The first execution I saw was in August 1998. All the executions in Kabul take place in the football stadium, and I sat high in the concrete terraces, buying endless small glasses of green tea from a hawker as I waited for the amputations - which precede most Taliban executions - to start. A crowd of around five thousand had filed quietly through the tunnels and onto the stands. Lessons from the Koran were being read aloud over the public address system and people sat and talked and bought nuts and sweet biscuits and cold kebabs. There were no women present but many boys.

LRB 22 March 2001 | PDF Download