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Bette Dam is an investigative journalist [1] [2] professor at Sciences Po [3] and author of Looking for the Enemythe unknown story of the Taliban, which describes the life of the most unknown leader of the world, mullah Omar. [4] [5] [6]
Dam is notable for writing more complex, and diverse stories on terrorism. [7] In 2009, she published the unknown story of the then Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and how he came to power immediately after 09/11. [8] As one of the first journalists, Dam shows that there were strong signs that the so-called war on terrorism in Afghanistan could have been over in December 2001, with a surrender-offer of the Taliban. [9] [10] Dam also describes how the United States government, under the leadership of George Bush at that time, was ‘too emotional’ to accept this, and started the military intervention instead. [11] [12] [13]
In Looking for the Enemy, [14] [15] Dam discloses for the first time the long unknown hiding place of mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban. [16] [17] Like Osama bin Laden who lived next to a Pakistan Military Academy, mullah Omar lived not far from an American Forward Operating Base in Southern Afghanistan (Zabul), she claims. [18] [19] [20] The news attracted attention. There were compliments, and at the same time disbelief. The Afghan government who had claimed mullah Omar to be in Pakistan, wrote that Dam was ‘delusional’. [21] [22] General David Petreaus responded in The Wall Street Journal, saying that he still believed mullah Omar had been hiding in Pakistan. Yet, Dam her work has not been proven wrong. The Guardian stated that Dam her work ‘is something the CIA was not able to do’. [19] Foreign Affairs reviewed her work and stated that ‘the West still doesn't understand the Taliban’. [23]
Since 2017, Dam has been a professor at Sciences Po, in Paris. Her teaching is about detecting Western biases in global coverage, and how to prevent this. She also lectured at several universities and for governments. In 2020 she lectured at Oxford University at All Souls College. [24]
Dam has appeared in media such as the BBC, [25] CNN and The Guardian. [26] [15] [4] She was nominated the best investigative journalist of the year in 2020. [27]
Her first book were nominated for the Bob den Uyl Award [28] and for the Dick Scherpenzeel award. [29]
As an Author
From 2002 to 2005, Dam studied political science with a specialization in International Relations at the University of Amsterdam. [23]
In 2019, Dam started her PhD at the University of Brussels. Dam writes an auto-ethnographic study about her journalistic experiences in Afghanistan and compares it to the journalistic productions of legacy media like, the New York Times and Associated Press on Afghanistan. [33]
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from December 2004 to September 2014. He previously served as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration from December 2001 to July 2002. He is the chief (khān) of the Popalzai Durrani tribe of Pashtuns in Kandahar Province.
Mullah Muhammad Omar was an Afghan mujahideen commander, revolutionary, and the cleric who founded the Taliban. During the Third Afghan Civil War, the Taliban fought the Northern Alliance and took control of most of the country, establishing the First Islamic Emirate for which Omar began to serve as Supreme Leader in 1996. Shortly after al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, the Taliban government was toppled by an American invasion of Afghanistan, prompting Omar to go into hiding. He successfully evaded capture by the American-led coalition before dying in 2013 from tuberculosis.
Kandahār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Pakistan, to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west, Uruzgan in the north and Zabul Province in the east. Its capital is the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, which is located on the Arghandab River. The greater region surrounding the province is called Loy Kandahar. The Emir of Afghanistan sends orders to Kabul from Kandahar making it the de facto capital of Afghanistan, although the main government body operates in Kabul. All meetings with the Emir take place in Kandahar, meetings excluding the Emir are in Kabul.
Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil Abdul Ghaffar is an Afghan politician who has been a member of the militant Taliban organization. He was the Taliban foreign minister from 27 October 1999 in their first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rule, until the Taliban were deposed in late 2001. Prior to this, he served as spokesman and secretary to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban. After the Northern Alliance, accompanied by U.S. and British forces, ousted the regime, Muttawakil surrendered in Kandahar to government troops.
Grishk District, also called Nahri Saraj District, is a district in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. Its principal municipality is Grishk. Grishk Dam is located in the district.
Mullah Mohammad Fazl is a member of the Taliban militant group and the First Deputy Defense Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, having assumed the role on 7 September 2021. He also served in the position during the previous Taliban government (1996–2001).
Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa is a member of the militant Taliban organization currently in control of Afghanistan, who has previously been called one of the "moderate" Taliban. He is the Taliban Minister of Information and Culture and a former Minister of the Interior. After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, he was held at the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for 12 years. He was released in late May 2014 in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban five. Press reports have referred to him as "Mullah" and "Maulavi", two different honorifics for referring to senior Muslim clerics.
Hajji Mohammed Zaman, also known as Zaman Ghamsharik, was a Pashtun Afghan military leader and politician. He was an ethnic Pashtun from the Khogyani tribe. According to Maj. Dalton Fury, who fought together with Ghamsharik in November/December 2001 in the Tora Bora campaign against the Taliban, Haji Zaman had been "one of the more infamous mujahideen junior commanders during the Soviet–Afghan War. When the Taliban took over, Zaman departed Afghanistan for France. When the Taliban fell from grace after 9/11, he returned to his homeland to reclaim his former VIP status. He was said to have had influential friends in neighboring Pakistan, including members of the Pakistan intelligence service. He reportedly led a force of 4,000 men during the campaign to oust Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers.
Abdul Haq Wasiq is the Director of Intelligence of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan since September 7, 2021. He was previously the Deputy Minister of Intelligence in the former Taliban government (1996–2001). He was held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, from 2002 to 2014. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 4. American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1971 in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.
Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani or Usmani was a senior leader of the Taliban, treasurer for the organization, and close associate of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Omar. He was involved in the demolition of the Buddhas of Bamyan and was considered a potential successor to Mullah Omar. Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, once referred to him as one of the four most dangerous Taliban members still in Afghanistan.
Mullah Obaidullah the Akhund was the Defence Minister in the Afghan Taliban government of 1996–2001 and then an insurgent commander during the Taliban insurgency against the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and the US-led NATO forces. He was captured by Pakistani security forces in 2007 and died of heart disease in a Pakistani prison in 2010.
Mullah Naqib Alikozai, sometimes called Naqibullah, was an Afghan mujahideen commander and politician from the Kandahar area of southern Afghanistan. He was the leader of the Alikozai Pashtun tribe.
The Fall of Kandahar took place in 2001 during the War in Afghanistan. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kabul and Herat, Kandahar was the last major city under Taliban control. Kandahar was where the Taliban movement had originated and where its power base was located, so it was assumed that capturing Kandahar would be difficult. The city fell after several weeks of fighting to a force of local militia under Pashtun military commanders and their American advisers. The fall of Kandahar signaled the end of organized Taliban control of Afghanistan.
Events from the year 2009 in Afghanistan
Mullah Hayatullah Khan is a Taliban leader and spokesmen. In 2004 Khan informed journalists that the Taliban's leadership were in Afghanistan, not taking sanctuary in Balochistan. When Hayatullah Khan made his first statement, in 2004, President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai said "Who is this Taliban commander Hayatullah Khan who made this claim? I have never heard his name and probably you also don’t know him.".
Abdul Ghani Baradar is an Afghan militant and religious leader who is the acting first deputy prime minister, alongside Abdul Salam Hanafi, of the internationally unrecognized post-2021 Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A co-founder of the Taliban along with Mullah Omar, he was Omar's top deputy from 2002 to 2010, and since 2019 he has been the Taliban's fourth-in-command, as the third of Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada's three deputies.
Events from the year 2012 in Afghanistan.
Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was the second supreme leader of the Taliban. Succeeding the founding leader, Mullah Omar, he was the supreme leader from July 2015 to May 2016, when he was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan, Pakistan.
Daud Junbish is a BBC journalist. He is one of the few journalists in the world who has met former Taliban chief Mullah Omar, and has interviewed him on multiple occasions. He is the author of What Is Really Happening in Afghanistan?, 24 Hours That Turned Afghanistan Around, and Red Army in Afghanistan.
Mullah Borjan, also known as Mullah Aminullah, was an Afghan Taliban military commander. He was considered to have been an influential military leader in Kandahar Province.
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