Taliban Poetry to Be Published

An anthology of Taliban poetry will be published soon for English speakers.

From an article on the Huffington Post...

Many of the works in "Poetry of the Taliban" center on the movement's campaign to expel foreign forces from their territory, with angry battle anthems or mournful dirges devoted to civilian casualties. But others touch on themes of religious devotion, nostalgia, or even love.

Alex Strick van Linschoten, one of the anthology's coeditors, said he had collected the 240-odd poems off the Internet and in the field – not for novelty's sake, "but as a way of understanding who the Taliban are."

"This is one of the big problems of the conflict, which is one of making decisions without properly understanding the circumstances of the people around which these decisions are being made."

Although the Taliban's Web presence is closely monitored, few people showed much interest in the group's poetry. Strick van Linschoten suggested that was a mistake.

"The only way you're going to understand who the Taliban are is reading and understanding what they have to say," he said.