Taliban: War & Religion in Afghanistan

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Taliban have become the focal point of the West's difficult relations with the Islamic world. This informative & readable guide to the labyrinth of contemporary Afghanistan is useful for both general readers & academics alike. Helps us understand what has been happening inside the country, the nature of radical Islamic movements, & the very difficult questions ahead which war cannot answer. It is particularly good on the equivocal role played by the Americans. The US tacitly backed the ''Pax Talibana.'' Their hope was that regional stability would allow a US company to build a pipeline to bring Central Asia's energy reserves via Afghanistan, rather than through the territory of its old enemy, Iran.