When Kim Barker first arrived in Kabul as a journalist in 2002, she had only recently acquired a passport, spoke only English, and had little idea how to do the 'Taliban Shuffle' between Afghanistan and Pakistan. No matter - her stories about Islamic militants and shaky reconstruction were soon overshadowed by the bigger news in Iraq. But as she delved deeper into Pakistan and Afghanistan, her love for the hapless countries grew, along with her fear for their future stability. In this darkly comic and unsparing memoir, Barker uses her wry, incisive voice to expose the absurdities and tragedies of the 'forgotten war', finding humour and humanity amid the rubble and heartbreak.
The Economist is a global weekly magazine written for those who share an uncommon interest in being well and broadly informed. Each issue explores the close links between domestic and international issues, business, politics, finance, current affairs, science, technology and the arts.
Explores the theoretical and practical features, recent developments and future prospects of interest-free banking, illustrated by a detailed analysis of the past twenty-five years of the interest-free banking movement in Pakistan (1980-2005). It helps the reader to understand the model underpinning interest-free banking, based on principles of free market mechanism, efficiency, ethical investment and socio-economic justice. And it assesses the practical success of interest-free banking at individual Islamic banks and at state level, as in the case of Pakistan.
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
