After the Taliban: Life and Security in Rural Afghanistan.

• Author: Phadnis, Rohina
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

AFTER THE TALIBAN: LIFE AND SECURITY IN RURAL AFGHANISTAN

Neamatollah Nojumi, Dyan Mazurana, Elizabeth Stites

(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 309 pages.

While talk of troop levels and the greater geopolitical game consume much of the current assessment of Afghanistan, After the Taliban uncovers the challenges to basic human security among the country's rural population, a potentially crucial issue for the region's future. The book is a result of the work of research scholars and academics from Tufts University and George Mason University who conducted field work in 2003 and 2004 focusing on Afghanistan's Badghis, Balkh, Herat, Kabul, Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces. The focus of the book is on security, livelihoods and various systems of justice in Afghanistan. The writers tease out various threads of development that, woven together, could support a strong society if properly addressed: health care, civil society, education, family structure and economic development.

Though Nojumi et al. offer few surprises regarding the problems faced by rural Afghans, the authors explore lesser known aspects of the society. They then effectively assess how a variety of social factors have fluctuated, for better and for worse, after the fall of the Taliban. One example is the practice of badal, in which women are exchanged in marriage between families to...