Poetry of the Taliban / translated by Mirwais Rahmany and Hamid Stanikzai ; edited and introduced by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn ; preface by Faisal Devji.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-247).

Before September 11 -- Love and pastoral -- Religious -- Discontent -- The trench -- The human cost.

While much has been written about the Taliban's military tactics, media strategy and harsh treatment of women, the cultural and sometimes less overtly political representation of their identity, the Taliban's other face, is often overlooked. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, a people who cherish their vibrant poetic tradition, closely associated with that of song. The poems in this collection are meant to be recited and sung; and this is the manner in which they are enjoyed by the wider Pashtun public today. For the Taliban today, these poems, or ghazals, have a resonance back to the 1980s war against the Soviets, when similar rhetorical styles, poetic formulae and tricks with metre inspired mujahideen combatants and non-combatants alike. The poetry presented here includes 'classics' of the genre from the 1980s and 1990s as well as a selection from the odes and ghazals of today's conflict.

Translated from the Pushto.