Afghanistan's Search for Peace 'Ismaili Woman'

Seamus Murphy

Newsweek/NY Times Magazine

The Afghan people live their lives as they always have done through their history , at once both the victims and ultimate survivors of their own fate. A young Ismaili woman (followers of the Aga Khan, who as Sh'ia Muslims observe a different interpretation of Hejab ) working in the fields in the remote region of Ishkashim.Badakshan. Badakshan is a rustic land of snow-capped peaks and grinding poverty that is also one of Afghanistan's main opium producing regions. The province was almost entirely cut off from central government, both politically and physically and as a result opium poppies have been grown in Badakshan for centuries, but cultivation took off during the upheavals of Afghanistan's two decades of war and occupation. October 2004

Seamus Murphy, "Afghanistan's Search for Peace 'Ismaili Woman'," in POYi Archive, Item #35628, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/35628 (accessed November 21, 2024).