abu_rashid wrote on Jan 6
th, 2009 at 5:00am:
I am no supporter of the Talibaan, but this doesn't sound truthful. At least use facts to criticise them.
Kabul Men Fling Off Trousers for Death-Free Soccer
Back to the Victim's Page
November 15, 2001 11:02 AM ET
By Mark Chisholm
KABUL (Reuters) - A group of Kabul men flung off their baggy trousers and tunics on Thursday for a game of post-Taliban soccer, free from the threat of interruption by the fundamentalist militia carrying out a public execution.
"In the past, soccer matches were interrupted and executions would be carried out for everyone to see," said Ahmed Marof in the middle of a practice soccer match in the same Kabul football ground that the Taliban used for shooting criminals. "What could we do?"
Bullet casings could still be seen on the pitch.
The Taliban, who tried to turn Afghanistan into their vision of a pure Muslim utopia, retreated from Kabul before dawn on Tuesday -- freeing residents from their draconian rules.
Women appeared on the streets without the head-to-toe burqa veils the Taliban forced them to wear, music was heard for the first time since the militia took the city in 1996, children flew kites, men shaved off the beards the Taliban made compulsory -- and played soccer.
The Taliban allowed soccer on special occasions, but with bizarre restrictions.
Players had to wear long-sleeved shirts and long trousers -- preventing the showing of skin, which the Taliban denounced as un-Islamic.
Applause was banned -- spectators were told the appropriate way to show enthusiasm was to shout "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest). Last year, a match in the Taliban's stronghold Kandahar against players from the Pakistani border town Chaman ended in disarray when members of the feared religious police raced on to the pitch to arrest the Pakistani players for wearing shorts. Five of the Pakistani players managed to flee to the safety of their consulate in Kandahar while the rest had their heads shaved before being released. Pakistani diplomats lodged a protest.
The Taliban's interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic, law imposed the death penalty for several offences. Executions were often carried out in public, sometimes by the family of the victim. With few other sources of entertainment, Afghans often flocked to stadiums to watch.
But Thursday's players were left to play interrupted, and dared to wear shorts.
"Before, the Taliban used to make us play in long garments, and today you see us in short sleeves and shorts," said Ahmed Zaia. "It's wonderful."
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/13/asia/OUKWD-UK-AFGHAN-STADIUM.php
KABUL: The grass has grown in Kabul's soccer stadium where the Taliban used to stage public executions, but few Afghans dare visit in the evenings, believing that the souls of the victims still roam the sprawling grounds.
"Too much blood has flown here," says Mohammad Nasim as he mowed the lush green grass in the stadium under a warm afternoon sun, a little oasis ringed by brown hills away from the bustle of the street.
The goalposts, where the black-turbaned Taliban used to force convicts to kneel before executing them or from which they hung the severed arms or legs of thieves for all to see, have been given a fresh coat of white paint.
New portraits of Afghanistan's leaders, including late King Zahir Shah, President Hamid Karzai, anti-Taliban hero Ahmad Shah Masood and the country's latest star, Olympic taekwondo bronze medallist Rohallah Nikpai, hang from the empty stands.
The Afghanistan Olympic Committee has set up its office in the stadium's red building and there are pictures of Nikpai, the country's first Olympic medal winner, being feted.
But try as they might, few Afghans can put behind them the brutality of the Taliban years when men, and sometimes cowering women in their pale blue, all-enveloping burqas, were brought into the stadium to be either stoned or shot dead at close range.Others had limbs amputated for crimes ranging from robbery to adultery and murder.
The stands would be full of people, including children, either coming of their own volition or brought in to witness how the Taliban enforced its version of justice.
"Now nobody comes here in the evening, even we don't go inside," says Nabeel Qari, a young guard at the entrance to the stadium. "Everyone believes the place is haunted, that the souls of the dead people are not at rest even now."
BODIES FLUNG INTO VANS
The Taliban also executed convicts in a huge open ground across the street from the stadium, where they would bring them in the back of open-topped vans, shoot them in the head at close range and fling the bodies back in the vans.
Nasim said he saw two of his relatives shot dead and another hanged in the soccer stadium for possessing arms that a Taliban court concluded in a summary trial were intended to be used against them.
He remembers people streaming into the stadium to watch the executions. It was usually over within minutes, with the men lined up near the soccer field's penalty spot and shot, blood oozing out as they slumped to the ground.
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