Ladies of Caubul by James Rattray

Ladies of Caubul: A 1842 lithography work by James Rattray showing a Persian (Qizilbash) woman in Afghanistan with a burqa next to her, source: The British Library. This lithograph is taken from plate 24 of 'Afghaunistan' by James Rattray.

A political mission consisting of Doctor Lord and Captain James Rattray was established at Afghanistan’s Bamiyan, the first spot which could be invaded by the Russians. It also had the only road by which the exiled Dost Mohammed could revisit his kingdom.

The region was famed for its Buddhist statues. Some of the tallest rock-cut standing Buddha statues, known as Bamiyan Buddhas, were blasted off with heavy artillery fire by the Taliban during their reign of Afghanistan, disregarding international outcry against destruction of the ancient statues.

The subject of the lithograph, Shakar Lab ('Sugar Lips'), was the favourite wife of a former governor of Bamiyan and niece by marriage to Dost Mohammed. As a great favor, Rattray was introduced to her in Kabul. Describing her as ‘a Qizilbash belle of the first water’, Rattray wrote, "Afghaun ladies exercise more control over their husbands than is usual in Eastern countries."

According to Rattray, though Afghan women of higher classes were strictly under purdah as in some parts of Hindustan, they certainly enjoyed life more than the Hindustanis. He wrote, Afghanistan women were seen making constant pleasure trips into gardens and bazaars, and they threw off their veils and restraint in secluded spots, and he had often come upon them thus and found Afghan women strikingly beautiful.

A burqa (also transliterated as burkha, burka or burqua from Arabic ‘burqu’ or ‘burqa’) is an outer garment plus a head-covering and the face-veil (niqab) worn by women in some Islamic traditions for hiding a female body. The burqa is worn by Muslim women over the usual daily clothing such as a long dress or a salwar kameez, and removed when they return home, out of the view of men who are not their husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons and grandsons.

The face-veil (niqab) is usually a rectangular piece of cloth top side of which is sewn to the head-scarf, and it can be turned up if the woman desires to reveal her face. The niqab is also called purdah, a Persian word meaning ‘curtain’.

The veil and similar type of dress was worn by some Arab and Persian women long before Islam, as historical references show. The Roman African Christian Tertullian (around 200 AD) praises the modesty of those ‘pagan women of Arabia’ who ‘not only cover their head, but their whole face... preferring to enjoy half the light with one eye rather than prostituting their whole face’, in Chapter 17 of ‘The Veiling of Virgins’. Strabo (1st century AD) also writes about covering the face as a practice of some Persian women (Geography 11.13. 9-10).

Before the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, the Afghan veil, chadri, was not frequently worn in cities, but it was made compulsory for all Afghan women to wear chadri in public under the Taliban rule. Officially it is not compulsory under the present Afghan regime.

Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan

Photo 1: Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan

Photo 2: US air strikes on Tora Bora

Tora Bora is a cave complex situated in the White Mountains, sometimes called Tora Bora Mountains, in eastern Afghanistan, in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar province, approximately 50 km (31 miles) west of the Khyber Pass and 10 km north of the border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. During the US invasion of Afghanistan it was one of the strongholds of the Taliban and its Arab Al Qaeda allies. As the suspected hide-out of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, it was the location of the December 2001 Battle of Tora Bora.

Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 over Afghanistan

Photo: This Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane was conducting a mission over Afghanistan on May 28, 2008 after receiving fuel from a KC-135R Stratotanker aircraft. The KC-135R is assigned to the 22nd Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, 376th Air Expeditionary Wing deployed from Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, USA. Author: Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway.

The rough mountainous terrain of Afghanistan can be seen in the background, well below the fighter plane, as you see in a relief map.

Fighter planes of the class F-16s have been used by the United States in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2002, a tri-national detachment, the European Participating Air Forces, consisting of Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway forces, of 18 F-16 fighter planes in the ground attack role deployed to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Here is a bit of history of involvement of F-16s in Afghanistan. Since April 2005, eight Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s, joined by four Royal Norwegian Air Force F-16s in February 2006, have been supporting International Security Assistance Force ground troops in the southern provinces of Afghanistan. On 31 August 2006 a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16AM crashed in Ghazni province and the pilot, Capt. Michael Donkervoort, was killed, but the cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the investigation report referenced the fact that a camel spider and other creatures had been found recently in the cockpits of Dutch aircraft in Afghanistan. Could it be that the spiders and other creatures in the cockpit had bitten the pilot of the crashed aircraft?

Camel spider is also known as wind scorpion, jerrymuglum, sun scorpion, red Romans, haarskeerders, baardskeerders and sun spider. Scientifically, they are Solifugae, an order of Arachnida with over 1,000 species in about 140 genera.

Camel spiders have appeared in many urban legends. In the Middle East and to some extent in Afghanistan, it is rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that camel spiders will feed on living human flesh. The foreign forces there believe that the creature will inject an anesthetic or venom into the skin of its sleeping victim, and then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. However, they do not have such an anaesthetic or poison, excepting some species found in India. And they do not attack humans unless threatened.

Other stories about camel spiders say they leap into the air, disembowel camels, scream, and run alongside moving humvees. The greatest threat they pose to humans is their bite in self-defense. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection.

Click HERE to view Camel Spider.