Mirwais Rahmany was born in Rodat district of Nangarhar province in 1983. He learnt English from his father at an early age. Rahmany fled to Pakistan in the late 1980s on account of the Soviet invasion. He returned to Kabul following the mujahedeen victory, but settled in Herat after the civil war broke out among various jihadi groups. In 2001 he began his medical studies at Herat University, from which he graduated in 2008. During this time he also worked as an English teacher in Herat. Most recently, he has done work as a specialised legal translator. He continues to live in Herat.
Abdul Hamid Stanikzai was born in Deh Bali, Kapisa province. He lived there for three years before moving to Kunduz province. Eventually, his parents moved permanently to Kabul. He started school in 1979, and by 1989 enrolled in Kabul’s Police Academy. He started his first official job as a computer operator in the Cartography Head Office in 2001. Following that he began translating and writing and is currently studying for a BBA at the Dunya Institute of Higher Education and French at the Lycée Esteqlal in Kabul. He has translated a wide variety of documents, from project manuals, electoral laws and procedures, codes of conduct and so forth, between English, Pashto and Dari.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
A graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BA Arabic and Persian), Alex Strick van Linschoten first came to Afghanistan six years ago as a tourist. In 2006, together with Felix Kuehn he founded AfghanWire, an online research and media-monitoring group to give a more prominent voice to local Afghan media. During this time he worked on a translation of the last book of poems published by Nadia Anjuman before her death, Smoke-veined Flower. In spring 2010 he published My Life With the Taliban, of which he was a co-editor, to critical acclaim. In early 2012 he published An Enemy We Created, a history of the relationship between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda, together with Felix Kuehn. He is currently working on a book and PhD at the War Studies Department of Kings College London on the identity of the Afghan Taliban movement 1978–2001. He has worked as a freelance journalist in Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Somalia, writing for Foreign Policy, International Affairs, ABC Nyheter, The Sunday Times, Globe and Mail and The Tablet. He speaks Arabic, Farsi, Pashtu and German and can get by in French and Dutch.
Felix Kuehn first travelled to Afghanistan some five years ago, having spent several years in the Middle East including a short twelve months in Yemen, where he first learnt Arabic in 2002. In 2006, together with Alex Strick van Linschoten he founded AfghanWire, an online research and media-monitoring group to give a more prominent voice to local Afghan media. In spring 2010 he published My Life With the Taliban, for which he was a co-editor, to critical acclaim. In early 2012 he published An Enemy We Created, a history of the relationship between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda, together with Alex Strick van Linschoten. Felix holds a degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (BA Arabic and Development Studies).
ABOUT FAISAL DEVJI
Faisal Devji is University Reader in Modern South Asian History at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He has held faculty positions at the New School in New York, Yale University and the University of Chicago, from where he also received his PhD in Intellectual History. Devji was Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, and Head of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, from where he directed post-graduate courses in the Near East and Central Asia. He sits on the editorial board of the journal Public Culture. Devji is the author of three books, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Hurst, 2005), The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (Hurst, 2009) and The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (Hurst, 2012) and is currently writing a book on the emergence of Muslim politics and the founding of Pakistan. He is interested in the political thought of modern Islam as well as in the transformation of liberal categories and democratic practice in South Asia. Devji’s broader concerns are with ethics and violence in a globalised world, particularly with the thought and practices of Mahatma Gandhi, who was among the earliest and perhaps the most perceptive commentator on this predicament of our times.