cover image My Life with the Taliban

My Life with the Taliban

Abdul Salam Zaeef, , trans. from the Pushto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kueh. Columbia Univ., $29.95 (331pp) ISBN 978-0-231-70148-8

The recent history of Afghanistan is the focus of this harrowing autobiography by Taliban member Zaeef. The book begins with the author’s early childhood before turning to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Zaeef’s decision to join the mujahideen resistance. Countering conventional accounts that the Taliban emerged in the 1990s, Zaeef maintains that the movement existed as early as the 1970s. The author traces his rise in the Taliban to his appointment as ambassador to Pakistan in 2000, and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay after September 11 and the fall of the Taliban regime. He describes the psychological and physical torture he and his fellow prisoners suffered at the hands of American soldiers and concludes with a vehement denunciation of American policy in Afghanistan. Zaeef’s matter-of-fact prose can be difficult to take in the more violent segments, particularly those that deal with the Soviet invasion and Guantánamo Bay, and some readers may be offended by his fiercely anti-American political stance. However partisan the book may be, it is a valuable addition to the literature on contemporary Afghan history. (Mar.)