Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan

by Barbara Bick

Covering everything that "Charlie Wilson's War "did not, "Walking the Precipice "gives a succinct, readable account through a woman's eyes of the rise of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan. This is a personal report about a country at the heart of the "War on Terror."

In 1990, activist and grandmother Barbara Bick, age sixty-five, traveled with a women's delegation to Afghanistan for what she thought would be her last great adventure. Instead, while the Mujahideen shelled Kabul, Bick forged deep friendships with her Afghan hosts. In the ensuing years, she watched with horror as the Taliban took over Afghanistan and instituted its fiercely anti-woman policies.

In 2001, Bick returned to Afghanistan, this time to even more dangerous terrain: the region dominated by the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban militia. She was their guest at a compound where Ahmad Shah Massoud, their leader, was also staying, and was there on September 9 when Taliban infiltrators assassinated him prior to the al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Bick returned to Afghanistan one last time, in 2004, to see how women were faring under the new government.

"Walking the Precipice "gives new insight into the people, politics, and culture of a country that should be on everyone's "watch list."

A longtime peace and human rights activist, Barbara Bick has worked for Women Strike for Peace, NEGAR-Support of Women of Afghanistan, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Institute of Women's Policy Research, and the National Conference of State and Local Public Policies.

Barbara Bick was born in Washington D.C. in 1925 and graduated from Antioch Collage. A longtime peace and human rights activist, Bick has worked for Women Strike for Peace, NEGAR (an Afghan women's organization), the Institute for Policy Studies, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and the National Conference of State and Local Public Policies.

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