My Life with the Taliban
In the Name of All�h, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
This �freedom� put a proud people in chains
And turned free men into slaves
�Independence� made us weak
And slaughtered us
In the name of kindness
This is democracy by the whip
And the fear of chains
With a whirlwind at its core.
This is the autobiography of Abdul Salam Zaeef, a senior former member
of the Taliban who was not only one of its founding members but also
spent several years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. His memoirs,
translated from Pashto, are more than just the story of his
extraordinary life: they offer a challenging counter-narrative to the
standard accounts of Afghanistan since 1979.
Zaeef describes growing up in rural poverty in Kandahar province. Both
of his parents died at an early age, and the Russian invasion of 1979
forced him to flee to Pakistan. He started fighting the jihad in 1983,
during which time he was associated with many major figures in the
anti-Soviet resistance, including the current Taliban head Mullah
Mohammad Omar.
http://www.archive.org/download/LifeWithTheTaliban/LifeWithTheTaliban.pdf