Analysis: Another book to kill for? by Khaled Ahmed

Analysis: Another book to kill for? by Khaled Ahmed
Analysis: Another book to kill for? by Khaled Ahmed

Another bombshell will have to be endured by the national Taliban narrative with 'Taliban and anti-Taliban' by Farhat Taj (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011), a Research Fellow at Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, Norway, an MPhil in Gender and Development from the University of Bergen, Norway. The book demolishes some of the basic assumptions about terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and challenges several authors on their earlier findings.
Taj says her book is based on '2,000 face-to-face interviews, discussions and seminars with people across FATA and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province for two years'. The interviews have been conducted with 'tribal leaders, leaders and volunteers of anti-Taliban lashkars, khasadars and officials recently retired from the political administrations in FATA, daily-wagers and jobless people, internally displaced people (IDPs) from FATA - displaced as a result of military operations in the area - and people hosting the IDPs in their houses on humanitarian grounds or tribal and kinship basis'.