Stalin and Dow Jones
Once upon a time a TASS night-time editor picked up a ringing phone and – lo and behold – there was Stalin’s voice on the other end. The supreme leader wanted to know the current Dow Jones index.
Category: English
Posts in English, it’s obvious, innit?
Iraq
A few pictures from various places in Iraq, mostly shot in 2003, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, during a relatively quiet period in the country’s life.
The Cook that Killed ‘Em All
The little person standing on the porch of the prison cell of the Do-Ab detention center for Taliban POWs with his long-bearded friend once had a reputation of being the best chef not only in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, the home base of the Northern Alliance fighting against the Taliban, but…
Education in Afghanistan
During the Taliban rule, which came to an end in late 2001, Afghanistan had schools that taught mostly Islamic subjects to boys, while girls were not allowed to study at all.
Afghan Women
It’s hard to discuss Afghan women, because one can hardly describe the subject concealed for the most part by the controversial blue or white veil, known as burqa or chadri. Islam, it seems, has different rules as to how women should be dressed in different countries. In Afghanistan, the prevailing…
TANKS, TANKS, TANKS
During its ten-year war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), the Soviet Union lost 14,453 soldiers dead (Source: “Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses” by G.F. Krivosheyev) and hundreds of units of military hardware, including tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), which still litter the former battlegrounds.
Boy Soldiers
Afghanistan’s adults unanimously say they are tired of fighting, but their children seem to enjoy the numerous paraphernalia of war, from tanks to heavy guns to grandfathers’ rifles, that one can encounter virtually everywhere, from one’s home to a village maidan. And even if the peace that has finally come…
Afghan Refugees
Afghanistan’s civil war has displaced millions and created a whole class of impoverished people.
Baptism by Fire
“You’ve come here to see the war, so you are going to see it,” Aziz was trying to wake up journalists who had just settled down for yet another night of discomfort and anxiety in the front-line town of Jabal os-Saraj, also known as Jabul Saraj, which Russian-speakers aptly, if…
Travel in Afghanistan
They say there are only good drivers in Afghanistan: all the bad ones are lying at the bottom of mountain gorges.
Taliban Prisoners of War
Afghanistan’s civil war was responsible for the existence of tens of thousands of prisoners captured by the two major parties to the conflict, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
All Afghan Men Are Warriors
All Afghan men are warriors. The old ones were fighters in the past, the young ones will become soldiers in the future.