Afghanistan
The Punishment of Virtue:
Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban by Sarah Chayes
An NPR foreign correspondent from 1997 to 2002, Chayes left NPR after covering the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Questioning whether her journalism was making a difference in the world, she settled in Afghanistan where she now lives and helps with the rebuilding of that country. She compares Afghanistan with Iraq "on a slow boil." It's growing increasingly dangerous and corrupt due to blunders associated with the U.S. invasion, and especially due to U.S. alliances with Afghan warlords. Further complicating matters is the fact that Pakistan, America's supposed ally in the "War on Terror" is funding and encouraging Taliban expansion back into Afghanistan. Caught in between, of course, are the Afghan people. Chayes is working to improve their lot by operating Arghand, a cooperative designed to make it feasible for Afghan farmers to grow and profit from crops other than opium poppies. Chayes spoke with WNYC's Leonard Lopate, and with All Things Considered's Melissa Block.
*Also available (Oct. 1), unabridged, on Audio CD
The Punishment of Virtue ... published August 17, 2006 by Penguin Press HC
The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2006, this is epic and highly topical travel writing at its very best. An intrepid young Scot with sound, working understandings of many of the region's languages and customs walked across Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban. Stewart's also the author of an incisive chronicle of his year in postwar Iraq, The Prince of the Marshes. He begins The Places in Between,
I'm not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan. Perhaps I did it because it was an adventure. The Taliban had banned posters and films, but I arrived six weeks after the Taliban's departure. ... In the courtyard where al-Qaeda men had gathered to chat in Urdu, students were waiting to practice their English on war reporters. I found The Man in the Iron Mask among a pile of DVDs on a handcart. It had been touched up for the Afghan market so that Leonardo DiCaprio, as Louis XIV in seventeenth-century dress, brandished a Browning 9mm. Herat ... a great medieval market for China, Turkey, and Persia -- was now selling Chinese alarm clocks, Turkish sunglasses, and Iranian apple juice.
*Also available on Audio CD
The Places in Between ... published in America May 8, 2006 by Harvest Books
Jawbreaker by Gary Berntsen
A veteran CIA officer recounts some of his efforts versus al Qaeda, especially in the wake of the 1998 U.S. African embassy bombings and later in Afghanistan after 9/11. Berntsen says that when he directed operations at Tora Bora in 2001, he and other U.S. forces knew for certain that Osama bin Laden was in the vicinity -- contradicting what Bush and Tommy Franks said during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Berntsen further tells of having requested that 800 U.S. troops be inserted into the area to prevent bin Laden's escape. Nothing came of that request -- and periodic bin Laden videos vividly illustrate the result.
While Jawbreaker provides eyewitness reports on historically pivotal events from a top-level participant, his macho-guy prose (or, more likely, that of his "co-writer") immediately descends into self-parody reminiscent of Mickey Spillane, and it pretty much stays that way throughout. Worse, the book's been heavily censored by the CIA, which makes for a halting read. But no one reads a book such as this for its literary excellence, and the quality of its information compensates for the quantity of irritations.
*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD
Jawbreaker ... published December 27, 2005 by Crown
Come Back to Afghanistan
by Said Hyder Akbar and Susan Burton
Though Afghanistan barely touches the consciousness (much less the consciences) of most U.S. citizens, that's not so of at least one all-American kid. He grew up in California and seems like the nice young man you wish lived next door -- but with one enormous difference: his dad is friends with Hamid Karzai and has served in his government. Akbar first returned as a 17-year-old to the country he'd never known, recording audio diaries on minidisc as he traveled widely (and often very dangerously), watching first-hand as the Karzai government struggled to assert itself against the power of "warlords, terrorists, opium [most of the world's supply comes from Afghanistan], carnivorous neighbors, you name it." His recordings led to two hour-long installments that aired on This American Life in January and December 2003; Susan Burton both produced the radio features and helped write Come Back to Afghanistan. With her assistance, Hyder Akbar provides an incisive, first-hand look at a country that's been horribly wronged by much of the rest of the world -- including America.
Come Back to Afghanistan ... published October 13, 2005 by Bloomsbury USA
Love and War in Afghanistan
by Alexander Klaits and Gulchin Gulmamadova-Klaits
A husband-wife team (he's American, she's a multilingual Tajik) who'd done aid work in Afghanistan interviewed over 150 northern Afghans about their day-to-day lives under Soviet and Taliban rulers. Fourteen Afghans tell their tales and humanize a story that had been lost to the West -- to the great sorrow of America, as one Afghan points out:
The world had forgotten about Afghanistan until that dark day, September 11, 2001. ... In the days that followed, there wasn't a single Iranian or Afghan with whom I spoke who wasn't heartbroken for the American people. But, of course, it was America ... with several other countries -- that had laid the groundwork for the Taliban movement. ... I am ultimately very grateful that the result of this tragedy was that the American people remembered us and our sad plight. But it is such a sad irony that so many people had to die in the West in order to save so many lives back here.
Love and War in Afghanistan ... published May 1, 2005 by Seven Stories Press