Afghans Fear New Talibans

"After the Taliban was toppled, I was sure that we could start living normally again," Kabul local Shafi Samandari told the Christian Science Monitor on Monday, April 21.

"I love listening to music and going to wedding parties."

Last week, the parliament's Commission for Anti-Social Behavior and Counter-Narcotics put forth a draft bill that would ban loud music, billiards and video games.

Radio and TV stations will not be allowed to broadcast shows harmful to youth.

According to the bill, women and girls are not allowed to wear jeans or make-up and must be properly dressed in public.

Men will not be allowed to sport long hair, wear bracelets, necklaces or rings.

The sexes would be segregated at celebrations and public gatherings such as weddings.

"How can we live with these restrictions and without entertainment," Samandari asks.

"It will be just like the Taliban times – we will have to flee the country yet again."

A week ago the parliament voted to ban Indian soap operas from airing on Afghan channels.

The widely popular operas, emotional dramas featuring forbidden trysts, family intrigue and Hindu imagery, drew the ire of conservatives and religious figures as propagating immodesty and immoral ideas.

Political Gains

The bill must be approved by both houses of parliament and signed into law by President Hamid Karzai.

"Even if the law doesn't pass, it will provide legitimacy for the Taliban by approving of Taliban-era laws," Haroun Mir, cofounder and deputy director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy Studies, told the Monitor.

Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001.

Days after the 9/11 attacks, the invaded the country to topple the Taliban regime for sheltering Al-Qaeda.

Ahmad Idrees Rahmani, another cofounder of the same think-tank, believes some lawmakers are using religion, a powerful card in conservative Afghanistan, for political gains.

"This is a political game," he said, arguing that with legislative and presidential polls scheduled for 2009 "everyone is trying to create some kind of leverage or bargaining power."

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