Episode 9: In conversation with Anne-Cathrine Riebnitzsky

In this episode, Arpita Das, publisher and founder of Yoda Press, is in discussion with Anne-Cathrine Riebnitzsky about her book, The Women's War: A Female Soldier’s Account of Her Time in Afghanistan. The book narrates the gripping true story of Riebnitzsky's tours to the Helmand Province in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009. There she comes into contact with the Afghan women who are fighting against oppression, domestic violence and the horror regime of the Taliban, and together they initiate a covert collaboration. The women receive the necessary aid to establish dressmaking rooms, beauty salons, chicken farms and other projects while being aware of the fact that the international military forces are their only chance to get rid of the Taliban. Das and Riebnitzsky discuss how this book emerged out of the friendships built by a soldier with Afghan women who helped the international military forces in unexpected ways. It is a book by a woman in the armed forces about what war does to women, about the looming risk of taking chances in wartime and about grief over fallen friends, but more importantly, it is about how women in one instance found the will to not only survive but to make something out of the terrible conditions that war brings.