ANN JONES

WRITER/PHOTOGRAPHER

NEW BOOKS

By John Leonard

But sword and scourge is what

I get from Ann Jones in KABUL

IN WlNTER: LIFE WlTHOUT

PEACE IN AFGHANISTAN

(Metropolitan Books, $24). The author

of Women Who Kill, Next Time

She'll Be Dead, Looking for Lovedu,

and other books about women and

violence has as little use for George

W. Bush as she has for the Taliban.

What took her for three years to the

Hindu Kush and occupied Afghanistan-

where, late in 2005, half the

capital city is still in ruins and

"children are kidnapped and sold

into slavery or .murdered for their

kidneys or their eyes"-was a kind

of rage against waste and ruin, stupidity

and deceit, misogyny and

self-righteousness. In the wake of

American bombs, she had to do

something, even if only to instruct

widows how to sew, weave, and embroider

at home; or to collect the

stories of females imprisoned for

running away from arranged marriages

and licensed rapists; or to

train teachers and midwives; or to

record for us the deadening jargon

of international aid: "nexus of concern,"

"Indefinite Quantities Contract,"

"multiplier effect," and "maximizing

outputs."

Not for Jones any cultural relativism

that excuses throwing acid in

the faces of unveiled coeds at the

university and death by stoning for

adultery; nor any willingness to rationalize

a foreign-aid program that

leaves eighty-six cents of every

American dollar safely at home,

while the remainder seems to end up

with Halliburton or Creative Associates.

And she is not a bit impressed

by a brand-new democracy

in which Karzai is "over-elected"

president, with "a million more registered

voters" than there are

Afghan citizens. We meet many remarkable

people in this angry, eloquent

book, but none more remarkable

than Jones herself. When she

tells us that "Kabul in winter is the

color of dust," and that "dust fills

the lungs, tightens the chest, lies in

the eyes like gravel, so that you look

out on this obscure drab landscape

always through something like

tears," we know exactly who's crying.

But these are tears of rage.

HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MARCH 2006

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