John Follain

This was a difficult book for me to rate as it left me torn.
On the one hand as a person who is an empath and has a terror of torture, I felt I should have felt worse than I ended up feeling about the entire subject matter.

What bothered me a lot was the constant murder, torture, rape, etc of women, girls and children there that makes them total victims. Yet .................they do the same to their own children. They 'marry' off the children at a very young age, often to much older men for a show more profitable dowry, without any consent of the daughter and she does not get to see the man until the wedding day itself.

Virginity is prized nearly above everything, so they keep that miserable tradition of showing the bloodied cloth after the first sexual encounter and heaven help her if it can't be produced. Women are illiterate there, have no job skills, and are beaten regularly.

So while many people feel that women there are victims, and naturally they are, no doubt, yet, they seem to be swallowed up by a religion and culture that allows them to marry their young daughters off, turn her into a non stop baby machine and get beaten.

Naturally I am thinking and evaluating everything thru Western eyes and thoughts, and I stand by that. No mother in her right mind, and I don't care where she comes from should be ok with making her 12 year old daughter marry a stranger of 40 or more.

Time magazine rated Afghanistan as the worst place on earth for women, and after this, The land of Blue Burquas, and Kabul Beauty School, I agree 1,000%.

It also seems that going to an arena to watch the Taliban cut off people's hands and bringing their children to watch, smile and clap over it is serial killer-psychopath territory. show less

Handling & Tema 5 /5
Karaktärerna: 4/5
Miljöbeskrivning: 5/5
Språk och berättarkonst: 5/5

Gudfadern av Mario Puzo är min favorit bok som jag har läst flera gånger. Har alltid varit intresserad av den Italienska maffian,. Tillskillad från Mario Puzos böcker är detta ingen roman utan fakta, men boken är lika spännande och svår att släppa ifrån sig

I had seen documentaries on Carlos and read some other books about Carlos but I don’t think I ever had read what the eventual outcome was for Carlos. This book provides that information. I hesitate to call it an ending because although Carlos is currently incarcerated in France, he will be eligible for parole in 2020.

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan national who inspired by all of the student uprisings and nationalists movements in the 1970’s, joined show more Palestinian terrorist training organizations in order to foment what he called an International Socialist Revolution.

What was most surprising was how little success he actually had – he caused a lot of injury, death and havoc without achieving much in the way of personal or political change. I guess given the legend, I expected so much more. It seems like a life wasted since he spent almost all of it on the run.

In the end, much of the book shows how political machinations and considerations behind the scenes play such an important role in how terrorists are handled. For example, while Carlos was in Khartoum, France wanted to extradite him or grab him but due to considerations and relationships with the Sudanese government, it took quite some time to happen.

Carlos also was sheltered by East Germany, Syria and Libya during the Cold War years but as the Iron Curtain fell and relations thawed between East and West, he found it increasingly more difficult to find places to hide. It is amazing that he managed to evade capture while at the same time living a jet setting lifestyle.

A good, easy to digest book that provides insights into terrorism and the reasons why individuals choose to involve themselves in it. It also gives succinct answers to why releases of hostages and political negotiations take so long and are so complicated. What really hit home for me is how little value is placed on victims and how difficult it is for victims to get any justice. The book outlined how utterly devastated victims ended up: economically, physically, mentally and emotionally.

For those interested in this topic and this individual, this book is a great, easy, succinct biography. I enjoyed it and it did provide me with some new insights and the story….so far. show less

Zoya's mother was a member of RAWA, and her father of another under ground group. They were both killed when she was a girl, and she eventually became a member of RAWA itself. She was born about 1979,and she grows up under President Najibullah ("the puppet regime," as she calls it.), then witnesses the Taliban taking power. An interesting note; in her book the energy the Soviets spent in fighting in Afghanistan is linked to the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1989. RAWA sent her abroad to show more speak on its behalf, and she met her coathors in Rome. I wish more had been said about how they collaborated on the book; you sense that she told her story, they asked questions and wrote it. It's a very human story. In it one gets the sense that RAWA actually functions in a similar way to the madrassas, or Taliban schools, in that they attempt to become replacement parents to the orphans or students, and are definitely teaching them a certain way to look at the world. They are also indoctrinating warriors, not just educating children. Nonviolent warriors, but warriors just the same. It's not that I don't agree with the cause, as I understand it, it's just sad. show less