Thaindian News

August 6, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The face on the cover of the latest issue of the Time Magazine is of Bibi Aisha, who is an Afghan female. She appears wonderfully poised and serene in the cover. However, what will suddenly wallop the psyche of the readers is the opening on her nose that resembles the shape of the heart. Why is there an opening or a cavity on her nose?

‘Time’ and other credible accounts have articulated that Aisha had run away from the residence of her in-laws in Afghanistan in 2009. Aisha has declared that she escaped from her husband and her in-laws since they frequently punched her. She was a victim of their mistreatment. However, Aisha was apprehended by the Taliban, known for its barbaric standpoints on womanhood. A Taliban commandant enacted the role of an adjudicator and ordered that Aisha’s ears and nose be sheared off as punishment for her escape from her in-laws’ residence.

Subsequently, Aisha was transported to a shelter for females in Kabul, where she has been residing in the previous 10 months. Time has mentioned that Aisha posed for the cover picture of Time as she desired that the global readers witness the possible horrific ramifications of the resurrection of the Taliban. Eminent Afghan females have expressed their apprehension that the freedoms of the Afghan women could be eradicated if the national government of Afghanistan arrives at a negotiated peace treaty with the terroristic insurgents of the Taliban. These freedoms of the Afghan women were gained subsequent to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 by the international community, which ousted the repressive Taliban from power.

Aisha, meanwhile, journeyed to America on Wednesday from Kabul in order to undergo a facial reconstructive surgery. She has mentioned that she is unaware whether her photo would assist other oppressed Afghan ladies. Aisha desperately desires to regain her nose.

Feedbacks to the Time cover have been exceedingly passionate and simply illustrate feelings toward the Afghan war and towards the issue of the precise commission of America in Afghanistan. Detractors of the American existence in Afghanistan have referred to the photo on the cover as psychological blackmail and even as war porn. Other entities, which dread the outcomes of jettisoning Afghanistan, have analyzed the photo as a potent appeal to scruples. Critics have alluded to the photo as a horrible example of hysterical media reportage. They have voiced that this photo is profoundly insidious and assists ethnic divides and cultural detachment.

This vociferous and fervent debate was stimulated, in some measure, by the words that Time has selected to go together with the photograph. The words are ‘What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan’, meaningfully devoid of a question mark.

Some analysts have brought into play contrasts of this photo with one of photojournalism’s most lasting images. This image was of the eye-catching and green-eyed Afghan refugee girl. She came into view on National Geographic’s cover in 1985 and became a symbol of Afghanistan’s anguish under Soviet military occupation.