Contested Terrain: Reflections with Afghan Women Leaders Paperback – October 14, 2014

I recently finished reading this compelling book and could not put it down – a very fine academic treatise, seamlessly interwoven with stories of two Afghan women leaders, Jamila and Marzia, with immeasurable struggles trying to help lift their country from the rubbles of destruction. Highly applicable academia!I could not help thinking that many of the issues addressed in the book apply to similar struggles in other hot beds in the Middle East such as Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and even Syria and Lebanon.I was touched by the fact that I got to know Jamila and Marzia and more so the author on a personal level. I am not an academician or an expert in women studies but being from the Middle-East, a refreshing voice kept creeping up throughout the book saying: finally, feminism I can relate to and something I can bite into. I thoroughly liked the last chapter that offered concrete solutions, among them: A balance between central and local controls, ‘serial’ coalitions and a warning to internationals on the dangers of solidifying ethnic and religious divisions and mainstreaming policies based on their impact on gender.The book talks about “the negative forces of globalization”. Globalization is dangerous when its overarching goal is to provide economic opportunities for exploitation and profit optimization. With such goal, of course there will be “inefficiencies in the delivery” of help and goods and “undermining of local leaders” on the ground. It only serves the higher purpose. There is also the ego at play, “the imperialist self-righteousness” of the “white male” with the ‘I am better than you’ mentality that perpetually reinforces these inefficiencies. [My family and I can attest to a debacle and inefficiencies at work when the state department tried to evacuate the Americans out of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. It was painful to watch and suffer the consequences of that unbelievable mess created by the embassy there. When I asked one of the Lebanese army men protecting the area why they were not helping out in the evacuation process, he gave a half-mocking, half-frustrated answer: “They don’t want us there”. Antony Bourdain (the host of the food show “No Reservations”) who happened to be there during the evacuation said on his show that if any person was picked at random off the streets in Lebanon and was asked to run the evacuation process, he or she would have probably done a much better job than the one done by the state department there. ]The book is a testament to the positive effects of globalization when thoughts, experiences and knowledge are shared and women from different religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds such as Sarah Grimké, Julia Foote, Amina Wadud and Fatima Mernissi are listed on the same page and all converge in their revolt against the top-down hierarchical interpretations of their own religious books. The book sheds light, from a feminist angle, on a world being so close and scary anymore that any solution to the world struggles has to involve all of us. There is a sense of timeliness and urgency to the fact that we have to start taking care of each other. Everyone reading this book will come out more informed, aware and compassionate; a somewhat better human being. Congratulations on a job well done!All royalties from the book sales go towards the organizations that Jamila and Marzia are running on the Afghani grounds; one more reason to buy the book.