After the Taliban, Back to Normal

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Text by Tara A. Lewis

Photographs by James Reeve

When the Taliban ran Afghanistan, they destroyed idols, refused to educate women, and even forbade kite-flying. After the Americans unseated them in 2001, Afghans slowly began recovering the basic freedoms that strict Sharia had denied them, though that liberty is still far from total. In Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008, there were 461 attacks on schools for girls, and in 2008, 15 girls were attacked with battery acid on their way to school. Meanwhile in Pakistan, the Taliban's sister organization, the Pakistani Taliban, control an area with almost 4 million people, where women, aid workers, and beardless men are tortured and murdered. The threat of a return to draconian rule lingers on. These photographs, from James Reeve's project Banned, document the freedoms available to Afghans after the Taliban's fall.




Kite Flying

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.

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Weather Forecasting

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.

 

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Soccer

A soccer team of amputee landmine victims pose on a playing field next to the Ghazi National Stadium. Although soccer was not completely banned, its practice was heavily restricted; players were barred from wearing "flesh-revealing" shorts, and "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Great) was the only cheer allowed at matches.

 

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Cinema

When the Taliban took over and announced that anyone involved with the cinema would be arrested, beaten, and jailed, 28-year-old Rahmattala Ameni fled to Iran. There, the former projectionist at the Park Cinema labored for several years in a match factory. After the Taliban fell, he returned to the Park Cinema, where he'd worked sine he was 10, and also helped replace projectors in other Kabul cinemas that had been destroyed by the Taliban. The two projectors in the picture were brought from India for $22,000.

Bird Keeping

The Taliban banned this popular Afghan hobby—in which birds are kept for racing, fighting, or singing—claiming that men who kept birds on their roofs could look into a neighbor's garden from their rooftops and potentially see a woman without her burqa. Nirzamon, 55, has been keeping pigeons for more than 40 years.

 

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Women's Education

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.)

 

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Images of Women

The Taliban said living creatures could not be filmed, worrying that looking at pictures (or films) of them would be tantamount to worshipping idols. Although exceptions were made for passports, photographing women was strictly forbidden. Images of unveiled Western women are now everywhere in Afghanistan. On this Kabul market stall, posters of Bollywood stars hang alongside those of Western children, Afghan President Karzai, and Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance Commander assassinated on September 9, 2001.

 

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Free Press

Reporting the news was heavily restricted by the Taliban. Local and national newspapers are once again available. Above, two men operate a printing press.

 

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Men Shaving

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.

 

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Woman Driving

Driving was one of the many privileges reserved for men under the Taliban. Now that the ban has been lifted, women like 18-year-old Fronia Guyan, left, can take driver's ed (though they may still require the approval of liberal-minded parents). Fronia's teacher, Frotan, right, has taught more than 350 Afghan women to drive at the Bakhtar Driving School in Kabul.

 

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Music

Crowds mill about at Afghanistan's first major music event in more than 15 years. The 2004 concert, at Kabul's infamous Ghazi National Stadium, saw Afghan legend Farhad Darya return to his homeland (from self-imposed exile in Canada) to perform in front of an audience of men, women, and children. Under the Taliban, playing music was forbidden; instead of hosting concerts, this stadium hosted weekly executions and amputations.

 

[SpArK]

Salute to the creator of .... "thread of the day".

amazing... keep it coming.

 

[Jigs]

Really cool pictures

 

[Icarus]

And unfortunately, our people are still under the illusion that the Afghan Taliban are the "Good" Taliban..................

 

[Icarus]

This is the so called "Good" Taliban's legacy:







May they rot in hell, and I feel I have sent plenty, hell must be getting crowded !!!!

 

[Ahmad]

thanks for the posts bro. both countries will inshallah recover from the bad days.

 

[mehru]

Great thread.
Million thanks to the creator of thread.