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Shortly after the fall of the Taliban in
2001, Christina Lamb met an
incredible group of women writers in Herat who had risked their
lives
under the Taliban to carry on their writing. The plight of Afghan
women
had been made one of the main issues in the fight against the Taliban
under the new Western-backed administration. Yet today, five and
a half
years on, few Afghan women have cast off the burqa that became a
symbol
in the west of Taliban repression. Last year one of those women
poets of
Herat was found beaten to death by her husband. Two popular female
presenters have been murdered and Afghanistan’s most outspoken
female
MP lives in hiding and has been suspended from Parliament. Women
trying
to commit suicide by setting themselves alight is alarmingly common.
Christina Lamb, bestselling author and award-winning journalist,
will talk
about what went wrong, why the Taliban have returned, what the situation
is for Afghan women today, and how political leaders forgot the
real frontline
in the war on terror.
Christina Lamb was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the
British
Press Awards and won the BBC What the Papers Say Awards this year
(for
The Sunday Times). She is the author of The Sewing Circles of Herat;
My Afghan Years).
Asia House members and concs £4, Non-members £7
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