast personal transformation. Such transformation ends up being an unexpected gift.

Download or read book The Night Letters written by Denise Leith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For five years, Australian doctor Sofia Raso has lived in Kabul’s vibrant Shaahir Square, working with Dr Jabril Aziz to support the local women. She knows that living peacefully in Kabul requires following two simple rules: keep a low profile; and keep out of local affairs. Yet when threatening night letters from the Taliban taunt the town, and young boys disappear from Jamal Mina, Kabul’s largest slum, Sofia can no longer remain silent. While the square is encased by fear, an elegant former warlord proves an unlikely ally, and a former lover re-emerges with a warning. As the search for the boys intensifies, and Sofia feels herself being drawn back into a love affair she thought had ended, it soon becomes clear that answers will bring a heavy price. Gripping and evocative, The Night Letters takes you to the heart of Kabul in a story of secrets, friendship and love in all its imperfect guises. ‘Full of wonderful prose and with a stunning sense of place, The Night Letters is a story of love, betrayal, corruption and friendship. It made me weep and cheer.’ – Michael Robotham, author of When She Was Good ‘A bittersweet and astonishingly detailed narration of both the simplicity and complexity of life in Afghanistan. What I loved about the book is that it does not represent Afghan women as passive and docile, but you will learn about their stories of bravery, struggles, and persistence.’ ­– Aalam Gul Farhad

Download or read book An American Bride in Kabul written by Phyllis Chesler and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.

Download or read book Dancing in the Mosque written by Homeira Qaderi and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society. Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

Download or read book Kabul 24 written by Ben Pearson and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2009-09-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can't kidnap someone's hope. They were teachers, engineers, nurses, students, and artists from around the world who answered God's call to help Afghan refugees rebuild their lives following decades of war. But as international tensions reached inferno levels in 2001, extremists set out to rid Afghanistan of anyone who posed a threat to Islam and the influence of the Taliban. The Shelter Now International (SNI) humanitarian effort led by Christians from Western countries topped the Taliban's list. Kabul 24 is the story you didn't see on CNN. It's the story of the human heartbeats behind the headlines that captivated the world during one of the most volatile political windows in rencent history. Relive the harrowing, true account of how eight humanitarian aid workers imprisoned behind enemy lines would survive and even thrive in the midst of betrayal, inhumane conditions, and the massive Allied bombing raids?conducted by their own countries?following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. From peacemakers to pawns in a story of political and religious turmoil, the eight would individually and collectively discover a level of hope that would free them from captivity long before their dramatic rescue by American Special Forces 105 days after their abduction.

Download or read book Kabul Catastrophe written by Patrick Arthur Macrory and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1839 a large British army invaded Afghanistan in order to place upon the throne a ruler deemed more friendly to the British in Delhi than the incumbent Dost Mohammed. Many voices in London warned against the foolhardy enterprise, among them that of the Duke of Wellington, who foresaw shame and disaster. The enterprise started well. The army conquered all before it, including reputedly impregnable fortresses. But only two years after being established in Kabul, attached on all sides by the hostile Afghans, the British retreated in mid-winter, 1842, trying to regain India. Of the 16,000 soldiers and others who left the city, only one person survived the journey as far as Jalalabad. It was one of the worse catastrophes to befall the British Empire.

Download or read book Shakespeare in Kabul written by Stephen Landrigan and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005, a group of actors in Kabul performed Shakespeare's Love’s Labour's Lost to the cheers of Afghan audiences and the raves of foreign journalists. For the first time in years, men and women had appeared onstage together. The future held no limits, the actors believed. In this fast-moving, fondly told and frequently very funny account, Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan capture the triumphs and foibles of the actors as they extend their Afghan passion for poetry to Shakespeare's.Both authors were part of the production. Qais, a journalist, served as Assistant Director and interpreter for Paris actress, Corinne Jaber, who had come to Afghanistan on holiday and returned to direct the play. Stephen, himself a playwright, assembled a team of Afghan translators to fashion a script in Dari as poetic as Shakespeare's. This chronicle of optimism plays out against the heartbreak of knowing that things in Afghanistan have not turned out the way the actors expected.

Download or read book Outside the Wire written by Kevin Patterson and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. Visceral, intimate and captivating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat, and an introductory reflection by Roméo Dallaire. Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone. Throughout each piece the passion of those engaged in rebuilding this shattered country shines through, a glimmer of optimism and determination so rare in multinational military actions–and so particularly Canadian. In Outside the Wire, award-winning author Kevin Patterson and co-editor Jane Warren have rediscovered the valour and horror of sacrifice in this, the definitive account of the modern Canadian experience of war.

Download or read book The Underground Girls of Kabul written by Jenny Nordberg and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

Download or read book The Bookseller Of Kabul written by Åsne Seierstad and published by Virago. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'An intimate portrait of Afghani people quite unlike any other . . . compelling' CHRISTINA LAMB, SUNDAY TIMES For more than twenty years Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, defied the authorities - be they communist or Taliban - to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. A committed Muslim, Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship. Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Åsne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there and the year after she lived with an Afghan family for several months. We learn of proposals and marriages, suppression and abuse of power, crime and punishment. The result is a gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history. 'Fascinating . . . A portrait of people struggling to survive in the most brutal circumstances' DAILY MAIL

Download or read book After We Kill You We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests written by Ted Rall and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unflinching account—in words and pictures—of America's longest war by our most outspoken graphic journalist Ted Rall traveled deep into Afghanistan—without embedding himself with U.S. soldiers, without insulating himself with flak jackets and armored SUVs—where no one else would go (except, of course, Afghans). He made two long trips: the first in the wake of 9/11, and the next ten years later to see what a decade of U.S. occupation had wrought. On the first trip, he shouted his dispatches into a satellite phone provided by a Los Angeles radio station, attempting to explain that the booming in the background—and sometimes the foreground—were the sounds of an all-out war that no one at home would entirely own up to. Ten years later, the alternative newspapers and radio station that had financed his first trip could no longer afford to send him into harm's way, so he turned to Kickstarter to fund a groundbreaking effort to publish online a real-time blog of graphic journalism (essentially, a nonfiction comic) documenting what was really happening on the ground, filed daily by satellite. The result of this intrepid reporting is After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests—a singular account of one determined journalist's effort to bring the realities of life in twenty-first-century Afghanistan to the world in the best way he knows how: a mix of travelogue, photography, and award-winning comics.

Download or read book Operation Pineapple Express written by Scott Mann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a group of retired Green Berets who come together to save a former comrade—and 500 other Afghans—being targeted by the Taliban in the chaos of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban. The message reached Nezam’s former commanding officer, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who couldn’t face the idea of losing another soldier in the long War on Terror. Immediately, he sends out an SOS to a group of Afghan vets (Navy SEALs, Green Berets, CIA officers, USAID advisors). They all answer the call for one last mission. Operating out of basements and garages, Task Force Pineapple organizes an escape route for Nezam and gets him into hiding in Taliban-controlled Kabul. After many tense days, he braves the enemy checkpoints and the crowds of thousands blocking the airport gates. He finally makes it through the wire and into the American-held airport thanks to the frantic efforts of the Pineapple express, a relentless Congressional aide, and a US embassy official. Nezam is safe, but calls are coming in from all directions requesting help for other Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and at-risk women and children. Task Force Pineapple widens its scope—and ends up rescuing 500 more Afghans from Kabul in the three chaotic days before the ISIS-K suicide bombing. Operation Pineapple Express is a thrilling, suspenseful tale of service and loyalty amidst the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Download or read book Shadow City written by Taran Khan and published by Arrow. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kabul in Winter written by Ann Jones and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Soon after the bombing of Kabul ceased, award-winning journalist and women's rights activist Ann Jones set out for the shattered city, determined to bring help where her country had brought destruction. Here is her trenchant report from inside a city struggling to rise from the ruins. Working among the multitude of impoverished war widows, retraining Kabul's long-silenced English teachers, and investigating the city's prison for women, Jones enters a large community of female outcasts: runaway child brides, pariah prostitutes, cast-off wives, victims of rape. In the streets and markets, she hears the Afghan view of the supposed benefits brought by the fall of the Taliban, and learns that regarding women as less than human is the norm, not the aberration of one conspicuously repressive regime. Jones confronts the ways in which Afghan education, culture, and politics have repeatedly been hijacked?by Communists, Islamic fundamentalists, and the Western free marketeers?always with disastrous results. And she reveals, through small events, the big disjunctions: between U.S promises and performance, between the new "democracy' and the still-entrenched warlords, between what's boasted of and what is. At once angry, profound, and starkly beautiful, Kabul in Winter brings alive the people and day-to-day life of a place whose future depends so much upon our own"--

Download or read book The Opium Prince written by Jasmine Aimaq and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jasmine Aimaq’s stunning debut explores Afghanistan on the eve of a violent revolution and the far-reaching consequences of a young Kochi girl’s tragic death. Afghanistan, 1970s. Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul at the helm of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to eradicating the poppy fields that feed the world’s opiate addiction. But on the drive out of Kabul for an anniversary trip with his wife, Daniel accidentally hits and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. He is let off with a nominal fine, in part because nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law, but also because a mysterious witness named Taj Maleki intercedes on his behalf. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to unravel, running from his crumbling marriage and escalating threats from Taj, who turns out to be a powerful opium khan willing to go to extremes to save his poppies. This groundbreaking literary thriller reveals the invisible lines between criminal enterprises and political regimes—and one man’s search for meaning at the heart of a violent revolution.