Helen Benedict, professor of journalism at Columbia University, is most recently the author of Wolf Season and a forthcoming novel about refugees, The Good Deed. She was awarded the 2021 PEN Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral Histories.
Unlike Joe Biden, Mursal wasn’t surprised at how fast Kabul fell. She knows firsthand how effectively the Taliban has been terrorizing Afghans into silence and complicity.
More women have fought and died in Iraq than in all the wars since World War II put together. Yet the US military continues to treat them like second class citizens.