A new period in Afghanistan’s history has opened up with the return of the Taliban to power and the hasty departure of US forces.
I reported from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, during the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections and the 2005 legislative election.
Here are photos of some of the country’s long-suffering people taken during my assignements (my camera was stolen in 2001 during an unpleasant roadside incident, so none from then, sadly). Unfortunately, I don’t have easy access to my notes of the time and a link to a slideshow on RFI’s website in English appears to be broken, so I no longer have people’s names and am writing captions from memory. So here goes:
For a small fee this boy burns incense (span) in a can and waves it around your head to chase away evil spirits. His father is dead, leaving his mother to look after several children, the fate of many women after decades of war. His income, collected on the streets and in the parks of Kabul, is essential to feed the whole family.
Some of them stay until late in the day …
Photos of Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Panjshir Valley and elsewhere to follow in a later post