I’m tired of hearing that the Northern Alliance is Afghanistan’s savior. Consider a report from a BBC correspondent in one of the towns under their control. Women are still forced to wear the head to toe coverng which some liken to a funeral shroud, and are banned from the marketplace as well.
I ask her whether life here under the Northern Alliance is any better for women than under the Taleban. She has experienced both, although she did flee Kabul soon after the Taleban took power.
She pauses and thinks carefully. She hates the Taleban, she says, and she hates what they have done to her country. And yet she also hates wearing the burkha that the women of this town must wear at all times outside their home.
Fahima looks at me then and smiles again. The day we go back to Kabul, she says, I shall throw off my veil and celebrate. And the other women laugh.
Most are from the countryside here in the north. Their husbands insist they wear the burkha. Not to, they tell me, would bring shame on their family and insults on the streets.
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