Those damn Taliban movie critics

“Sonia Nassery Cole knew that shooting a movie on location in Afghanistan could get her killed. The most vivid reminder came a few weeks before filming, she said, when militants located her leading actress and cut off both of her feet…” Here (The NY Times).

The Taliban, Spiderman and Hannah Montana

A NY Times journalist in the hands of the Taliban: “…He spoke a smattering of English, and my own beliefs seemed to interest and amaze him. During our six weeks together, he asked me a series of questions. Was it true, he asked, that a necktie was a secret symbol of Christianity? Was it true that Christians wanted to live 1,000 years? As the weeks passed, our captivity became increasingly surreal. My Taliban guards slept beneath bedspreads manufactured by a Pakistani textile company and emblazoned with characters from the American television show “Hannah Montana” and the movie “Spider-Man.” My blanket was a pink Barbie comforter…First hand NY Tines article here.

Musical tribute to the best of Afghan culture

Using his nation’s official musical instrument musician plays Afghan national anthem

Quoting Afghanistan’s Taliban

Mind-bogglingly astute observation: “The [NATO] soldiers have shaved their heads but when we see them washing they are still shampooing their heads, but they have no hair.”

Their charming and witty sense of humor: “Last year, after one attack near the town of Baramcha, there was the hand of one British soldier left on the field. We took it and we hung it as a souvenir in the room and sometimes we would shake the hand.”

Their silly harmless pranks: “We enjoy finding the [NATO] bombs unexploded. We have some guys with us, they are not Afghan, they use the bomb back on the British. I like to bury a gas canister on top of the bomb, the explosion is very large.”

Asking big and important questions: “When we go to a village at night the [NATO] soldiers come for us in helicopters. How can they see us? How do they know we are there? They have technology?”

On multiculturalism: “We have some other people with us, I can’t tell you where they are from but they don’t speak a language we understand.”

Taliban technology: “[We use] a bomb that recognizes the number [on a license] plate of a vehicle and only explodes with the number of the plate you put in a computer.”

Read article.

Taliban up ante in “battle of the sexes”

When this expression–battle of the sexes–is used in the West it usually has a comic connotation, popular in movies, for example, but in backward Islamic countries it is something that has dead serious meaning, as illustrated in the following story: “The most prominent female police officer in Afghanistan has been murdered by the Taliban, the latest victim in a vicious campaign against women in public life by Muslim fundamentalists. Malalai Kakar, who specialised in rescuing abused women, was shot dead outside her home in Kandahar…” Read this story.