Return To Kabul

Thousands have read the book Escape from Kabul, which documented the more than three months of imprisonment of eight Shelter Now International1 Development Workers. The Taliban held them as hostages following the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. The workers were to be used in exchange for terrorists and in negotiations with the American forces during their acts of reprisal in Afghanistan. Their dramatic release by American Special Forces from the clutches of the Taliban was extremely risky. 

"If God had not done so many miracles, we would not have come out alive," Georg Taubmann, leader of the team, explained later. 

Shelter Now has been working for 35 years among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They help with primary care through the provision of food, drinking water and medical aid among the refugees. They built outpatient clinics, schools and thousands of mud houses for the Afghans who were streaming across the border into Pakistan in tens of thousands, and being accommodated in provisional refugee camps in desert-like areas by the Pakistan Government. 

In 1983, Shelter Now first got involved in the primary care of refugees. Due to the Russian invasion in 1979 and the establishment of a Communist system in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of refugees poured across the border into neighboring Pakistan. Years later Shelter Now looked after Afghans from the former Communist regime who had fled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. 

Shelter Now initially specialized in the construction of low-cost houses made of pre.fabricated concrete. Later they also built mud houses so that the refugees living in tents or under tarpaulins, could find relief from the burning heat. Reconstruction projects for those returning to ruined villages in Afghanistan were added later. 

Numerous times the Shelter Now staff found themselves facing life threatening attacks, kidnappings and other threatening situations. Twice their projects were totally demolished and materials plundered-first in 1990 by fanatical Islamists in Pakistan, second in 2001 by radical Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Damages amounting to several million Euros forced the organization to close down; the foreign workers had to leave the country. 

Both times Georg Taubmann began rebuilding the relief organization out of nothing, even while facing murder threats and kidnap attempts. His love for the suffering Afghan people and his deep faith allowed him no rest and drove him to achieve what many would consider humanly impossible. 

In 2019, Shelter Now began its 36th year. The origins and the history of this organization read like a thrilling detective novel-except it is not fiction, but the real truth. This book chronicles the exciting beginnings of Shelter Now and trace its history chronologically. 

God cannot be excluded from the l...