Making Friends Among the Taliban

Making Friends Among the Taliban
Author: Jonathan P. Larson
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2012-10-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0836197135

The Sharron Valley is as majestic, harsh, and remote as any in Afghanistan. In the summer, snowmelt feeds a silver ribbon of river, and the valley floor is strewn with stones and boulders. On each side, mountain walls rise steeply away to the crests of the Hindu Kush. As far as the eye can see, there is hardly any sign of human settlement. Not by chance is it home to the elusive snow leopard, ibex, and Marco Polo sheep. On the silent valley floor, on a summer day in 2010, sits a caravan of three white Land Rovers. Closer examination suggests a desperate story. On small grassy mounds around the vehicles, bodies lie prostrate under a cobalt sky. Others are strewn in and under the vehicles where the victims took cover. All of them taken out execution-style. Ten in all. The sketchiest outline of what happened there along the river emerges from the testimony of a passing shepherd who witnessed the events from the surrounding hills, and from the sole survivor, a young Afghan driver. Making Friends Book Trailer In Making Friends among the Taliban, childhood friend Jonathan Larson retraces Dan’s nearly forty years in Afghanistan and, through interviews and eye witness accounts, relays Dan’s incredible way of daily living. Facing famine, poverty, prison, and rifle muzzles—and across three decades of kings, the Red Army, warlords, the Taliban, and the American-led coalition—Dan found improbable friendships across the front lines of conflict and inspired small Afghan communities to find a better way of life. This inspirational narrative of Dan’s life and friendships offers a model for living authentically wherever we are. Read a sample chapter here. Free downloadable study guide available here. Jonathan Larson and others share more captivating stories from Dan Terry’s life, in the complementary documentary, Weaving Life: The Life and Death of Peacemaker Dan Terry, available here.

The Taliban Shuffle

The Taliban Shuffle
Author: Kim Barker
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-03-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385533322

A true-life Catch-22 set in the deeply dysfunctional countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by one of the region’s longest-serving correspondents. Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent—she is candid, self-deprecating, laugh-out-loud funny. At first an awkward newbie in Afghanistan, she grows into a wisecracking, seasoned reporter with grave concerns about our ability to win hearts and minds in the region. In The Taliban Shuffle, Barker offers an insider’s account of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, chronicling the years after America’s initial routing of the Taliban, when we failed to finish the job. When Barker arrives in Kabul, foreign aid is at a record low, electricity is a pipe dream, and of the few remaining foreign troops, some aren’t allowed out after dark. Meanwhile, in the vacuum left by the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban is regrouping as the Afghan and Pakistani governments floun­der. Barker watches Afghan police recruits make a travesty of practice drills and observes the disorienting turnover of diplomatic staff. She is pursued romantically by the former prime minister of Pakistan and sees adrenaline-fueled col­leagues disappear into the clutches of the Taliban. And as her love for these hapless countries grows, her hopes for their stability and security fade. Swift, funny, and wholly original, The Taliban Shuffle unforgettably captures the absurdities and tragedies of life in a war zone.

I Am Malala

I Am Malala
Author: Malala Yousafzai
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316322415

A MEMOIR BY THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE As seen on Netflix with David Letterman "I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday." When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.

My Forbidden Face

My Forbidden Face
Author: Latifa
Publisher: Virago
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2008-09-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0748109129

Latifa was born into an educated middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980. She dreamed of one day of becoming a journalist, she was interested in fashion, movies and friends. Her father was in the import/export business and her mother was a doctor. Then in September 1996, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. From that moment, Latifa, just 16 years old became a prisoner in her own home. Her school was closed. Her mother was banned from working. The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out a window - were no longer hers. She was now forced to wear a chadri. My Forbidden Face provides a poignant and highly personal account of life under the Taliban regime. With painful honesty and clarity Latifa describes the way she watched her world falling apart, in the name of a fanatical interpretation of a faith that she could not comprehend. Her voice captures a lost innocence, but also echoes her determination to live in freedom and hope. Earlier this year, Latifa and her parents escaped Afghanistan with the help of a French-based Afghan resistance group.

Words in the Dust

Words in the Dust
Author: Trent Reedy
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 054557806X

Winner of the Christopher Medal and a "heart-wrenching" Al Roker's Book Club selection on the Today Show. Zulaikha hopes. She hopes for peace, now that the Taliban have been driven from Afghanistan; a good relationship with her hard stepmother; and one day even to go to school, or to have her cleft palate fixed. Zulaikha knows all will be provided for her--"Inshallah," God willing. Then she meets Meena, who offers to teach her the Afghan poetry she taught her late mother. And the Americans come to her village, promising not just new opportunities and dangers, but surgery to fix her face. These changes could mean a whole new life for Zulaikha--but can she dare to hope they'll come true?

To Right Every Wrong

To Right Every Wrong
Author: Dave Andrews
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725288532

Dave Andrews’s latest book, To Right Every Wrong, is the last in the Dave Andrews Legacy Series. It is a funny, sad, brutally honest retrospective, reflecting on what it has meant for him and his family to seek to live a lifetime dedicated to love and justice. The reflections in this book, subtitled The Making and Unmaking of One Improbable Minor Prophet, come in three parts—the personal, the prophetical, and the paradoxical. The personal part explores Andrews’s experience of the radical, compassionate spirituality that he shares with wife, Angie, and which has shaped their way of life as a family in community with marginalized and disadvantaged groups of people. The prophetical part explores Andrews’s embrace of the “strange,” “crazy,” “improbable” call he felt to be a prophet, which he has sought to flesh out in classic prophetic roles—as an interrogator, a protester, a practitioner, and an inspirator—in contemporary prophetic contexts characterized by poverty and violence. The paradoxical part explores Andrews’s making and unmaking as a minor prophet, critically constructing and deconstructing the more confrontational aspects of the prophetic roles he has played in order to be able to practice more sensitive pastoral care.

No Good Men Among the Living

No Good Men Among the Living
Author: Anand Gopal
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805091793

Told through the lives of three Afghans, the stunning tale of how the United States had triumph in sight in Afghanistan--and then brought the Taliban back from the dead In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America's war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander, who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent; a US-backed warlord, who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power; and a village housewife trapped between the two sides, who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could in fact have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the US invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively, the Taliban ceased to exist--yet the Americans were unwilling to accept such a turnaround. Instead, driven by false intelligence from their allies and an unyielding mandate to fight terrorism, American forces continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day. With its intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan, Gopal's thoroughly original reporting lays bare the workings of America's longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A heartbreaking story of mistakes and misdeeds, No Good Men Among the Living challenges our usual perceptions of the Afghan conflict, its victims, and its supposed winners.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan
Author: Thomas Barfield
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2012-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691154414

Traces the political history of Afghanistan from the sixteenth century to the present, looking at what has united the people as well as the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

An Enemy We Created

An Enemy We Created
Author: Alex Strick van Linschoten
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199927316

Originally published: [London]: C. Hurst & Co., 2011.

Making Friends Among Taliban (Audio DL)

Making Friends Among Taliban (Audio DL)
Author: Jonathan Larson
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-11-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9780836196870

In a remote valley north of Kabul in August 2010, American peacemaker Dan Terry and nine other aid workers were attacked and killed in an event that made worldwide headlines. Why would one man take his family, follow faith and calling into the political and religious maelstrom of Afghanistan, and--through years of war and strife--believe he could make a difference? Making Friends Book Trailer In Making Friends among the Taliban, childhood friend Jonathan Larson retraces Dan's nearly forty years in Afghanistan and, through interviews and eye witness accounts, relays Dan's incredible way of daily living. Facing famine, poverty, prison, and rifle muzzles--and across three decades of kings, the Red Army, warlords, the Taliban, and the American-led coalition--Dan found improbable friendships across the front lines of conflict and inspired small Afghan communities to find a better way of life. This inspirational narrative of Dan's life and friendships offers a model for living authentically wherever we are. Sample the audiobook Read a sample chapter here. Click here for a free study guide. Jonathan Larson and others share more captivating stories from Dan Terry's life, in the complementary documentary, Weaving Life: The Life and Death of Peacemaker Dan Terry, available here.