and the banning of Flying Kites!

The Tail of Two Taliban

A few years ago, the Guardian came up with a headline Colorful kites fill London sky in solidarity with people of Afghanistan.” The kite-flying celebration was organized by the Good Chance theatre, which describes itself as “the theatre of hope” and put on a similar event last August across 15 cities in the UK as an “act of defiance” “Hordes of colorful kites soared into the sky over London in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan on the second anniversary of the fall of their homeland to the Taliban. The Western world alarmed us with the terrible life under the Taliban; they banned school and work for women and banned flying kites. The art of making and flying kites using colored tissue paper and bamboo sticks is a traditional part of Afghan culture but was denounced by the Taliban as un-Islamic and banned during their rule.” explained The Guardian.

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One of the more important parts of our Afghan culture is these amazing multi-coloured kites and we fly them, make them, design them since we were children,” 24-year-old Afghan refugee Amir Hussain Ibrahimi told the PA news agency. The Taliban did not just ban women from schools, impose the burqa and outlaw smartphones. The Taliban built a system that enslaves nearly half the country’s population, reported the Guardian. When the Taliban regime fell in 2001, the sudden return of colorful kites to the skies over Kabul and other cities became an iconic global image of regained freedom and resilience. Kites flown by Palestinian children in Gaza are now threatening Israel’s national security, and a pretext for further air strikes on Gaza that haven’t stopped for three years, with Palestinian children flying paper kites used as justification for further strikes, destruction,  and displacement across. Gaza Strip. More than 74,420 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, including 1,288 since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry

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