Larry Downing is a Reuters senior staff photographer assigned to the White House. He shares that duty with three other staff photographers. He has lived in Washington since 1977 and has been assigned to cover the White House, since 1978. President Barack Obama is the sixth president Larry has photographed.

“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  George Orwell

Veteran’s Day is a time to remember “All gave some....Some gave all.”

Before reaching the new gravestones in Arlington National Cemetery’s ‘Section 60’ it’s easy to recognize why a simple, quilted, patch of green grass and white stones buried alongside the quiet banks of the Potomac River troubles the heart.

Names etched into fresh marble tell the sad tale of early death ...Travis L. Youngblood.... Justin Ray Davis....Andy D. Anderson....Thomas J. Barbieri Jr..... Kenneth E. Zeigler II....James R. McIlvaine .... America’s varsity players benched early in the game.

‘Section 60’ is America’s promise to honor its warriors for first serving, and then dying, in the strange dusts on foreign soil.

Its 22211 zip code is the final address for roughly ten-percent of America’s dead from combat action in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 570 service members from “Operation Enduring Freedom” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” are “interred, inurned or memorialized with honor inside the cemetery.”

Spend time in the section and you can’t help but breathe the restless cloud of uneasiness that hangs over the calm symmetry of the graves. Your eyes lie; you actually “see” the pieces of shattered hearts and lost ambitions scattered across the manicured grounds.

You “feel” why this is America’s field of broken dreams.

Fathers, mothers, widows and children are all lost as they chase the ghost of vanished love inside the shadows of a sinister fog.

Watch an abandoned friend or family member alone in anguish softly whispering to the dead and you’ll realize the devil deals mean cards.

Cards that have forced a grieving mother to stare at the letters of her baby’s name chiseled onto a gravestone not long after those same letters were neatly printed on a new birth certificate.

No woman deserves to lose her child in war and then tragically continue her life driving a car with the unwanted license plate reading “Gold Star Family.”

No wife should ask God “why” the only man who ever promised to protect her is gone.

And no child should ever cry out to mommy “where’s my daddy?”

An ‘Arlington’ funeral means a father will never experience the joy of giving his daughter’s hand away in marriage.

Television got it right when they called ‘Section 60’ “the saddest acre in America.”

Robert E. Drawl Jr...... Kevin D. Grieco.... Charles E. Wyckoff... Michael Ross Stahlman....

Death is the greatest equalizer; only after a funeral does the phrase: “...all men are created equal” written in the nation’s ‘Declaration of Independence’ take life.

Generals lie buried the same depth underground as the men and women they commanded in life.

Black, white, brown, or yellow skins are equal. There is no racial prejudice after death.

Republicans and Democrats agree...In silence.

Gays are finally treated with respect. No one asks...no one tells...

Passages recited from the Koran are as beautiful as those recited from the Bible.

The impact of two distant wars became personal once the “knocks on the door” delivered the horrifying news and haunted a house forever. Prayers that the Pentagon “got it wrong” vanished when asked if they wanted an ‘Arlington’ funeral.

‘Arlington’ is an idyllic hillside cemetery and is easily seen while driving on the Arlington Memorial Bridge towards Virginia. It’s the last stop straight ahead.

It’s also the last stop for those sons and daughters who were killed after announcing to their family they wanted to be “Army Strong” or part of “The Few...The Proud” and then fearlessly joined the deadliest profession.

They volunteered; even while never reading the frightening draft notice of their father’s generation. One sent on behalf of the President of the United States during the Vietnam War beginning with the terrifying, “Greeting....You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States....”

Both the draft and that war ended in the 1970’s.

The names of 58,261 brave Americans are etched into the “wall” inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the other end of that same bridge.

About the time energetic eighteen year-old college freshmen are searching for an “awesome” campus tailgate party, America’s young soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are finishing their individual combat specialty schools and boarding the express bus to the front lines. Thoughts of joining sororities and fraternities are long gone. Learning the dangers of the “kill radius” of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and recognizing the “signs and symptoms of hypovolemic shock” are more important. A severed femoral artery is quick to kill in the field.

Today’s military volunteer swears to an oath to do “whatever it takes” to hold the protective umbrella over the nation during the storms in violent times.

Doubts of joining the military were erased after witnessing an attack on their nation September 11, 2001.

Things became clear for them in the dawn’s morning light.

‘Section 60’ is one of approximately 70 sections inside the 624 fenced acres of ‘Arlington’ where more than 320,000 heros are honored. The first military burial took place in 1864 during the American Civil War when the cemetery opened.

The U.S. Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) maintains a sentry inside the cemetery on duty every second of every day.

The ceremonial guards from each branch of service provide military honors during the somber burial of one of their own.

Temporary paper markers are placed in the dirt above the grave after a funeral while waiting for the permanent marble stones.

Ryan Patrick Baumann....Eric W. Hall....Colby J. Umbrell....James C. Edge....

A triangular folded American flag is all that remains to hold for the devastated family members during a funeral in ‘Section 60.’

“Gold Star” mother Lyvonne Lightfoot hugs the flag that draped her 20 year-old son’s casket on August 4, 2009. Anthony M. Lightfoot died in Afghanistan, July 2009, while supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Rebecca Baldeosingh holds the flag from her husband’s casket at his funeral on August 4, 2009, after he was killed last June in Iraq.

The Iraq war made Laura Youngblood an early widow in 2005 while pregnant with her second child. Husband Travis Youngblood was a U.S. Navy medic who died from wounds suffered from an IED during combat operations with the U.S. Marines in Hit, Iraq.

She visited her husband in May 2009 during the Memorial Day weekend.

After touching his gravestone, she stood up, gently kissed the top of the marble and said, “See you tomorrow, honey.” And then left....

“Gold Star” mother Paula Davis thought she was an “Army of One” when raising her only child, Justin, alone for eighteen years before turning him over to the U.S. Army. He had just graduated from high school weeks earlier and he had no fear of serving in wartime.

Justin was spirited and was strong. “A million dollar smile,” Mrs. Davis proudly boasts. Proof is seen in a large photograph moments after entering her home in Maryland. “He wanted to be in Kung Fu movies...the next Jet Li.”

And he loved the idea of joining the Army so much that the night before he reported for his first day of duty he made his mother stay up with him and watch two war movies, “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Black Hawk Down.”

Hours later they drove to the U.S. Army recruiting office. Mrs. Davis was now alone for the first time in nearly two decades. “I drove a few blocks down the street, stopped, and just cried....”

One year later she cried again...only harder. Justin was finally coming home from the war and “did she want him buried at Arlington?”

The entire time he was gone she thought “Afghanistan was a safer war,” she said.

For two months after his funeral Mrs. Davis slept inside his bed; “I still go and sit on his bed for comfort.”

Justin’s room is exactly as it was the day he joined the army in 2005. The four cardboard boxes containing his belongings from Afghanistan are still unopened on the floor of his room.

Justin’s first pair of baby’s shoes hangs from the door knob to the room.

Mrs. Davis drives to ‘Section 60’ after church every Sunday, “rain or shine,” to honor him. “If I don’t, who will?” “This is our Vietnam Memorial,” she said.

She then explained, “The burden of two wars falls on a select few....Most Americans are not asked to sacrifice. Our leaders should find every means possible to not go to war...”

Justin died shortly after turning 19 years-old. “He would have been a great father.....now I’ll miss that,” said Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. Davis and “Gold Star” mother Xiomara Mena (Anderson) are best friends now after meeting in ‘Section 60.’ Their boys are buried within steps of each other. Mrs. Anderson is also a “Blue Star” mother; she has two other children serving in combat overseas.

Mrs. Anderson patiently uses her household scissors to trim the grass around the gravestone of her son, Andy D. Anderson, who died in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in June 2006. “Arlington takes good care of my son...” she said, “but I like to keep him neat.”

Mrs. Anderson’s motherly instinct is still alive after three years since Andy’s funeral. Watching her carefully clip the grass around her son’s grave seems as natural as watching a loving mother making up her son’s bed in the morning.

“Gold Star” mother Vicki Zeigler deserves her own medal for the unwavering devotion to her son, Kenneth E. Zeigler II; driving EVERY weekend to visit ‘Arlington’ from Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. Kenneth died while serving with the U.S. Army in Baghdad, Iraq, in May 2005.

Mrs. Zeigler arrives early and unfolds a beach chair before spending the entire day serenely staring at the name of her baby boy while recalling the day he was born after “6 hours of hard labor” in 1983.

Kenneth loved “God, mom, family, ‘Metallica’ and the New York Yankees...and in that order,” says Mrs. Zeigler.

“He was a momma’s boy until the end,” she proudly said. As he was lying on the ground and fighting for his life while wounded his sergeant leaned down and whispered “we’ll take care of mom,” she explained. Kenneth then relaxed and slipped away after knowing his mom was in strong hands.

Mrs. Zeigler drives in a car devoted to the memory of her hero.

All three women expressed concerns for American’s who have loved ones in harm’s way and may be forced in the future to sit in the “green chairs” for family members during an ‘Arlington’ funeral.

Theodore Uland Church....Garrett T. Lawton....Darryl Demetrial Booker.... Deforest Lee Talbert...

Photojournalists assigned to military funerals are tough and rarely flinch. Cameras make great walls to hide behind when emotions become powerful. Tears have always dripped down from behind mine during an “Arlington’ funeral.

Watching a sobbing widow hug a cold casket for the last time is unnerving.

Rebecca Baldeosingh and her daughters attended the funeral of her husband and their father, Juan C. Baldeosingh, who was killed last June in Iraq. He was buried in Section 60 with honor on August 4, 2009.

The most horrifying funeral I’ve attended was by accident at the end of the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 along the Iraq-Kuwait border. It still haunts me today.

Photojournalist Mike Nelson and I stumbled upon an eerie scene in the desert that belonged in “The Twilight Zone.”

Over 100 Iraqi soldiers were fleeing north from Kuwait at the end of the war when allied warplanes launched rockets stopping the head of the snaking convoy.

The attacking aircraft then dropped exploding gas bombs high over the remaining vehicles in the convoy. The explosion created huge clouds of fire above the troops and burned all the breathable oxygen without scorching anyone below.

In short, the explosion sucked the air out of the lungs of every man.

Each corpse looked alive as we approached and they were still holding their rifles while seated inside their vehicles.

The memory of that sharp, biting, warm stench of death remains with my lungs today.

The British army arrived and carved a mass grave using bulldozers. Soldiers respectfully dragged the scores of dead bodies across the warm sands to their final grave before prayers were offered over the fallen.

Nearly 19 years have passed since that day and Iraqi mothers are still wondering where their sons are buried.

The Americans stationed inside the secure air base in Da Nang during the Vietnam War were easy targets for the Viet Cong who were hiding in the surrounding mountains east of the base. The VC used seven-foot long, deadly 122mm Russian-made rockets launched inaccurately from bamboo bipods to terrorize the troops below.

Chalk was used to tally “the count” on a wall inside the perimeter and over 650 rockets were launched from those mountains between September 1972 and September 1973.

A lethal game of Russian roulette played against the grim reaper during the year of living dangerously.

“If you heard a rocket explode or heard the siren, you had one goal...grab your helmet, flak jacket and haul ass to the nearest sandbag bunker scattered around our compound,” said a friend of mine, a U.S. Air Force security policeman who survived that year.

During one night’s rocket attack that same airman raced into the thick, wet muck in the “binjo ditch” that was used to drain latrine water away from the barracks. Both of his feet slide in different directions when they hit the sewage and then stopped abruptly. His forward motion continued and both ankles were brutally twisted as he fell hard. The memories of the “pop and a blinding pain” around his ankles are linked with the intense fear of dying during that rocket attack.

The injuries were so severe that at “20 years old, I would never be able to run, jump or even walk normally for the rest of my life,” he writes in an email. “They would’ve healed if they both broke,” said the doctors.

September 1973 arrived and he hobbled aboard the “freedom bird” leaving Da Nang. Vietnam and the war were now in his rear view mirror...or so he thought.

In the years before he arrived “in country” the air base had supported “Operation Ranch Hand;” an Air Force program involving the spraying of millions of gallons of a harsh herbicide “Agent Orange” over the jungles of Southeast Asia. The deadly chemical was used to kill the thick vegetation hiding the enemy. “Agent Orange” was sprayed over the rivers, fields, and jungles of Vietnam altering the normal life cycle of all living plants, animals and humans on the ground.

Air Force Security Policemen patrolled the areas on the base where splashed “Agent Orange” had dripped onto the ground leaving a contaminated residue. My friend spent a year kicking up and inhaling that dust.

36 years have passed since he left Vietnam and he will never be able to enjoy the simple, pleasurable, act of walking a dog.

The permanent damage to his ankles combined with the exposure to “Agent Orange” leaves him 100% disabled.

His days begin, then end, sitting in a motorized wheelchair. It’s a painful “hell;” his crippling souvenir for bravely volunteering for a year in Vietnam.

“There were dark, dark periods of unmentionable anger, fear, even desperation a time or two,” he said. He admits he is now “a controlled drug addict” relying on powerful prescription drugs to ease the sharp pain he wakes up to each morning.

He was my hero when we were Air Force Security Policemen stationed together on an island in the Mediterranean and he is my super-hero today.  (I’ve omitted his name at his request).

Jeremy A. Chandler....Deveran L. Owen....Adam Leigh Cann.... Steven R. Koch....

Combat veterans find the search for “closure” a lonely battle after losing a friend in war.

Veterans’ motorcycle club “Patriots Pride” rode from Charleston, West Virginia, to visit the grave of soldier DeForest Lee Talbert who is buried at ‘Arlington.’ Each rider served in combat with Talbert before he died in July 2004.

Talbot’s son, Deontae James Hamlet, stands proudly with the men who knew his father.

Susan Blankenship traveled to ‘Arlington’ to “rub” the gravestone of Steven A. Davis for her son who served with Davis in Iraq. Mrs. Blankenship’s son could not make the trip to ‘Arlington’ but he wanted the rubbing for “closure.” Davis died in 2007.

“Gold Star” mother Carolann Barbieri sits alone as she writes a private letter to her son on July 4, 2009. Barbieri died in 2006 while in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Visitors to ‘Section 60’ leave small stones or personalized mementos on top of a grave to honor those buried below. Some are unique but most follow the simple Jewish tradition of leaving a single pebble per visit on the gravestone of a loved one.

Veteran’s Day is celebrated on November 11th in the United States.

It’s a national day of honor recognizing veterans for “throwing their hat in the ring” to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Look for a veteran in November and buy him a cup of coffee, or a sandwich, and give thanks for their service.

Travel to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. and volunteer to help the “wounded warriors” who are fighting for their dignity with less than whole bodies.

U.S. Army Sgt. Joey Bozik (L) talks to Vietnam veteran Army Col. Oliver Mahatha Sr. (R) in the physical therapy room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2005. Bozik lost two legs and one arm from an explosion in Iraq.

Wounded Army Sgt. John Daniel Shannon wears the Purple Heart with pride on his eye patch while testifying before Congress in 2007.

Or, walk the extra mile to ‘Section 60’ inside ‘Arlington’ and place a small pebble on the grave of an American hero....It’s their day.

U.S. Marine SSgt. William C. Rapier, of Quantico, Virginia, shows his son around Arlington National Cemetery in 2006.

Greg Lamonte Sutton.... Jamie D. Wilson.... Charles E. Wyckoff... Philip Andrew Johnson Jr.....

(Photo: Afghans protest at parliament building in Kabul, 25 Oct 2009/Ahmad Masood)

Afghan police fired into the air on Sunday to break up a protest by thousands of people who had gathered in the capital, Kabul, to protest against what they said was the desecration of a copy of the Koran by foreign troops.

Protesters, claiming foreign forces had burned a copy of Islam’s holiest book during a raid in Maidan Wardak province last week, blocked traffic in Kabul for more than an hour. A spokeswoman for U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said none of their troops were involved in the incident and blamed the Taliban for spreading a false rumor that a copy of the Koran had been burned.

Thick plumes of smoke rose above the crowd as protesters set fire to a large effigy of what they said was U.S. President Barack Obama. “Death to America. Down with Israel,” chanted one man at the rally, which was organized mainly by university students. Others threw stones and clashed with police but no casualties were reported.

“No to democracy. We want just Islam,” said one banner carried by protesters, many of whom shook their fists in the air.  Captain Elizabeth Mathias, a media officer for U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said the Taliban were trying to undermine foreign troops by spreading the rumor. “We did not burn a Koran … It is unfortunate that the protesters believe a Taliban rumor,” Mathias said, adding an investigation had been carried out.

Read the full story here. Below is the Reuters video showing what a protest like this looks like:

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    The Dalai Lama believes the war in Afghanistan has so far been a failure, saying military intervention creates additional complications for the country.
    The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, making his first visit to the Western Canadian city of Calgary in 30 years, said foreign military intervention against Taliban insurgents has only served to make the fundamentalist group more determined.  
    The war has been "so far, I think, a failure," he told reporters, adding that he could not yet judge its outcome. "Using military forces, the other hard-liners become even more hard ... and due to civilian casualties the other side also sometimes is getting more sympathy from local people." 
    U.S. President Barack Obama is weighing calls to boost troop levels and alter strategy to reverse what officials have said is a deteriorating military situation. But the Dalai Lama said it would all have been unnecessary had the United States and the European Union spent more on aid to the region.
    "Instead of spending billions and billions of dollars for killing they should have spent billions .... on education and health in rural areas and underdeveloped areas. (If they had) I think the picture would be different."

-- Written by Scott Haggett

(Photo: The Dalai Lama speaks at a conference in Calgary, Alberta, on October 1, 2009. REUTERS/Todd Korol)

An Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for blasphemy, reduced to 20 years’ jail on appeal, has been set free and is living in exile in an undisclosed country, a media watchdog has said.  Perwiz Kambakhsh, 24, a reporter with the Afghan Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January 2008 by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

(Photo: Kambakhsh at a Kabul court hearing, 21 Oct 2008/Omar Sobhani)

Kambakhsh was arrested and imprisoned for downloading and distributing an Iranian article from the Internet that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women. Under Islamic law — stipulated in Afghanistan’s constitution — blasphemy is punishable by death.

In a statement on its website, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom, said Kambakhsh’s lawyer had confirmed to them Monday his release and that President Hamid Karzai had signed a pardon several weeks earlier. Karzai’s office was not immediately available for comment.

The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups. FaithWorld has followed this story closely from his death sentence in January 2008, the October 2008 appeals verdict of 20 years in jail and appeals to President Hamid Karzai last March to pardon him.

Read the whole story here.

Here is an interview with Kambakhsh that Reporters without Borders recorded in a Kabul detention centre in February 2009:

U.S. soldiers (L) and an Afghan policeman keep watch near a building which is held by the Taliban in Logar, south of Kabul August 10, 2009. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

The article by Jean MacKenzie originally appeared in GlobalPost. This is part of a special series by GlobalPost called Life, Death and The Taliban. Click here for a related article Funding the Pakistani Taliban.

KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.

Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.

It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds.

Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, former Taliban minister to Pakistan, was perhaps more than a bit disingenuous when he told GlobalPost that the militants were operating mostly on air.

“The Taliban does not have many expenses,” he said, smiling slightly. “They are barefoot and hungry, with no roof over their heads and a stone for their pillow.” As for weapons, he just shrugged. “Afghanistan is full of guns,” he said. “We have enough guns for years.”

The reality is quite different, of course. The militants recruit local fighters by paying for their services. They move about in their traditional 4x4s, they have to feed their troops, pay for transportation and medical treatment for the wounded, and, of course, they have to buy rockets, grenades and their beloved Kalashnikovs.

Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at about $100 million, while others placed the figure as high as $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.

Now administration officials have launched a search for Taliban sponsors. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.

“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, according to media reports. “That is simply not true.”

The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy, with a variety of sources, including private contributions from Persian Gulf states, accounting for much of the rest. Holbrooke told reporters that he would add a member of the Treasury Department to his staff to pursue the question of Taliban funding.

But perhaps U.S. officials need look no further than their own backyard.

Anecdotal evidence is mounting that the Taliban are taking a hefty portion of assistance money coming into Afghanistan from the outside.

This goes beyond mere protection money or extortion of “taxes” at the local level — very high-level negotiations take place between the Taliban and major contractors, according to sources close to the process.

A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.

The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.

If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated.

The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.

One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.

“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

In the south, no contract can be implemented without the Taliban taking a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way.

One contractor in the southern province of Helmand was negotiating with a local supplier for a large shipment of pipes. The pipes had to be brought in from Pakistan, so the supplier tacked on about 30 percent extra for the Taliban, to ensure that the pipes reached Lashkar Gah safely.

Once the pipes were given over to the contractor, he had to negotiate with the Taliban again to get the pipes out to the project site. This was added to the transportation costs.

“We assume that our people are paying off the Taliban,” said the foreign contractor in charge of the project.

In Farah province, local officials report that the Taliban are taking up to 40 percent of the money coming in for the National Solidarity Program, one of the country’s most successful community reconstruction projects, which has dispensed hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the country over the past six years.

Many Afghans see little wrong in the militants getting their fair share of foreign assistance.

“This is international money," said one young Kabul resident. “They are not taking it from the people, they are taking it from their enemy.”

But in areas under Taliban control, the insurgents are extorting funds from the people as well.

In war-ravaged Helmand, where much of the province has been under Taliban control for the past two years, residents grumble about the tariffs.

“It’s a disaster,” said a 50-year-old resident of Marja district. “We have to give them two kilos of poppy paste per jerib during the harvest; then we have to give them ushr (an Islamic tax, amounting to one-tenth of the harvest) from our wheat. Then they insisted on zakat (an Islamic tithe). Now they have come up with something else: 12,000 Pakistani rupee (approximately $150) per household. And they won’t take even one rupee less.”

It all adds up, of course. But all things are relative: if the Taliban are able to raise and spend say $1 billion per year — the outside limit of what anyone has been able to predict — that accounts for what the United States is now spending on 10 days of the war to defeat them.

Sometimes we Afghan photographers joke that an Afghanistan without burqas, would mean no more good images.
I was with Yannis Behrakis when he shot his version (top). It was the day after the Northern Alliance took over Kabul and the Taliban fled the city. Yannis wanted to shoot some images which could show a change after the fall of the Taliban. We came across a number of women who were waiting to receive some alms from a rich local businessman. Yannis stopped to take some pictures.

For my version (below), I went to cover President Hamid Karzai's election rally in the south of the country on August 4. There were thousands of men but some females who were mostly covered in burqas, as usual. I wanted to show the women's participation in this mainly male-run country.

One could draw the conclusion that years after the fall of the Taliban, women are still under burqas and pictures look the same. This is because the situation of women may have changed in the cities but not across the country. The reason is not that international communities failed to help women liberate but it is because that is how they live. The life style in most parts of Afghanistan is a unique one, it is an Afghan one. It is clear from the start that men work outside and women work inside the house, that is how centuries past by. This is how they choose to live, one can not just take their burqas off, put them in jeans or short skirts, tell them to go out and work and then say your situation has improved. With all due respect to the Western media, they are painting the wrong picture on the situation of women here. Let's leave the Taliban era out of this, this is now eight years of "Operation Enduring Freedom".

You still see the same picture. The Afghan women and burqas make a damn good picture so they make a good story too, it is colorful. It is hard for me to believe a story written by a journalist who come for a short visit to Afghanistan and made reports about women or anything in Afghanistan. It takes time, knowledge and above all understanding of the Afghan way of doing things. This may be wrong according to the outside world but right according to Afghans.

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared last month that the burqa was not welcome in France, he unleashed a global debate on Islam and veils that drew in everyone from bloggers and full-time pundits to Al Qaeda’s North African wing. FaithWorld has dealt with it when Sarkozy spoke, in the aftermath of that speech, with a view from Afghanistan and a televised debate with a National Assembly deputy backing the ban.

(Photo: Kabul women in burqas, 20 Nov 2001/Yannis Behrakis)

Last week, a somewhat unlikely group of commentators joined the debate — fashion designers at the haute couture shows in Paris. The niqab and the burqa are, after all, garments, so maybe it should not be surprising that the high priests of fashion have spent some thought on the issue.

In fact, many top French designers make customised abayas (long, baggy gowns some Arab women usually worn with a veil) and other luxury versions of traditional outfits for their Middle Eastern clients.

Speaking backstage before and after their shows, surrounded by half-naked models, most stuck to the middle ground, saying they had nothing against the burqa, abaya or niqab as long as the woman was not forced into it. Couturier Franck Sorbier pointed out that in most hot places, including Corsica, women
wear some kind of headscarf.

“If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” haute couture designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, told me.

(Photo: Stephane Rolland and model in wedding dress he designed, 21 Jan 2004/Philippe Wojazer)

When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered. “I don’t want to speak about religion, that’s a different subject. But I don’t want to cover the woman — alas, I don’t want to think about that,” he said before turning away.

And at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld mused about the practical side of the burqa:

“It might be quite nice to wear it, you don’t need to go to the hairdresser and you can see everything without being seen, I find that quite comfortable,” he told me after the Chanel haute couture show last week. “Veils, tunics, I’m not against all that, I find it picturesque. Live and let live!”

For the latest on the French burqa debate, from the chic fashion shows to burqa shops in scruffy Paris suburbs, read my feature here.

Any reactions to this?

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(Photo:A burqa-clad woman in Kabul’s old bazaar, 4 March 2009/Ahmad Masood)

Here’s some news for Nicolas Sarkozy. While the French president has begun a battle against the burqa in France, the famous blue garment that covers women from head to toe is losing favour back in its stronghold Afghanistan. In Herat, burqa seller Nehmatullah Yusefy says sales have dropped 50 percent since the Taliban were toppled in 2001 and he says he will soon need to start stocking other styles of Islamic dress to make up for lost profits.

(Photo right: Baghdad woman in chador, 12 Nov 2008/Mahmoud Raouf)

“I think, God willing, the sales of burqas will decrease, then I will sell chador namaz and even maybe mantau chalvar,” Yusefy said, standing behind the counter of his small outlet on a strip of burqa shops in the western city’s main market.

Read my feature here.

The chador namaz is a long, billowing dress in black or sombre-patterned fabric which is widely worn in Iran. It exposes the woman’s face but covers the rest of her head and body until her ankles.

Mantau chalvar is a long coat worn over trousers and it is popular with women in the capital Kabul, who are comparatively more free to dress as they choose. It is always worn with a scarf covering the head that is tied firmly under the chin.

(Photo left: Kabul woman in mantau chalvar, 28 June 2009/Ahmad Masood)

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The French love a rousing political debate, all the more so if it leads to a parliamentary inquiry and is topped off with a new law. Paris set the stage this week for just such a debate on whether Muslim women should be allowed to cover their faces in public in burqas or niqabs. By deciding this week to launch a six-month inquiry into the issue, parliament has ensured it will stay in the headlines until year’s end as 32 politicians from the left and right hold weekly hearings to consider banning these veils.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

A few politicians have been proposing a ban on full facial veils ever since France outlawed headscarves from its state schools in 2004. The issue came up recently when 58 politicians signed a petition for an inquiry into whether burqa wearing should be outlawed in France. But it finally took off on June 22 when President Nicolas Sarkozy declared these veils “unwelcome in France” as a symbol of the subjugation of women and backed the call for an inquiry.

Few women in France actually wear these veils, either the Afghan-style burqa covering the face completely or the Arabian niqab with space open for the woman’s eyes. It is perhaps telling that the French say burqa for both of them, even though the full veils occasionally spotted in minority neighbourhoods outside Paris or Lyon are niqabs. Pictures of burqas in French media are usually from Afghanistan. Anyway, the politicians who petitioned for the commission say the numbers of fully veiled women are rising and that seems to be true. But the evidence is always anecdotal and there are no statistics to support this argument.

One might be tempted to call the inquiry a “fact-finding mission” but, if past practice is anything to go by, we may not get many facts in the final report anyway. France has been through this exercise before. In mid to late 2003, the so-called Stasi Commission studied the state of laïcité (separation of church and state) in six months of work including 100 open and 40 closed hearings. Many of these sessions were covered by the media. The final report had long and eloquent sections on French law, history and laïcité. But it had no empirical survey data on how many schoolgirls wore hijab headscarves or how often women refused to be treated by male doctors in hospitals.

Nobody seemed surprised at the lack of data at the time because this was not a “fact-finding mission.” The exercise was meant to find arguments to ban the Muslim headscarf in state schools. This was confirmed when the report was finished and then President Jacques Chirac promptly picked one of the commission’s 26 proposals — the veil ban — and quickly had a law passed to enforce it. There was a wave of protests by some Muslim groups but they did not last long.

(Photo: Protest in Strasbourg against the headscarf ban, 20 Dec 2003. The banner reads “A law against the headscarf or against Islam”/stringer)

The inquiry and the public debate surrounding it showed that defending laïcité and upholding basic rights such as gender equality and freedom of expression enjoy wide support across the political spectrum in France. In an age of advancing globalisation and Europeanisation of so many other political issues, these have become key identity issues for the French. They’re what are known in American political slang as “motherhood and apple pie” issues that most people agree on. The burqa inquiry petition, for example, was launched by a communist deputy but 40 of its 58 signatories are from Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party.

The timing of the petition suited Sarkozy’s political calender well. Elections in France’s 26 regions, now almost all run by the opposition Socialist Party, are due around March of next year. By that time, the burqa commission should have finished its job and the government might be ready to present a burqa ban law bound to be popular . As my colleague Paul Taylor wrote here, the issue also fit into Sarkozy’s plan to relaunch his drive for some far-reaching reforms: “The aim was clear — to distract attention from less crowd-pleasing but more significant proposals to ease taxes on labour and production, raise a big loan from the public to finance key spending priorities, slim down France’s bloated regional and local government and debate raising the legal retirement age.” It’s useful to remember that, back in 2004, Sarkozy didn’t like the headscarf ban idea and only went along with it reluctantly.

As France heads into this debate, two questions stand out:

• If the commission really wants to find out about burqa and niqab wearing in France, it should provide solid statistics to back up its claim that it is important and growing. Will the fact-finding panel come up with any facts?
• Masked people present a problem of identity and security in an open society. Faces are a natural identity card and a rough indicator of a person’s mood. Covering them hides the wearer’s most indentifying feature and denies to the rest of the public sphere — especially the police — the ability to see the others in their midst. Hijabs present no such problem because they leave the face uncovered. Why do politicians opt for the arguments about laïcité and women’s equality when the broader question of identity and security in an open society also confronts them?

My guess is that no statistical surveys will be made because the results would show the actual number of women involved is very small and this could undercut arguments for a ban. The question of identity and security will probably also not be asked because it would involve a deeper debate about what is and is not admissible in the public sphere. We had a post earlier this year about this debate in North America and how difficult it is to decide this.

Why bother with a more complex debate when laïcité and women’s equality are sure-fire winning arguments?

(Photo: Women shop for clothes at Muslim fair in northern Paris, 14 April 2007/Benoit Tessier)

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A new poll shows public opinion in Pakistan has turned sharply against the Taliban and other Islamist militants, even though they still do not trust the United States and President Barack Obama. Reporting on the poll, our Asia specialist in Washington, Paul Eckert, said the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, conducted in May as Pakistan’s army fought the Taliban in the Swat Valley, found that 81 percent saw the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda as a critical threat to the country, a jump from 34 percent in a similar poll in late 2007. Read Eckert’s report here.

(Photo: Pakistani Taliban in Swat, 2 Nov 2007/Sherin Zada Kanju)

The poll shows a wide divergence between Pakistani public opinion and the views of the Taliban on the implementation of sharia, a religious issue sometimes cited to help explain earlier tolerance of the militants. Some 80 percent of the respondents said sharia permits education for girls, one of the first services the Taliban close down when they gain control of an area. And 75 percent said sharia allows women to work, which the Taliban do not.

Reflecting their distrust, 71 percent said they believed the Taliban would not even submit to the sharia courts that they themselves have set up or promised to install as a pure and speedy alternative to Pakistan’s corrupt and inefficient civil courts. Only 14 percent supported the Taliban claim that it could provide more effective and timely justice than the state, a claim that partly helped the Islamist militants in the past (although it must be added that only 56 percent expressed trust in the civil courts). Only 9 percent said they thought the Taliban would do better at fighting corruption than the government, which got a lukewarm 47 percent. In any case, these results seem to indicate very little support for trademark Taliban promises that once seemed attractive.

If accurate, these findings mark a major shift from the results of a similar poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org in late 2007, not long after the Pakistani army flushed out Islamist militants who had taken control of the Red Mosque complex in the heart of Islambad. More than 100 died in the raid, including dozens of suspected militants and at least 10 troops. Some 64 percent said the raid was a mistake while only 22 percent supported the decision. A 60 percent majority believed that sharia should play a larger role in Pakistani law than it did at the time.

(Photo: Anti-Taliban rally in Lahore, 19 June 2009/Mohsin Raza)

Another poll, by the International Republican Institute, relativises this shift a bit. Conducted in March, before the height of the Taliban-army clash in Swat and the video of Taliban flogging a teenage local girl that reportedly turned Pakistani opinion against the militants, it shows more sympathy for the Taliban’s sharia demands. While 74 percent said religious extremism was a problem in Pakistan, 80 percent supported the introduction of sharia in Swat and 72 percent supported the government peace deal with the Taliban there. Some 56 percent said they would support the Taliban if they demanded sharia in other cities such as Karachi, Multan, Quetta or Lahore.

The relationship between traditional religious views and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is so complex that I’m not sure any poll gives a very accurate picture. Unfortunately, neither poll examined in greater detail what those polled thought about sharia and how much of it should be applied in Pakistan. Does anyone have other poll results that give what they think is a better picture?

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UPDATE (July 2) Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid has an interesting opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times saying: “The Pakistani public, army and government have suddenly awakened to the Taliban threat. That is a crucial first step. But it will need strong international support to effectively respond.”