Afghanistan

The Collection / Conflicts

Afghanistan

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AFGHANISTAN. Kabul. Pol-e-Keshti Mosque. Friday prayer. 1992.

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AFGHANISTAN. Herat. Men perform Friday prayer in the Great Blue Mosque.

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AFGHANISTAN. Kabul. The crop. 1992.

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      In 1986, Lenin is at war with Mohammad. Rather than covering the mujahiddin, I travel in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan: extremist mullahs having turned my country, Iran, into a fanatical Islamic republic, I have no reason to join the western press in glorifying Islamists as freedom fighters. Getting off the plane in Kabul, is like entering the Iran of fifty years ago. Few days pass and I feel I am back in the Iran of three hundred years ago.

      In the Kabul of December 2001, I am tempted to think I have entered the Iran of five hundred years ago. Afghanistan has hastened to move backward in history during the rule of the Mujahiddin and the Taliban: the State has just dissolved. I live the utopia of a country gone back to its tribal days.

      When burkahs are lifted, when full beards are shaved off, faces reveal total despair.

      The collection