My friends Katherine Kiviat and Scott Heidler have a new book out. It is worth a look.

The press synopsis:

JERUSALEM—September 2007—The world remembers the stomach-turning television news images of innocent Afghan women executed in the Kabul stadium, and the stories of women being beaten in the streets of Afghanistan for infractions that seem frivolous to a Westerner—letting their hair be seen or leaving their family compound without permission. The world remembers the quick overthrow of the Taliban just months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the new images of free Afghan women rushing to beauty salons to coif their hair, and little girls wearing crisp new uniforms streaming into classrooms—the first time for most of them going to lessons outside underground, secret schools. But what is the situation like now for the women of Afghanistan after the world’s attention has left?

In Women of Courage: Intimate Stories from Afghanistan ($19.95; Hardcover; September 2007),  photojournalist Katherine Kiviat and Fox News Middle East Correspondent Scott Heidler offer a new glimpse of the true stories and incredible work Afghan women are doing to push for continued reform and maintain the freedoms they have so recently won back.

With the courage of Afghan heroines from many walks of life—privileged/poor, educated/simple, athletic/disabled, politically connected/rural, self-promoting/motherly—change is taking flight. It is here, in the pages of Women of Courage, where compelling photographs and unfiltered interviews will allow you to look into the eyes and read the words of some of these heroines. From a Bread Maker to a Presidential Candidate, a University Student to a Bee Keeper, and a Fortune Teller to an Afghan National Army Helicopter Pilot, these women are all agents of change in their future, in their country, trying to make a better tomorrow for themselves and their daughters..

I wanted to alert everyone to Andrew Lichtenstein's excellent new book, Never Coming Home, a poignant and heartbreaking look at the human toll of the war in Iraq. Also, a video of the same-titled series Andrew participated in can be found here. I would also encourage you to take a look at Andrew's other work, including his series on prison life and its costs. Publisher's Description: America lies thousands of miles from the deserts of Iraq, and its civilians are rarely truly forced to confront the fact that it is a nation at war, and has been for more than four years. But every day, the list of casualties grows longer. The men and women killed in Iraq are buried every week back home. Their funerals are not dramatic national events, and they are rarely sites of political soul searching. Most families want to grieve privately, to remember their children as they knew them and as heroes who have died for all of us. Photographer Andrew Lichtenstein says of his prizewinning work, 'These funerals are about paying tribute to promising lives cut drastically short. There are some funerals that I never take the camera out of the bag. And then there are others that allow us, I can only hope, to begin to feel the true cost of war.' Lichtenstein's work has appeared in the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly and Aperture, among other publications. In this powerful new portrait of grief and sacrifice, he documents the families of eight American soldiers killed in Iraq. With interviews of the families by StoryCorps oral history producer and Slate and MSNBC contributor Zachary Barr. Never Coming Home is a project by Andrew Lichtenstein and Robert Peacock.

Russian photojournalist Dmitry Chebotayev was killed on May 7, 2007 when a roadside bomb struck the U.S. military vehicle in which he was traveling. Chebotayev was on assignment for Newsweek, reporting on American military operations in the Diyala province. Chebotayev was the first Russian journalist to be killed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there. Six American soldiers in the vehicle were also killed. Further details of the killing can be found here.
Chebotayev's work can be viewed here and here.

Chebotayev's friend,  Sergey Ponomarev, is organizing a website and book project to showcase Chebotayev's work. Those interested in donating time or money, or anyone who could help with fundraising from foundations, should contact him at ponomarevs@gmail.com.

WarShooter contributor Bill Putnam has also passed along this tribute written by Bob and Marine Black:
Птица известна ее полетом.....
we begin and end in dream but through the course of our waking we are not dream but flesh and bone and blood, weighted down by life’s gravity and time’s urgency, born into and back by the way in which we carry our lives and our actions. Though we cannot, not ever, know this life and this world, it, sometimes majestically and sometimes horribly, knows us all too well. How to measure this unfathomable inequality?: to, without certainty and assuredness, without footing and buckles, to extract from the life what it has given up and to share that experience with others. To sing the dark with rhyming and light. Dima’s life and work are a testament to this. His brave and unyielding work in Urkraine and in Chetnya are ballasts by which we can measure our own understanding of place and people’s whose lives have been rendered harshly. My wife, just last week, spoke of the honesty and “beauty” (in the humanistic sense) of his work and that it was clear that his compass pointed toward the undestanding, the noble witnessing of that life and for those who had lived through those difficult times and places. Dima’s work and his character as a person are rhymes by which, all of us can take inside ourselves, swallow them inside our cold and wearied bodies and allow them to sing inside the place of darkness into which we all so often feel trapped.
That he shall remain among his friends and family, not in the relm of dreams but in the life surrounding. Like all sources of light, Dima and his work shall not pass beneath this temporary cloak of darkness and will be folded back and will emerge corona-spark and unyielding.
The deepest and most personal condolences for Dima’s family, friends and loved ones from our family…..
мы – с Вами.......

BEIRUT, settembre 2006 Quartiere di Haret Hreik, "roccaforte" sciita. La vita prosegue.  Difficile anche solo respirarla quell'aria...piena di polveri strane, di cemento sbriciolato e chissà di quali sostanze chimiche... difficile camminare nel cemento fuso dal fosforo bianco, tra le donne che osservano silenziose le ruspe che tiran su i brandelli delle loro case...  e poi un vestito da sposa...uno dei pochi negozi con le serrande su, e il piu bel vestito esposto...a dimostrare che non ci si ferma.. a dimostrare che la vita vince sempre.  MORTE ALLE VOSTRE BOMBE! Baruda © All rights reserved.

Use this link to run the video: Children in the Ranks - US: Cut Military Aid to Governments Using Child Soldiers An estimated 250,000 children, some as young as eight years old, are serving in armed conflict. Children serve as spies, messengers, porters, and too often, as front-line combatants. Many female child soldiers are forced to serve as sex slaves to military commanders. Human Rights Watch is a leading voice against the use of child soldiers worldwide. Human Rights Watch co-founded the International Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and helped lead the international campaign for a UN treaty to ban the use of children in armed conflict. Over 110 countries, including the United States have ratified this treaty. After months of consultation from Human Rights Watch, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) have introduced The Child Soldiers Prevention Act. Yesterday, Senator Durbin chaired a Senate hearing on child soldiers, where he used a video produced by HRW (featuring the acclaimed author of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah) to make a compelling case for the bill. Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of child soldiers, 9 currently receive US military assistance. If passed, the Act would restrict US military financing, training, and weapons transfers to governments involved in the recruitment or use of child soldiers. Please take action today: Watch the video above to learn more about the Child Soldiers Prevention Act Contact your elected representatives and urge them to lend their support Send this page to friends and family and encourage them to take action With your help we can take the world one step closer to completely stopping the use of child soldiers.