Men savor close shave after Taliban driven from town
Jubilant residents flout strict rules imposed by regime

11/13/2001
By DEXTER FILKINS / New York Times News Service

TALOQAN, Afghanistan – In this town just freed from the Taliban by Northern Alliance troops, the busiest spot was Amon's Barbershop, where men lined up to have their beards shaved off.

One after another they came, and one after the other the beards fell to the floor. At the end of the day, Amonullah, the proprietor, stood exhausted in a pile of beard cuttings. He smiled when he realized there was one thing he had forgotten to do.

"Tomorrow, I'm going to shave off my own beard," Amonullah said. With that, he closed for the night, capping the busiest day he had ever known.

In the 12 hours since the Taliban soldiers left this town, a joyous mood has spread. The people of Taloqan, who lived for two years under the Taliban's oppressive Islamic rule, burst onto the streets to toss off the restrictions that had burrowed into the most intimate aspects of their lives.

Men tossed their turbans into the gutters. Families dug up their long-hidden television sets. Restaurants blared music. Cigarettes flared, and young men talked of growing their hair long.

In the most noticeable change of all, women, clad in their head-to-toe burqas, walked the streets alone, no longer required to have a male relative at their side. They walked by themselves and they walked with each other, their blue and white and red burqas blowing open in the afternoon breeze.

"The Taliban, they were cruel people, and the whole city clapped and cheered when they retreated," said Muhammad Humayun, a 23-year-old pharmacist. "The first thing I did was take my turban off and throw it away. I am going to enjoy my freedom."

Taloqan, a valley town in northeast Afghanistan, fell to the Northern Alliance on Sunday afternoon, after troops under Gen. Daoud Khan overran Taliban front lines and secured the defection of an important local warlord.

The Taliban, sensing that their fortunes were changing for the worse, fled the city. Gen. Daoud and his men rolled into the city at 5:30 p.m., and the townspeople poured into the streets to greet them. The adults threw money and roses, and the children clambered aboard the tanks and trucks.

With that celebratory entrance, Taloqan became the second major city to fall to the Afghan opposition in three days, and the first that foreign journalists have been able to enter. Mazar-e Sharif, the largest northern city, has remained inaccessible to correspondents since its reported capture by the Northern Alliance.

In the tea shops and food stores that line the main bazaar here, the locals said the city never embraced the Taliban soldiers who captured the city or the creed that they brought with them.

After they captured Taloqan two years ago, the Taliban imposed the extreme brand of Islam that has brought them condemnation from around the globe. All men had to wear beards. No woman could work or go to school or leave the house alone. Television, music, and photos of people were banned. Violators were beaten, jailed, mutilated, and killed.

Every day, people said, the turbaned religious police patrolled the streets, wielding rubber whips in search of the most minor of infractions.

The ideology, however harshly imposed, never sunk in, it seems. When Taliban soldiers arrived, they smashed every television set they could find. As they approached his home, Muhammad Asif, a young shopkeeper, rushed his Sharp 17-inch TV and VCR to the back yard, where he buried them.

Since then, Mr. Asif has dreamed of the day when he would be able to watch again. That moment arrived Monday, when Mr. Asif unearthed his television and slipped a weathered copy of Titanic into the VCR.

"Everywhere people are digging up their television sets," said Mr. Asif, standing in front of a restaurant. Like so many other men in Taloqan, Mr. Asif's head was bare in public for the first time in many months.

"All the restrictions, on television, on shaving, on women," Mr. Asif said, waving his hand. "The Quran says nothing about such things. The Taliban people are a bunch of illiterates."

Down the street, at Habibullah's Restaurant, the Afghan music was so loud that the proprietor's voice was barely audible.

"I haven't listened to music in two years," Habibullah said, sitting cross-legged on a pillow and bobbing his head to the rhythm. "It's nice."

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