The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) defied  the Taliban and years of negligent injustice through clandestine activities  that make the Underground Railroad during the Civil War look like a stroll through kindergarten. 

    Their bold efforts only have recently gained international attention 
after the U.S.-led war in the poverty-stricken nation last year toppled the 
Taliban and ushered in a more promising era of peace and civil liberties. 
  
 Cheryl Benard chronicles the rise of RAWA and the plight of women in 
Afghanistan in "Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance." 

     Benard is a sociologist and expert in women's issues. She has traveled to Afghanistan extensively and has worked alongside RAWA for 10 years. Her  husband is an Afghan refugee who is one of President Bush's Afghanistan  advisers. 

    Benard constructs a mind-boggling account of the subordination that women  faced under brutal regimes and how they struggled to oppose male leaders bent on dehumanizing them. In spots, the book reads like a cloak-and-dagger tale, full of life-endangering moves. But the book mostly has a scholarly feel to it. It takes a  by-the-numbers approach to telling RAWA's story and seems a bit rushed, considering it was released in April, only a few months after the Taliban were run out of the country. The Afghan women are only beginning to flirt with freedom, and their story is far from being complete. 

   "Veiled Courage" may be the most complete record of their struggle, at 
least in the West. It offers the first behind-the-scenes look at RAWA, who 
attempted to create a civil society by establishing literacy classes, 
employment projects and schools for girls. Americans will be simultaneously shocked and amazed at how women persevered in one of history's most draconian regimes. The story of RAWA's  founder, Meena, is particularly gripping. She struggled to get the movement 
off the ground before she was brutally murdered 15 years ago. 

    Benard smartly includes plenty of first-person accounts of women who 
endured the Taliban. And RAWA's work even included Afghan men who didn't like the way their country was headed. 
    
    "To women ... who might read (this) book, I want to say this: Whatever 
you have heard about Afghanistan is only a fraction of what we go through,"writes Nooria, a 48-year-old Afghan refugee. "Each one of our days is more bitter than you can even imagine." 

    Thanks to "Veiled Courage," women and men will get a much better 
appreciation and awareness of what women like Nooria have experienced and the hope they have for a better future.

 Mark Davis is books editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal