Welcome for your answer!

Your are right, English is not my mother tongue and Afghani is my personal (german) slang for afghan people. But I call them like this while having full respect to them! Have to say this, so you don`t get me wrong!

I was many years in relation with a pashtun girl born in Kabul. Her father was a professor for maths/physics who temporally teached in a german university while his german collagues did same in Kabul. When the russians invaded Afghanistan he was able to emigrate to Germany with his wife and his 3 daughters. He and his wife were coming from a privileged families and they managed it to mix german and afghan culture. All his 3 girls are now married to european guys, all have studied and work while still having kids. And all of them teach their kids their family tongue (afghan farsi). Sadly grandpa and grandma passed away while still having the unfullfilled dream once to return back to Kabul.

We talked, better to say he and his wife told me a lot about their Afghanistan; I saw a bunch of photo albums and selfmade super 8 films covering the life of his family, the country and the culture and I listended to their family history. I still have my feet right now on top of an old family carpet I got as a present for my 30s birthday. I understood how they honored me when giving me an old traditional piece from their family.
And of course I am happy that I got feed much too much with a full taste through afghanstan cuisine made by the mother that days.

Thats my experience with Afghanistan

I have been twice in Iran and I love the country, the people and the culture. You asked for whose view of womens rights. For an acceptable start of women rights I would say, do it like in Iran. I don`t fully agree to their islamic view to womens but I think it could be a better starter than that I recognize or hear through actual media now in Afghanistan. But ok, I am european with a european view and understanding, I speak only less farsi and arabic, I am not religious but me and my persian girlfriend managed it to marry the persian way (sighe).

I have been to some islamic countries and I have never felt not welcomed. The very reverse often happend to me in these countries. I was richly awarded with an oustanding hospitality, kindness, helpfulness - so I found myself often overwhelmed and confused by the possitive way how islamic people generally treat foreigners. As I said I am not religious but I learned a lot about the way seeing the world with an "islamic view" and I adopted a lot for myself.

So I still hope and wish that these fckng pandemic will soon as possible turn into a direction that it will be possible again to visit and travel countries like Pakistan. And of course I hope that influences of the change in Afghanistan won`t reflect to certain islamic groups in other countries as a promoter for any kind of violence actions.

Salam!

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Thanks again for an interesting reply, great story It's always these liberal, educated types that leave a country when things start to go downhill which is a great loss to the country. I have say that my Afghan friends are all now living abroad, and are all (Pashtun and Tajik) very negative about the prospects from the Taliban. Above all they think Ghani was a coward!

I like Iran a lot too, though I find the authoritarianism wears me down after a few weeks of being there each time I go. I really feel for Iranians who have to live with it their whole lives. I could see Tajiks in Afghanistan having women play a role in society like in Iran, but not the Pashtuns. I think it will be more like Pakistan where, except in a few upmarket areas in the biggest cities (e.g. Clifton in Karachi), women play basically no role in public life, and in the Pashtun cities in the north-west, are almost totally invisible.

Interestingly, in female travel literature (e.g. Dervla Murphy's incredible 'Full Tilt') women report being very well treated in Afghanistan. Murphy was almost raped in Turkey and Iran, but had nothing but good things to say about the honour and behaviour of Afghan men.

A fun story - I was sitting in my friend's bookshop in Kabul when a very well dressed, elegant lady came in and saw me sitting reading a book. After some brief words in Dari with my friend she glared at me and shouted something along the lines of 'YOU are the reason my country is in this mess! Get foreigners OUT of Afghanistan' I think she thought I was a soldier. It turned out she was (I think) the wife of one former Afghan president who had been murderer years earlier. The only hostile reaction I got in Afghanistan! And that includes a Pashtun highlander who carried his wounded daughter who had shrapnel in her eye (from an American attack) into a friend's ophthalmic clinic in Jalalabad. He bit his tongue.

But I absolutely agree with you - I have never been so welcomed anywhere as in Islamic countries, and Pashtuns are probably the most welcoming people I know.

Let's indeed see what the world looks like when (if?) this pandemic ever ends. The world is changing; Iraq has started to issue tourist visas on arrival (airport only), Afghanistan may see some degree of stability. Pakistan has made it easier to visit previously difficult areas such as Balochistan and Azad Kashmir. There are still adventurous places to visit!

EO

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EurasiaOverland a memoir of one quarter of a million kilometres by road through all of the Former USSR, Western and Southern Asia.

Thanks for this reading tipp, I am going to get the book because I never heard about her and her trip before!

I saw a video on youtube of german guy who entered from Turkey into Syria and tried to ride to Iraq in 2020 on a motorcycle. Having some safety issues after riding a week in Syria he decided to return to Turkey.

Think too that the Taliban have actually no interests in active exportation of in any kind of terrorism. This justified by their actual situation to get back afghanistan`s frozen and deposited capital and funds from the US. In my eyes a passive exportation of this idea through motivated radical islamic groups living in foreign countries is imaginable and should be watched.

Sadly the world is in the moment in a socially, financially and medical disbalance through the pandemic. Sudden changes in existing society behaviors can happen everywhere in different kind of expressions. A reason why my travel plans to certain countries are on hold for an undefined time. Think we all have recognized in our home countries how the load and pressure through the pandemic forced discussions and changes in our legal systems and in our social societies in the past 1,5 years.
I am convinced that this will be temporarily and will disappear when we all have learned how we can handle and live with a virus which will stay with us till the science found a solution to execute it.

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