BOOK REVIEW: Destination Afghanistan? Write a will ...

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-03-201213.html



BOOK REVIEW: Destination Afghanistan? Write a will ... Facing the Taliban by Anoja Wijeyesekera
Reviewed by Thalif Deen
Dec 20, '13

When Anoja Wijeyesekera, an aid worker with the UN children's agency UNICEF, received her new assignment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan back in 1997, her appointment letter arrived with a "survival manual" and chilling instructions: write your last will before leaving home. "It was an exercise that helped me to mentally prepare myself for Afghanistan," she told IPS during a recent visit to New York to launch her just-released book titled Facing the Taliban.

The book details her memorable experiences in a country where "women were reduced to objects of lust". It not only savages some of the hardcore Islamic fundamentalists but also lambastes the United States for indiscriminate bombings that killed many civilians.

A former UNICEF representative in Bhutan, the Sri Lankan national headed an all-male office in Jalalabad, located in what the UN calls a "hardship non-family duty station", where she "came close to making enemies of the Taliban and getting jailed or shot by them".

She recounts meeting Taliban mullahs who were "absolute tough nuts", and recalls stories of women covered from head to toe in a country "where animals had greater freedom than these women".