A Book About War-Torn Afghanistan That Reads Like a Novel
Afghanistan has largely disappeared from the news since the Taliban took over in August 2021, in a victory that restored the restrictive Islamic movement to power, humiliated the United States and crushed Afghan women who had embraced the Western notion that they could follow their dreams.
In light of this neglect, Asne Seierstad's new book, 'The Afghans,' is a valuable addition to the canon of literature on the country. A Norwegian journalist who has published several other books set in war-torn countries, including the best-selling 'The Bookseller of Kabul' (2003), Seierstad writes compellingly, with an eye for the details and dialogue that make her subjects come to life. She manages to achieve a rare intimacy, something that is tough in a book about Afghanistan, a place where outsiders are seldom allowed inside homes and most men don't speak the names of their wives publicly. But her book also raises questions about how she constructs her narrative nonfiction.
At nearly 430 pages, 'The Afghans' is a sprawling epic focused largely on three figures whose lives Seierstad recounts with vivid granularity: Jamila, a high-powered women's advocate; Bashir, a Taliban commander; and Ariana, a young law student (Seierstad has changed her name to protect her privacy). Through their stories, the book also traces the country's complicated recent history — from the Soviet invasion of 1979 through an American-backed insurgency, civil war, the initial rise of the Taliban, the return of the United States and its allies after 9/11, and, finally, the restoration of the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
For nearly 20 years, between 2001 and 2021, Western intervention created a unique laboratory in Afghanistan's major cities, primarily in Kabul, the capital, for testing what a version of democracy could mean in a country where the Taliban had banned women from the public sphere and required everyone to conform to their vision of a strict Islamic way of life. Women shed burqas and joined the work force. Boys dressed in Western clothes, watched Bollywood movies and hoped to build a new Afghanistan. Girls started school.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
38 minutes ago
- Fox News
Netanyahu sends message to people of Iran as country faces water crisis
Iran is facing an intense water crisis, but help could soon come from an unlikely source – provided the "tyrants" are out of power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a message to the people of Iran just days after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned against excessive water usage, saying the country is on the brink of severe shortages. Iran has faced electricity, gas and water shortages during peak-demand months due to mismanagement and overconsumption, according to Reuters. The outlet, citing the semi-official Tasnim news agency, reported that severe shortages could hit the country as soon as next month. "The thirst for water in Iran is only matched by the thirst for freedom," Netanyahu said in a video addressing the people of Iran. Netanyahu compared the regime's treatment of its citizens to Israel's struggle against it, saying, "Your dictators impose tyranny and poverty upon you – just as they impose war on us." While he stopped short of explicitly calling for revolution or regime change, the Israeli leader dangled a clear incentive for Iranians to rise up: remove the regime, and Israel will help end the country's water crisis. "So here is the great news: The moment your country is free, Israel's top water experts will flood into every Iranian city bringing cutting-edge technology and know-how. We will help Iran recycle water; we'll help Iran desalinate water." Iran expert and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk Lisa Daftari said Netanyahu's message was "a clear policy signal wrapped in humanitarian aid." "He told them that Israel has the technology, the expertise, and the willingness to end their water crisis, but that this help will flow only when Iran is no longer ruled by the current regime. It was a direct link between political change and tangible improvement in daily life, acknowledging the daily struggles of the Iranian people while putting the responsibility and the opportunity squarely in their hands," Daftari told Fox News Digital. "By tying water to freedom, he's making the idea of resistance more immediate and personal. It is a nod to the commonalities shared by the Israeli and Iranian people who just want to live normal lives away from radicalism," she added. In June, Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war after Jerusalem acted against Tehran's nuclear program. The U.S. eventually joined, aiding Israel in destroying nuclear facilities, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. After the war, the Iranian regime intensified its crackdown on civilians. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Iranian police claimed to have arrested as many as 21,000 people during the conflict. Despite the arrests, there have been no credible reports of mass demonstrations or coup attempts. Netanyahu is not the only one criticizing the Iranian regime; exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has also condemned its handling of the nation's water supply. "This regime has driven Iran's water, land, air, skies, lives, and wealth to the edge of destruction. Iran's rivers are dry, its soil eroding, its ground sinking, its air polluted, its skies in the hands of foreign forces, its economy in free fall, its people's homes without water or electricity, and their lives held hostage to the sectarian delusions of an anti-Iranian regime and its foolish leader," Pahlavi wrote on X. In July, Pezeshkian rejected a government proposal to impose a midweek day off or a one-week summer vacation to curb shortages. He said "closing down is a cover-up and not a solution to the water shortage problem," according to Reuters.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Beneath Trump's China truce, a race to find pressure points in high stakes game of ‘3D chess'
The United States and China have settled into a steady state of pragmatic, if uneasy, détente. Tariffs sit at unprecedented, but not economically debilitating levels. Three rounds of bilateral talks have steadily developed and expanded, with a fourth expected this fall. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are circling an in person meeting before the end of the year. 'I don't think anyone wants to see those tariffs snap back to 84%,' US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said ahead of Trump's decision to sign off on a 90-day extension of the trade truce agreement put into place in May. But beneath the surface, Trump's trade war has dramatically accelerated efforts to find and demonstrate an ability to exploit vulnerabilities that will define the future of the relationship and shape the potential conflict for years ahead. China's grip on rare-earth elements, critical for electronics, defense equipment and other crucial products, has triggered an urgent scramble across the US government and its allies. Despite an agreement that China would unlock the supply of rare earths, US officials and corporate executives with knowledge of the acquisition and export process say there remain difficulties for critical industries, exceedingly granular demands for corporate data and a seemingly implicit effort to choke off some national security related purchases. 'It was a wakeup call to the world,' a senior White House officials said. 'That was a major thing in world geopolitics.' Xi's ability the choke off western access to essential components has become the dominant topic of discussion during all three rounds of bilateral talks so far. 'We're focused on making sure that the flow of magnets from China to the United States and the and the adjacent supply chain can flow as freely as as it did before the control,' said Greer, leading up to Trump's extension of the pause, as US and Chinese continued intensive technical discussions behind the scenes. 'And I'd say we're about halfway there.' At the same time, US technological advantages have sparked sharp rebukes and a push to rapidly ramp up capabilities in Beijing. The United States also probed clear choke points in supply for industries critical to China's economy. America imposed export controls for software tools, aerospace equipment and the sale of ethane, a major petroleum byproduct for China. The actions weren't heavily publicized – most of the coverage came from corporate securities filings or leaks from frenzied executives. Some of those executives were Republican donors, people familiar with the matter said, and raised concerns directly to Washington. The lobbying appeared to have little effect, as US officials leveraged the economic pressure as an unequivocal counter to China's rare-earth actions in the second round of bilateral talks. They were maintained in the immediate aftermath as US officials continued to press for quicker action on the matter. Shortly before the July 4th holiday, US Commerce officials notified major ethane producers the export controls had been rescinded. 'I am informing you that effective as of the date of this letter, the license requirements set forth in my June 1, 2025 and June 25, 2025 letters are hereby rescinded,' a top export administration official wrote in the notification letter sent July 2 to Enterprise Products Partners. Over the last several weeks, Trump clinched a rolling series of bilateral trade frameworks that have included explicit commitments to shore up US supply chain vulnerabilities and implicit agreements to shift production, supply chains and security assets away from Chinese influence. New penalties for 'transshipped' products – an additional 40% tariff on goods shipped from a high-tariff country to a lower tariff country prior to export to the US – have been put into place, with new regulations expanding their reach forthcoming. At the same time, China has grown more aggressive in pushing against regional players in territorial disputes as US officials have used Trump's brute-force tariff approach to build a nascent but deeply consequential new alignment that breaks from the global trading system the president has long pilloried. Even student visas for Chinese citizens have been leveraged for effect. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump's lead negotiator in three rounds of trade talks with China, has told associates it's the equivalent of 'three-dimensional chess.' Bessent insists that the US now holds a clear advantage – a message he said he delivered directly to his Chinese counterparts last month during two days of negotiations in Stockholm, Sweden. 'I just said the world's with us now,' 'It looked in April, May like that the US was alone against the world,' Bessent said during a policy event with Breitbart news shortly after he returned from the third round of US-China trade talks. 'Now that we've done deals with our top trading partners, we have a lot more leverage.' The near-term goal, US officials say, is to utilize any leverage to accomplish Trump's overarching desire to secure a major trade deal with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping. Trump's trade agreements sharply diverge from any traditional 'trade deal' format and each remain devoid of the granular detail that historically takes years for negotiators to hammer out. There are significant questions about how much of what Trump has announced will actually become reality, according to diplomats and former trade officials, though administration officials say the threat of future tariffs serve as the ultimate dispute mechanism. But the decidedly Trumpian bespoke nature of the deals includes a series of significant commitments from countries like Japan and South Korea to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to the US for the explicit purpose of shoring up US supply chain vulnerabilities. Bessent, in an interview on Fox Business this week, described the unprecedented arrangement designed to use foreign capital for investments entirely subject to Trump's discretion as a way 'other countries are, in essence, providing us with a sovereign wealth fund.' 'We will be able to direct them as we re-shore these critical industries,' Bessent said. 'We are trying to de-risk the US economy.' Trump and his advisers have framed the size and structure of the commitments as a way for foreign partners to 'pay down' or 'buy out' of a higher tariff rate in bilateral talks. That option, however, is not on the table for Xi or his negotiators. 'The funds from the buyout are going to go to critical industries that we need to reshore,' Bessent said. 'And a lot of those need to be reshored away from China.' Still, the Trump's version of trade deals have created friction with the very partners viewed as a necessity in any new trade alliance to counter China's economic strength. Japanese officials have raised concerns with the way the structure and delivery have been framed by US officials, which in turn created domestic backlash for the critical Indo Pacific ally. 'The other party is not a normal person,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said of Trump earlier this month to members of parliament demanding details of the US-Japan agreement. 'In negotiations like this, implementation is far more difficult than reaching an agreement.' Ishiba's comment wasn't framed as a criticism, but instead a candid expression of reality. 'It's a feature, not a bug,' a senior administration official said of how the administration took the comments. 'He's stating a fact, and one that we use to our advantage.' But the rapidly evolving tools deployed across economic, security and diplomatic actions – since Trump initially triggered a de facto trade embargo between the two nations – has laid bare a far more existential reality: Trump needs China. The bilateral agreement to extend the temporary trade war truce this week came after a third round of negotiations framed by both sides as positive. Trump's advisers regularly cite his 'excellent' personal relationship with Xi and continue to weigh the possibility of a face-to-face meeting in China later this year. But, to accomplish that peace, Trump gave the green light for US companies to sell less-advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, drawing the ire of hawks within his own party. 'If he doesn't reverse this decision, it may be remembered as the moment when America surrendered the technological advantage needed to bring manufacturing home and keep our nation secure,' Matt Pottinger, Trump's first term deputy national security adviser, wrote this week with Liza Tobin, who served as China director on the National Security Council in during Trump's first term and under former President Joe Biden. Trump officials counter that the chips represent lower-tier technology and the highest end of the US chip stack isn't will remain blocked. More critically, they say, Chinese access to the chips would anchor the rapidly developing global AI race to US technology at the same time Trump, in a series of Oval Office meetings and calls over the last several weeks the CEOs of the largest tech firms in the world, has offered exemptions from forthcoming semiconductor tariffs in exchange for commitments to manufacture in the US. 'His objective is to get semiconductor manufacturing done here of our best technology and that way we can control it the best,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week. 'That's the strategy.'
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Beneath Trump's China truce, a race to find pressure points in high stakes game of ‘3D chess'
The United States and China have settled into a steady state of pragmatic, if uneasy, détente. Tariffs sit at unprecedented, but not economically debilitating levels. Three rounds of bilateral talks have steadily developed and expanded, with a fourth expected this fall. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are circling an in person meeting before the end of the year. 'I don't think anyone wants to see those tariffs snap back to 84%,' US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said ahead of Trump's decision to sign off on a 90-day extension of the trade truce agreement put into place in May. But beneath the surface, Trump's trade war has dramatically accelerated efforts to find and demonstrate an ability to exploit vulnerabilities that will define the future of the relationship and shape the potential conflict for years ahead. China's grip on rare-earth elements, critical for electronics, defense equipment and other crucial products, has triggered an urgent scramble across the US government and its allies. Despite an agreement that China would unlock the supply of rare earths, US officials and corporate executives with knowledge of the acquisition and export process say there remain difficulties for critical industries, exceedingly granular demands for corporate data and a seemingly implicit effort to choke off some national security related purchases. 'It was a wakeup call to the world,' a senior White House officials said. 'That was a major thing in world geopolitics.' Xi's ability the choke off western access to essential components has become the dominant topic of discussion during all three rounds of bilateral talks so far. 'We're focused on making sure that the flow of magnets from China to the United States and the and the adjacent supply chain can flow as freely as as it did before the control,' said Greer, leading up to Trump's extension of the pause, as US and Chinese continued intensive technical discussions behind the scenes. 'And I'd say we're about halfway there.' At the same time, US technological advantages have sparked sharp rebukes and a push to rapidly ramp up capabilities in Beijing. The United States also probed clear choke points in supply for industries critical to China's economy. America imposed export controls for software tools, aerospace equipment and the sale of ethane, a major petroleum byproduct for China. The actions weren't heavily publicized – most of the coverage came from corporate securities filings or leaks from frenzied executives. Some of those executives were Republican donors, people familiar with the matter said, and raised concerns directly to Washington. The lobbying appeared to have little effect, as US officials leveraged the economic pressure as an unequivocal counter to China's rare-earth actions in the second round of bilateral talks. They were maintained in the immediate aftermath as US officials continued to press for quicker action on the matter. Shortly before the July 4th holiday, US Commerce officials notified major ethane producers the export controls had been rescinded. 'I am informing you that effective as of the date of this letter, the license requirements set forth in my June 1, 2025 and June 25, 2025 letters are hereby rescinded,' a top export administration official wrote in the notification letter sent July 2 to Enterprise Products Partners. Over the last several weeks, Trump clinched a rolling series of bilateral trade frameworks that have included explicit commitments to shore up US supply chain vulnerabilities and implicit agreements to shift production, supply chains and security assets away from Chinese influence. New penalties for 'transshipped' products – an additional 40% tariff on goods shipped from a high-tariff country to a lower tariff country prior to export to the US – have been put into place, with new regulations expanding their reach forthcoming. At the same time, China has grown more aggressive in pushing against regional players in territorial disputes as US officials have used Trump's brute-force tariff approach to build a nascent but deeply consequential new alignment that breaks from the global trading system the president has long pilloried. Even student visas for Chinese citizens have been leveraged for effect. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump's lead negotiator in three rounds of trade talks with China, has told associates it's the equivalent of 'three-dimensional chess.' Bessent insists that the US now holds a clear advantage – a message he said he delivered directly to his Chinese counterparts last month during two days of negotiations in Stockholm, Sweden. 'I just said the world's with us now,' 'It looked in April, May like that the US was alone against the world,' Bessent said during a policy event with Breitbart news shortly after he returned from the third round of US-China trade talks. 'Now that we've done deals with our top trading partners, we have a lot more leverage.' The near-term goal, US officials say, is to utilize any leverage to accomplish Trump's overarching desire to secure a major trade deal with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping. Trump's trade agreements sharply diverge from any traditional 'trade deal' format and each remain devoid of the granular detail that historically takes years for negotiators to hammer out. There are significant questions about how much of what Trump has announced will actually become reality, according to diplomats and former trade officials, though administration officials say the threat of future tariffs serve as the ultimate dispute mechanism. But the decidedly Trumpian bespoke nature of the deals includes a series of significant commitments from countries like Japan and South Korea to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to the US for the explicit purpose of shoring up US supply chain vulnerabilities. Bessent, in an interview on Fox Business this week, described the unprecedented arrangement designed to use foreign capital for investments entirely subject to Trump's discretion as a way 'other countries are, in essence, providing us with a sovereign wealth fund.' 'We will be able to direct them as we re-shore these critical industries,' Bessent said. 'We are trying to de-risk the US economy.' Trump and his advisers have framed the size and structure of the commitments as a way for foreign partners to 'pay down' or 'buy out' of a higher tariff rate in bilateral talks. That option, however, is not on the table for Xi or his negotiators. 'The funds from the buyout are going to go to critical industries that we need to reshore,' Bessent said. 'And a lot of those need to be reshored away from China.' Still, the Trump's version of trade deals have created friction with the very partners viewed as a necessity in any new trade alliance to counter China's economic strength. Japanese officials have raised concerns with the way the structure and delivery have been framed by US officials, which in turn created domestic backlash for the critical Indo Pacific ally. 'The other party is not a normal person,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said of Trump earlier this month to members of parliament demanding details of the US-Japan agreement. 'In negotiations like this, implementation is far more difficult than reaching an agreement.' Ishiba's comment wasn't framed as a criticism, but instead a candid expression of reality. 'It's a feature, not a bug,' a senior administration official said of how the administration took the comments. 'He's stating a fact, and one that we use to our advantage.' But the rapidly evolving tools deployed across economic, security and diplomatic actions – since Trump initially triggered a de facto trade embargo between the two nations – has laid bare a far more existential reality: Trump needs China. The bilateral agreement to extend the temporary trade war truce this week came after a third round of negotiations framed by both sides as positive. Trump's advisers regularly cite his 'excellent' personal relationship with Xi and continue to weigh the possibility of a face-to-face meeting in China later this year. But, to accomplish that peace, Trump gave the green light for US companies to sell less-advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, drawing the ire of hawks within his own party. 'If he doesn't reverse this decision, it may be remembered as the moment when America surrendered the technological advantage needed to bring manufacturing home and keep our nation secure,' Matt Pottinger, Trump's first term deputy national security adviser, wrote this week with Liza Tobin, who served as China director on the National Security Council in during Trump's first term and under former President Joe Biden. Trump officials counter that the chips represent lower-tier technology and the highest end of the US chip stack isn't will remain blocked. More critically, they say, Chinese access to the chips would anchor the rapidly developing global AI race to US technology at the same time Trump, in a series of Oval Office meetings and calls over the last several weeks the CEOs of the largest tech firms in the world, has offered exemptions from forthcoming semiconductor tariffs in exchange for commitments to manufacture in the US. 'His objective is to get semiconductor manufacturing done here of our best technology and that way we can control it the best,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week. 'That's the strategy.'
