Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore is
the Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the 'Far
Eastern Economic
Review' and the 'Daily Telegraph,' London. He also writes
for the 'Wall
Street Journal', The Nation, Lahore and academic journals.
He appears
regularly on international TV and radio such as CNN and
BBC World.
His last book 'Taliban: Islam, Oil and the new Great Game
in Central Asia,''
was published by I.B.Tauris (2000) in London and Yale
University Press in
the US and has been a world wide best seller. It has been
translated into 22
languages and three quarters of a million copies have been
sold since
September 11.
For five weeks it was No.1 on the New York Times
best-seller non-fiction
list and numerous other best selling lists in Europe and
the US. The book
will be a course book at 220 US universities and colleges
in spring 2002.
His new book 'Jihad, The Rise of Militant Islam in Central
Asia' was
published in February 2002 by Yale University Press and
has being published
simultaneously in 11 languages.
He is a co-author of ''Islam and Central Asia. An enduring
legacy or an
evolving threat ?'' edited by Roald Sagdeev and Susan
Eisenhower, Centre for
Political and Strategic Studies, Washington, September
2000. He is a
co-author of 'Fundamentalism Reborn, Afghanistan and the
Taliban,' edited by
William Maley, pubslihed by C.Hurst,1998.
His first book was ''The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam
or Nationalism ?
'' was published by Zed Books, London and New York, in
1994.
His most recent longer articles include ''Talibanization''
in Foreign
Affairs, November 1999, ''Pakistan's Coup: Planting the
Seeds of Democracy ?
'' in Current History, December 1999, ''The New Struggle
in Central Asia''
in World Policy Journal, winter 2000-1 and ''The Fires of
Faith in Central
Asia'' in its spring 2001 edition. Also ''Afghanistan:
Ending the Policy
Quagmire'' in Journal of International Affairs, Columbia
University, 2001.
In 2001 he was awarded the Nisar Osmani 'Award for Courage
in Journalism,'
by the Human Rights Society of Pakistan. ''Taliban'' won
the 'British
Society for Middle Eastern Studies' book rrize in 2001. In
April 2002 he was
given 'The Media Personality of the Year' award by the
'Ethnic Multicultural
Media Awards' of Britain and in May he came joint second
for 'The Daniel
Pearl Award for Outstanding story on South Asia,' given by
the 'South Asian
Journalists Association of the US.'
He is a member of the Advisory Board of EurasiaNet of the
Soros Foundation
and a scholar of the Davos World Economic Forum.
In February Ahmed Rashid donated a quarter of his
royalties of ''Taliban" to
start up the ''Open Media for Afghanistan,'' a
non-governmental fund to give
grants to newly emerging Afghan independent print media.
The Fund is being
managed by Internews, a US based foundation that promotes
media development
in devastated countries.
The Fund already has won the support of Time-Warner, the
Soros Foundation,
Rockefeller Foundation, Dow Jones and other Western media
outlets. It has a
seven member Board of Trustees and its first grant was to
the Loya Jirga
Commission in Kabul to establish a newsletter in three
languages for the
promotion of the Loya Jirga, which was held in June. So
far the Fund has
given out US 120,000 dollars to seven deserving print
media projects in
Kabul and Herat.
Ahmed Rashid was born in Rawalpindi in 1948 and was
educated at Government
College Lahore and Cambridge University. He lives in
Lahore with his wife
and two children.
