Amazon.co.uk
Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: The story of the Afghan Warlords is the single best book available on the subject of the regime in Afghanistan responsible for harbouring the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has spent most of his career reporting on the region--he has personally met and interviewed many of the Taliban's shadowy leaders. Taliban was written and published before the massacres of September 11, 2001, yet it is essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the aftermath of that black day. It includes details on how and why the Taliban came to power, the government's oppression of ordinary citizens (especially women), the heroin trade, oil intrigue, and--in a vitally relevant chapter--bin Laden's sinister rise to power. These pages contain stories of mass slaughter, beheadings and the Taliban's crushing war against freedom: Under Mullah Omar, it has banned everything from kite flying to singing and dancing at weddings. Rashid is for the most part an objective reporter, though his rage sometimes (and understandably) comes to the surface: "The Taliban were right, their interpretation of Islam was right, and everything else was wrong and an expression of human weakness and a lack of piety", he notes with sarcasm. He has produced a compelling portrait of modern evil. --John Miller
Book Description
'The book they are all reading' - The Guardian
This is the definitive story of the Taliban movement. It describes how they emerged, why they emerged, why they choose violence as a means to their ends, how they are funded, how they fit into the wider context of Islam. It is already regarded by many experts in the field as the definitve account.
'This is an impressive analysis of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, of its background and impact on that country, and of the wider regional and geopolitical implications of the Taliban's advent to power. It would be hard to see how anyone could rival the range and detail of this account: this bids well to be the leading book on the subject.' - Fred Halliday, Professor of International Relations at London School of Economics
