Afghanistan

Program Director for the International Center for Transitional Justice, Paul van Zyl. As such he helps emerging democracies to reckon with the human rights abuses in their past. Van Zyl is from South Africa and was the executive secretary of South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The center is now working with the U.N. to design a justice policy for post-Taliban Afghanistan. The International Center for Transitional Justice is located in New York City.

Larry Goodson is associate professor of international Studies at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts. He the author of the book, Afghanistan Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (University of Washington press). Goodson writes that Afghanistan has become the archetype of a failed state and a perfect example of how nonstate actors move into the vacuum created when a state fails. He also writes about the divisions in the Afghan population: ethnic, linguistic, regional, sectarian, racial, and tribal.

Journalist Charles Sennott of the Boston Globe. He just returned from Afghanistan. He is also the author of the new book, The Body and The Blood: The Holy Land Christians At the Turn of a New Millennium (PublicAffairs). Sennott was the Globe Middle East bureau chief, and is currently the Globe Europe bureau chief and lives in London.

Journalist Robert Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He is the best known for his book Balkan Ghosts which became the book that former President Clinton turned to before the U.S. involvement in the Bosnian crisis. His 1990 book, Soldiers of God: with Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan has just been republished, updating the story. The book now includes a new introduction and a final chapter on how the Taliban came to power.

Lawyer and humanitarian aid worker John Sifton. He was working in Pakistan and Afghanistan earlier this year. He returns to Pakistan soon. His story about what he observed as a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan is featured in this Sundays (Sept 30th) issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Executive director of the USA division of the French medical relief organization Doctors without Borders, Nicolas De Torrente. During August, he was in the Northern Territory of Afghanistan checking on the work of the organization. To do their work, Doctors without Borders had to negotiate with the Taliban. After the attacks, the organization had to evacuate all foreign workers out of the country, leaving their Afhani staff behind. De Torrente was flying to JFK airport on Sept. 11, and his plane was one of the last international planes to land in the U.S.

Journalist Sebastian Junger. Last year he traveled to Afghanistan to profile Ahmad Shah Massoud, (known as the "Lion of Panjshir"), the legendary leader of the guerrilla war against the Soviets, who had been fighting the Taliban. Massoud was assassinated by Osama bin Ladens associates about two weeks ago.

Journalist Mark Bowden is a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of the award-winning bestseller Black Hawk Down about the 1993 ill-fated mission by the U.S. in Somalia. Theres currently a film adaptation of the book. Hes also the author of Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the Worlds Greatest Outlaw an investigation into the U.S. government's role in bringing down Colombian cocaine kingpin and terrorist Pablo Escobar. Bowden will talk about the U.S. military strategy in the war against terrorism.

Director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha, Thomas E. Gouttierre. He also served on the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission to Afghanistan, and is the American specialist on Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and South Asia at the meetings of the US-Russian Task Force on Regional Conflicts.

Junger traveled to Afghanistan to profile Ahmad Shah Massoud, (known as the Lion of Panjshir), the legendary leader of the guerrilla war against the Soviets, who is now fighting the Taliban. Junger traveled with photographer Reza Deghati who spent several years covering the war there. Jungers article The Lion in Winter appears in the March/April issue of National Geographics Adventure magazine. Its also the subject of a National Geographic Explorer program Into the Forbidden which aired march 4 on CNBC.

We talk about the Taliban with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. His new book is called Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press). In the mid 1990s, the Taliban Movement gained power in Afghanistan, a country in the wake of a civil war. The Taliban declared they wanted to restore peace and enforce traditional Islamic law. Instead, The Taliban has shown itself to be a troubling development in Islamic radicalism. It has launched a genocidal campaign against Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. It has sanctioned acts of international terrorism.

Advocacy Director for Physicians for Human Rights Holly Burkhalter talks to guest host Marty Moss-Coane about the plight of women under Afghanistan's Taliban government.

Zohra Rasekh, Senior Health Researcher for Physicians for Human Rights, co-authored "The Taliban's War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan." She's identified several discriminatory policies against women in that country, including the demand they wear a burqa at all times outside the home.