My Life with the Taliban — Events and Reviews

Interest and discussion has already begun about the just-released memoir My Life with the Taliban, by Abdul Salam Zaeef. In the book, Zaeef recounts his early life in Afghanistan, joining the Jihad against the Soviet Union in 1983, helping to form the Taliban in 1994, and his time with the organization, which included serving as the ambassador to Pakistan.

In his article in the New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid writes, that “we have a book that for the first time places readers at the heart of the Taliban’s way of thinking.”

The book was also just reviewed in the Telegraph which writes:

[Zaeef] has written a fascinating account of his own remarkable life which gives real insight into why the Taliban was formed, what motivates it, and what it is now trying to achieve. It is what he has to say about hopes of ending the current war, however, that will be of most interest to the spooks and diplomats in Kabul, Washington and London; they will have been hoping that Mullah Zaeef would point the way towards a negotiated end to the fighting. But he does not, and what he has to say suggests that ending the bloodshed could prove extremely difficult, if possible at all.

Finally, the editors of the book Felix Kuehn and Alex Strick van Linschoten will be touring the UK and the US in the coming weeks. Click here for a schedule of upcoming events.