I is for Infidel From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan

by Gannon, Kathy

• ISBN13: 9781586484521
• ISBN10: 1586484524
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-05
• Publisher: PublicAffairs

Summary

In early 1986 Kathy Gannon sold pretty much everything she owned (which wasn't much) to pursue her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had the world to choose from: she chose Afghanistan. She went to witness the final humiliation of a superpower in terminal decline as the Soviet Union was defeated by the mujahedeen. What she didn't know then was that Afghanistan would remain her focus for the next eighteen years. Gannon, uniquely among Western journalists, witnessed Afghanistan's tragic opera: the final collapse of communism followed by bitterly feuding warlords being driven from power by an Islamicist organization called the Taliban; the subsequent arrival of Arabs and exiles, among them Osama bin Laden; and the transformation of the country into the staging post for a global jihad.Gannon observed something else as well: the terrible, unforeseen consequences of Western intervention, the ongoing suffering of ordinary Afghans, and the ability of the most corrupt and depraved of the warlords to reinvent and reinsert themselves into successive governments.I is for Infidelis the story of a country told by a writer with a uniquely intimate knowledge of its people and recent history. It will transform readers' understanding of Afghanistan, and inspire awe at the resilience of its people in the face of the monstrous warmongers we have to some extent created there.

Author Biography

Kathy Gannon, born in Timmins, Canada, was AP correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1986-2005. In 2004 she was the Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work has been published in Foreign Affairs and the New Yorker. She is now based in Tehran where she lives with her husband.

Table of Contents

Map of Afghanistan	viii
Cast of Characters	ix
List of Photographs	xi
PROLOGUE Friends or Foes	xiii
CHAPTER ONE The Way It Was	1	(20)
CHAPTER TWO Inside the Taliban	21	(16)
CHAPTER THREE The Beginning of the End	37	(14)
CHAPTER FOUR The Moderate Taliban	51	(16)
CHAPTER FIVE The Taliban Bloodied	67	(16)
CHAPTER SIX The Last Days of the Taliban	83	(26)
CHAPTER SEVEN After the Taliban	109	(18)
CHAPTER EIGHT The Hidden Face of Pakistan's Military	127	(22)
CHAPTER NINE Ties That Bind	149	(16)
EPILOGUE Four Years Later	165	(10)
Acknowledgments	175	(4)
Index	179