BOOK REVIEW: My Life with the Taliban

‘My Life with the Taliban’ is the autobiography (written in 21 small chapters along with an epilogue and assisted by Character List in the beginning and a Chronolgyy and Glossory at the end) of Abdul Salam Zaeef who was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan in 2001 and one of the most well-known faces of the movement following the 9-11 attacks and a principal actor in its domestic and foreign affairs.. The book has been translated for the first time from the Pashto, which shares more than a personal history of an unusual life. The recent history of Afghanistan is the focus of this traumatic life story. It is an account about how a poor village boy ended up being the ambassador of Afghanistan to Pakistan, and thus being kidnapped; in defiance to all human and international conventions, and remained under arrest in Guantanamo, returning to Kabul in 2005 as a so- called reconciled Taliban to be used by the Afghan government as a conduit for talks. There he regrew his long black beard, acquired an iPhone and wrote this memoir.