Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, SEPT 10: A poor family, hoping for a few coins, tries to sell what little they have left: chipped cups and saucers, an ornate vase, and broken kitchen appliances little better than the row of derelict refrigerators others have dumped nearby.
No one gives their meagre wares a second glance. Everyone is selling something in Afghanistan's battered capital. But no one is buying.
Outside a carpet shop, with an old freight cart bearded men sit sipping sweet green tea and puffing lazily on their cigarettes. They seem to be there out of habit, rather than in any real hope of a customer turning up.
Since 1996, Kabul has been in the hands of the Taliban religious army, which controls roughly 90 per cent of the country. The militia, known for its strict form of Islam, is battling a coalition of northern-based armies, mostly small parties representing ethnic groups.
The only shoppers on Kabul's dust-clogged streets are women, dressed in the all-enveloping burqas, who sail past the ramshackled shops.Occasionally, the women pause, but only to buy food.
Cars are scarce. Most people ride bicycles.
``It just keeps going from bad to worse,'' complains Ismatullah. People seem confused that their old friend, the United States, which aided Afghan rebels who ousted a Soviet-backed government, would fire missiles at their country. They seem unaware that the August 20 strike was actually aimed at suspected terrorist training camps, about 145 km south-east of Kabul, funded by Saudi millionaire dissident Osama bin Laden.
``We need help and instead the Americans fire missiles at us,'' said Ismatullah.
The stench from an open sewer wafts inside the drugstore where Ismatullah is passing time with his friend, Saeed Zabiullah. Zabiullah hasn't gotten around to cleaning up after the Opposition force's last rocket strike smashed his counter and sprayed bits of glass over the few medicines on display.
``Business is bad,'' says Zabiullah. But he refuses to blame the hard-line Taliban, and he says both good and badhave come of the Taliban's rule of Kabul.
The Taliban's strict religious rule has been relatively peaceful, putting an end to four years of rocket attacks by rival Islamic groups that left the city in ruins and killed 50,000 people.
Corruption and crime, once widespread, have all but disappeared because of the Taliban's severe Islamic punishments. Theft, for example, is punished by chopping off a culprit's limb.
``That was good,'' said Zabiullah, bearded and his head covered as the Taliban demand.
The bad has been the Taliban's seemingly endless Islamic edicts, such as a ban on women working and the closure of all girls' schools, he said.
And he misses foreigners. Under the Taliban's heavy-handed rule, virtually all foreigners have fled the city, except for a few employed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------