Rashid's 2000 book, "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia," was a New York Times bestseller for 5 weeks. It was translated into 22 languages and has sold more than 1 million copies since 9/11/2001. The book was also extensively used by American analysts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In 2003, Rashid wrote Jihad - the Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, a book about Central Asia history and it´s islamic movements. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...
AHMEDRASHID: Well, I think really, people like myself and a lot of experts and critics and the media were extremely demoralized that these elections were being held at this time.
AHMEDRASHID: Certainly, but I think, you know, you have a population which is 99 percent fed up and exhausted with war and warlords.
AHMEDRASHID: Oh, I think it's made a very big difference in the sense that people certainly feel that there is a -- the rule of law is not necessarily implemented, but there is a rule of law there which can be implemented.
AhmedRashid: Well, the warlords are really those leaders of the mujahideen who, many of them are those who fought the Soviets, who got control of territory and of large numbers of people.
AhmedRashid: I don't think the Taliban are massively popular but certainly they have been able to strike a chord in the sense that the international community has not delivered the goods as it promised it would.
AhmedRashid: Ismail Khan is a very powerful warlord in western Afghanistan and in recent weeks, he has been fighting other warlords of other ethnic groups and things are coming to a head, but things are coming to a head at very bad time because it's happening just before the elections.
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