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.
Baby-Selling in Afghanistan
Most Afghan families have many children, too many, in fact, for some. On the other hand, there are childless couples for whom adoption is the only choice. In Afghanistan, this often means buying a baby from a poor family.
Don’t Do What the Mullah Does
One of my Afghan drivers never missed a chance to make sarcastic comments about religion in general and the Islamic clergy in particular whenever we passed a mosque on our long journeys across the country. One of his remarks that I recall is as follows: “Do what the mullah says,…
Afghan War
The war had been going on in Afghanistan for more than twenty years, largely unnoticed by the outside world, until the U.S.-led coalition said it was going to overthrow the Taliban regime and eliminate the al-Qaida leader, Osama ben Laden (Usama bin Laden).
How I Broke 9/11 News to Taliban Fighter
One of the Taliban prisoners-of-war I met at the Do-Ab detention center in the Panjshir Valley in mid-September 2001 was a bespectacled man with refined manners and fluent English.
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir
The late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, who fought against the Soviet and Taliban armies, remains a cult figure in many parts of Afghanistan.