Ian
priscilla 1Life After The Taliban
July 23rd 2010 05:02
As News Week reports. When the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, they banned everything from cinema, to women's education, weather forecasting and even kite flying.
Now Afghans are slowly receiving back some basic freedoms, although there is still much work to be done.
Every Friday afternoon across Afghanistan, children of all ages fly kites and compete in aerial kite combat. Soon after the Taliban came to power, they banned this traditional Afghan pastime.
Koba, 22, has been teaching for two years. She was the only teacher who allowed the photographer to take her picture. (Other teachers feared reprisal if their families found out they'd been photographed.)
Under the Taliban, men (like these clients at a barber shop in Kabul) were forbidden to shave their beards. They were expected to grow their facial hair so that, if they held the beard in a fist below the chin, hair would still protrude below the hand.
Reporting the news was heavily restricted by the Taliban. Local and national newspapers are once again available. Above, two men operate a printing press.
Russian Weather balloons lie abandoned in a desolate building at the National Weather Agency. The Taliban decreed that to predict the weather was to predict God's will—an act that they denounced as un-Islamic sorcery.
Now Afghans are slowly receiving back some basic freedoms, although there is still much work to be done.
Kite Flying
Women's Education
Men Shaving
Free Press
Weather Forecasting
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