THE AFGHANS

A moving history through Afghan eyes.

Seierstad, an award-winning Norwegian journalist and the author of The Bookseller of Kabul, chronicles Afghanistan’s long history of fending off invaders but emphasizes the period after 1990 when, having expelled the USSR, it descended into a civil war that was finally won by the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement. Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1996. The governing Taliban was not involved in 9/11, but the Bush administration made a fatal error by making no distinction between it and al-Qaeda. Taliban leadership refused the U.S. demand to hand over bin Laden but offered to compromise by expelling him to another Islamic nation. Proclaiming that America would never yield to the “bad guys,” President Bush ordered an invasion that quickly defeated Taliban forces, who did not stay defeated. This is not news to most readers, but Seierstad’s account of three Afghans who lived through these events delivers a fascinating if ultimately painful experience. Bashir, whose father died fighting the Russians in 1987, realized his childhood ambition to become a fighter after the American invasion. He spent 20 years in combat, then led other fighters in small-scale actions that occasionally killed a few Americans, yet they suffered plenty of deaths themselves. After victory, he discovers that he dislikes the tedious life of an administrator but never doubts that the good guys won. Polio rendered Jamila unmarriageable but lessened her father’s opposition to female schooling. She excelled and entered the American-supported government as an advocate of female education, but eventually she was forced to flee her native country, becoming a refugee. A member of a prosperous but conservative family, Ariana needed just one more semester to obtain a law degree when the Taliban expelled women from schools. For her protection, her family forced her to marry.

Indelible portraits of people struggling to survive in a war-torn land.