Cheryl Benard: Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance

By MARGIE THOMSON

Of the many books leaping into print about the plight of Afghanistan's women under the Taleban, this one is a stand-out - an astonishing collection of stories about women who dared to resist the vicious, fundamentalist regime.

At a time when women were not even allowed to be schooled within their own homes, could not be tended by a doctor, and were not allowed out in the street unaccompanied by a male relative, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) organised secret literacy schools, healthcare, small businesses that allowed widows to support their families, a website on which they posted photographs they had secretly taken of Taleban beatings and executions - all at the risk of death.

The organisation's founder, the legendary Meena, was an early martyr who nevertheless left a legacy of positive action that inspired thousands of others, men and women. It's an aspect of Afghanistan we don't often see, and undermines the myth of Afghan women's apparent acceptance of their low status. Benard, an aid worker and adviser to RAWA, makes the most of her many personal contacts to tell this fascinating and unexpected story.

Random House

$32.95