Kaboul Ensemble won the 2003 BBC World Music award for best Asian musical group; Khaled Hosseini gained acclaim for his compelling novel The Kite Runner as top voted fiction writer by Borders book readers 2003 Original Voices Award; and filmmaker Siddiq Barmak took international spotlight as he won numerous international film festivals, including the Golden Globe for best foreign film and the UNESCO Fellini Gold Metal for his outstanding film Osama. In coming issues, we plan to review their work and open dialogue with these talented individuals.

In this issue, we focus on filmmaker Siddiq Barmak: Fariba Nawa provides an insightful profile of the filmmaker, Nadia Maiwandi offers a critical review of his film Osama; in addition, Yama Rahimi and I document Barmak's recent visit to Berkeley, California.

In the previous issue, we focused on the problematic conditions and future of mental health and modern education in Afghanistan. Now, we move to Afghanistan's ecology by focusing on the externalities of air pollution in Kabul in a researched-based article provided by Daud Saba.

Lastly, Daud Saba also provides a canny photo essay of his travels to his birth city, Herat.

As always, we look forward in reading your feedback and comments. We also encourage Afghan writers and also those writing about Afghanistan to contribute work for future publications.

Farhad Azad
Publisher