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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (10809)	11/18/2001 8:03:12 PM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<The number of guns you have and the number of fighters holding sway. >> In a gunfight like Afghanistan is now the number of guns you have does count. OTOH they have seen some very impressive US air power and may reign in some blood lust to reach an agreement to avoid being a non entity.

To: maceng2 who wrote (10809)	11/18/2001 8:15:10 PM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 281500

Pie-crust hat hot seller again Shifting political fortunes in Afghanistan are having a marked effect on the millinery business STEPHANIE NOLEN, With Alan Freeman in Taloqan, Afghanistan Friday, November 16, 2001 PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- These are giddy days for the makers of the pakool, the distinctive woollen pie-crust hat that has become the symbol of Afghan opposition forces. From just after dawn until long after dark, the narrow streets of the hat market in Peshawar clatter with the sounds of ancient Singer sewing machines. For the dozens of tailors who make the soft cap with the rolled brim, business is the best it has been in years. Five years, to be precise. The caps are native to tribesmen of Nuristan in Afghanistan, and of Chitral across the border in Pakistan. They were popular once before, 20 years ago, when the mujahedeen from that area were the first to take up arms against the Soviet invaders. Afghan refugees to Pakistan wore the pakool in sympathy, and the hat business boomed. Then, in 1996, when the Taliban's power spread across Afghanistan, the hat market collapsed. The fundamentalist Taliban demanded men wear strips of cloth bound in loose turbans, or prayer caps, in their attempt to recreate life in the time of the Prophet Mohammed. The pakool (the word means woollen hat in Chitrali and Nuristani) was worn only by men in the small chunk of territory controlled by the Northern Alliance and by Afghan refugees and Pakistanis in the north. With the sudden victories by Alliance forces in the past week, the pakool is back in style. In the northern Afghan town of Taloqan, shopkeeper Mohammed-Mullazada kept a secret stash of pakools for the 14 months the town was under Taliban rule. When Alliance forces began moving in last Friday, the shopkeeper took a chance and displayed the caps in his small store. They sold quickly, he said -- especially to Taliban soldiers eager to get rid of their black turbans in anticipation of an opposition victory. "Many Taliban bought them because they knew Taloqan was about to fall," he said, adding: "I would have been shot if I had sold these hats [under Taliban rule]." In the Peshawar bazaar, Mohammed Amin, a Pakistani tailor who apprenticed as a hatmaker for six years, explained that for eight years pakool dealers could export to only four provinces in northern Afghanistan; now they hope to send a shipment to Kabul by the weekend. "If the situation becomes more stable, I will hire two more tailors," he said. "If the Northern Alliance remains in power it will be very good for business." Mr. Amin works in a shop the size of a small bathroom, cross-legged on the raised floor, his shiny black Singer in front of him and bolts of rough wool all around. Hundreds of pakools are stacked around him; thousands more are piled in the shops that line three surrounding alleys. Mr. Amin makes about 25 caps a day, stitching the round top to a tube of material, tugging that on to a hard tubular cushion then tightly rolling up the brim. With an eye to shifting political fortunes, two days ago Mr. Amin took down a poster showing a beaming Osama bin Laden which he had tacked to the shop front. "Most of my customers liked him," he said. "Now that time is over." But the tailor is a practical man. He has the poster in a cupboard, for while Mr. Bin Laden's face is not a good advertisement now, Mr. Amin thinks it might be again. globeandmail.com