FRANCOIS-XAVIER HARISPE, Kabul | Monday
ANIS, the first newspaper to be published in Kabul since the Taliban fled the city, was due on the streets on Monday sporting a picture no one would have dared publish during the Islamic regime’s five-year strict rule –women without their traditional veils.
The photograph was taken during a demonstration in Kabul some days after the November 13 capture of the city by Northern Alliance forces, during which women discarded their veils.
The action symbolised the long-awaited emancipation of Afghan women, who had been forced behind the veil, sequestered in their homes and banned from the classroom and the workplace because of the Taliban’s radical interpretation of Islamic law.
Another picture shows president Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of the Northern Alliance, while news coverage in the four-page daily is dominated by the fall of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last northern stronghold.
The journal also reports on the international campaign against terrorism, the fact that the Pakistani government has dropped its recognition of the Taliban regime, and the arrest of three thieves.
An editorial highlights the fall of Kabul and prospects for peace in Afghanistan.
Anis also announces, without giving sources, the death in the southeastern city of Kandahar of Taliban justice minister Mullah Nuruddin Turabi at the hands of a Taliban information services official.
It reports on the ”disarming” of Maulvi Kabir, Taliban governor of eastern Jalalabad city, who it said was found with 1 500 AK-47 assault rifles, 200 satellite telephones, 150 rocket launchers and seven machineguns.
The reports are mainly provided by Afghani national press agency Bakhtar, whose previous Taliban managers fled along with the fighters.
The 74-year-old newspaper is written in both Dari, the Afghan-Persian language, and in Pashto, the language of the dominant ethnic Pashtun group in Afghanistan.
Publication was halted a few days before Kabul fell to the alliance.
The newspaper Shariat, the voice of the Taliban, had been printed on the same presses but it is uncertain if it will ever appear again.
There is no indication of the price of Anis, named after writer Ghulam Mahiuddin Anis who founded it.
The only English that appears in the resumed daily is the date — wrongly given as October 25. – Sapa-AFP