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Story Archives of 'taliban'
Drinking Tea with the Taliban
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, June 16, 2009.Nicholas Schmidle was a tall, blond, 27-year-old-aspiring journalist when he traveled to Pakistan on a fellowship. Newly married and adventurous, he learned Urdu and set out on a two-year journey.
In his travels, he met radical jihadists and leaders, visited a Taliban camp in the Swat Valley and witnessed a public lashing. He watched a country in transition as President Musharraf's regime grasped for control, and a nation in turmoil after the assasination of Benazir Bhutto.
All this before he was swiftly kicked out for filing stories on the growing power of the Taliban in the Swat Valley and tribal and border regions. These are precisely the areas where the Pakistani military is now six weeks into a campaign against Taliban and Islamic jihadi forces.
Nicholas Schmidle tells his story in a new book, To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan. He joins us from The New America Foundation, where he is an American Strategy Fellow.
(Photo courtesy Al Jazeera English via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Women and the Taliban
By Naheed Mustafa on Monday, June 15, 2009.
As protests continue in Iran, officials in Afghanistan are warning of impending violence there. In the face of US troop reinforcements and this August’s presidential elections, officials believe Taliban rebels may try to turn this summer into the bloodiest yet.
