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Saturday, March 21, 2009

Happy New Year

Saturday marked the first day of the Persian New Year, known locally as "Nowruz." Under the Taliban regime, the traditional celebrations (which included such sinful acts as singing, dancing, and *gasp* kite running) were banned as being against the Quran. It's hard to imagine a civilization that would ban a New Year's celebration, but then again I come from the land of MTV Spring Break and Girls Gone Wild.

Now that we're here the locals get to party like it's 1388. That's the current year according to their calendar anyway. It puts this society only 621 years behind the rest of the world, so it's probably about right.

Predictably, the Taliban had a blast:

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT TODAY'S INSURGENT BOMBINGS

OR HERE

OR HERE

All the while I've been here I've been trying to come up with any way that I can think of to make life better for the people here.

I'm still at a loss.

2 comments:

  1. I don't get it...what do the Taliban hope to accomplish by blowing up locals on a holiday? I mean won't it just make the locals mad at the Taliban for fuckin up the party?

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  2. The locals should want the party to be fucked up. Allah forbids parties.

    According to the insurgents the revelers were not the target. Afghan government security forces were the target. Since security was heightened surrounding the celebrations, any partygoers injured in the blast were merely regrettable collateral damage.

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