What's Falling From The Sky Today?
In these troubled times, Afghans are never sure what might fall from the skies: bombs, pamphlets or food.
This week, when residents of a western neighborhood of Kabul heard a jet engine and looked skyward, they were surprised to see thousands of tiny pieces of paper floating to the ground.
"We watched to see where the bomb would fall," said one resident, Gul Bibi.
But it didn't. Instead, small pieces of paper came cascading down, each with a picture of the Taliban beating women and a question: "Is this the future you want for your children and your women?"
People who found the small pieces of paper quickly got rid of them for fear the Taliban might find them with "enemy propaganda."
"I don't want anyone to catch me with these. Maybe the Taliban will be angry with me," said Salim Gul.
If the war on terrorism launched by the United States in response to the Sept. 11 attacks has taken a variety of forms, so, too, have the items dropped onto Afghanistan from American planes.
There have, of course, been bombs — thousands of them, the United States says. Some have hit their targets; others have gone astray, killing civilians.
But since the air campaign began Oct. 7, the United States also has tried to show a softer side to ordinary Afghans inadvertently caught in the crosshairs of its war.
U.S. planes have released food packets that fly harmlessly to the ground, a move the American government says is designed to feed the hungry — which in Afghanistan are legion — and show that it has no quarrel with the Afghan people.
But the food packets have not been universally welcomed. International aid groups criticize the concept of dropping food and bombs on the same country, and say some contents of the nutrition packets, like peanut butter, are not part of the Afghan diet.
What's more, some have expressed concern that the food is landing in areas where land mines are buried, possibly endangering hungry Afghans who try to retrieve it.
The Taliban say residents aren't lured by U.S. meals and are collecting the food and burning it — a claim that has not been independently confirmed. One Taliban official, Mustaq, who gave only one name, said dropping food on an attacked nation is insulting.
"We should run after the food they drop so we live for another day when their bombs might kill us?" he snapped.
The other items from the sky, the leaflets of American propaganda, are directly scornful of the Taliban, prompting bitter complaints from the religious militia.
On one side of a leaflet is a photograph of a turbaned Taliban, hand raised, clutching a stick, caught on camera beating a group of women wearing pale-blue burqas — the all-enveloping covering that women in Afghanistan are required to wear.
In the picture, one woman is doubled over, apparently the target of the Taliban's wrath. A small girl watches from the corner, seemingly ready to flee. The caption is in Pashtu and Dari, the two mailanguages of Afghanistan.
On the reverse are pictures of men, faces hidden behind scarves that show only their eyes. They wave Kalashnikov rifles. Between the pictures is this exhortation: "Throw out the foreign terrorists from your land."
In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, women are barred from working except in health care. They are only allowed to travel when accompanied by a male relative.
And they must wear the burqa — and view the world through its cloth mesh.
"The burqa has been in our country for generations. It didn't just come with the Taliban," said Mohammed Hanifi, a Taliban commander. "They are insulting our culture and our tradition."
By KATHY GANNON
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