Veiled Courage: Inside Aghan Women's Reistance

A woman - or rather, a rumpled bundle of cloth, but we've all seen enough footage of Afghanistan by now to realise that it's a woman - is dumped off the back of a truck and shoved forward...A Taliban soldier steps up and puts the barrel of his gun against her head. She twists to look up at him, then huddles down. At point blank range he shoots her in the head. She collapses. A woman strolls over to the corpse and fusses with the Burqa - better to see the dead woman's blood and brains on the turf than her bare ankles... The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)- a brave grass roots underground organisation - is one bright spot in a dark and desperate situation. Cheryl Benard is not a writer who has discovered RAWA, or someone searching for something more to say about Afghanistan. Rather, she has been part of the resistance efforts for more than a decade. Her husband, Zalmay Khalilzad, is himself an Afghan refugee which originally led Cheryl to become involved. Today, Zal is a special advisor to President George W. Bush and is a member of the National Security Council under Condeleeza Rice and is based in the White House.