My Life with the Taliban

Abstract

‘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.