Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

As a women's health physician who tried for two years to improve the high rates of maternal and child mortality in Afghanistan, a feminist from a neighboring country, and a fluent Dari speaker, I am very invested in the lives of Afghan women in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Ann Jones' beautifully written Kabul in Winter offers a bleak but insightful view of women's rights in modern Kabul. Although she does not hide her disdain for President Bush and his policies, Jones offers a balanced, anecdote-driven picture of what Afghanistan's capital is like today, especially for its most vulnerable citizens (prisoners, street workers, suicide attempters, victims of violence, child brides, and students among others). Through her own humanitarian work, she accesses intimate Afghan women's stories that most non-Dari-speaking expatriates in this highly segregated society will never be able to hear. As an expert on violence against women, Jones does not hesitate to address the most horrifying cases of human rights abuses against Afghan women and girls. Though she often criticizes the Western-funded NGOs (mine included), she does so fairly and with a mountain of well-researched evidence to support her claims. Kabul in Winter will often make you want to weep and sometimes it will make you laugh, but you will come away with an accurate picture of what is happening in post-9/11 Kabul. This book is a must read for any humanitarian aid worker who lives in Afghanistan and beyond. For those hopeful about the changes following the US-led war on Afghanistan, this book will be a disappointment, but you will not come away unmoved. For those who enjoyed Rory Stewart's The Places In Between, Ann Jones' Kabul in Winter offers a perfect complement-- an up-close and indepth study of how Afghanistan's women have fared since the Taliban were thrown out of power by the West.

This is the angriest book I've read about women in Islamic countries since Geraldine Brooks' "Nine Parts of Desire." Author Ann Jones, who has written before of violence against women, finds no reason to applaud the so-called liberation of women in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where traditional ultraconservative attitudes toward women (which she points out have no basis in Islam itself) continue to prevail. Considered property to be bought and sold, they have lives that often lead to child marriages, domestic violence, prison, murder, and suicide. A woman at odds with either her husband's or her father's family, the author argues, is as good as dead. She often holds accountable the often glamorized mujahadin, who fought the Soviets for a decade with arms from the West and then, after driving them out, went on to destroy much of what was left of the country with a long civil war. While a quick summary of this book may make it sound extremist and politically radical, the evidence that Jones offers to support her claims quickly dismisses doubt. Her visits to women's prisons and hospital wards and her analysis of the judicial system that doesn't acknowledge the concept of women's rights reveal in story after story how women's lives are circumscribed by a rigidly enforced patriarchy. While the appearances of social change - women and girls going to schools, freedom from wearing burqas - are trumpeted in the western news media, Jones' experience indicates otherwise. Meanwhile, as she describes in the closing section of the book, the international aid efforts create their own high-priced counterproductivity. A reader is likely to be left with illusions about the West's beneficence totally upended, with statistics that show how 86% of U.S. aid is spent on military contracts and expensive living allowances for American aid workers living abroad. The lion's share of this financial outpouring goes to a handful of Washington's favorite vendors, often without competitive bidding. Finally, and amazingly, only $8.00 of the average American's yearly federal taxes actually go to real foreign aid, much of which is spent on projects of questionable value - like the mass production of textbooks originally developed for use in Taliban schools. Definitely worth reading as an alternative to the official view from Washington and the news media. Also recommended: Sarah Chayes' "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban"

Ann Jones takes up the human side of the war in Afghanistan. She deftly intertwines history with her own experience teaching English in Kabul and writes a book that is both gripping and profoundly moving. It also tackles the vexing issue of humanitarian aid and why sometimes our best efforts don't succeed. Winter in Kabul is a brave book.

Ann Jones empowers the reader by educating our minds and opening our hearts. The author is a master at research, detail, and literary portraiture. I was compelled to read this book because pretending its content doesn't exist is impossible. Kabul in Winter is essential reading for anyone who thinks of themselves as a humanitarian.

This book is definitely NOT for the faint of heart, or for true-believers in America-the-good or West-good, East-bad. Jones takes on institutions that have not only failed Afghanistan and failed women, but whose Machievelian hand can be seen in the deterioration of governments all over the globe whose first concern is not America's. She's done her homework, indeed, put her life on the line to do it, and this volume, if you have the courage to read it, will enlighten you in the most unexpected ways. I learned a lot from this most fascinating and readable book.