Decked out with fake crystal chandeliers and velvet sofas, cosmetic surgery clinics in Afghanistan’s capital are a world away from the austerity of Taliban rule, where Botox, lip filler and hair transplants reign.
Despite the Taliban authorities’ strict theocratic rule, and prevailing conservatism and poverty in Afghanistan, the 20 or so clinics in Kabul have flourished since the end of decades of war in the country.
Foreign doctors, especially from Turkey, travel to Kabul to train Afghans, who equally undertake internships in Istanbul, while equipment is imported from Asia or Europe.
Photo: AFP
In the waiting rooms, the clientele is often well-off and includes men with thinning hair, but the majority are women, sometimes heavily made up and always covered from head to toe, more rarely in an all-enveloping burqa.
At 25, Silsila Hamidi decided to get a second facelift, convinced her skin had suffered from the stress of being a woman in Afghanistan.
“Even if others can’t see us, we see ourselves: looking beautiful in the mirror gives us energy,” said Hamidi, before she went under the knife to lift the upper part of her face, which “was starting to sag.”
Photo: AFP
Skirting details, the medical school graduate said that her skin suffers from the “many pressures” faced by Afghan women.
Under Taliban government restrictions, women’s access to work has been severely constrained. They can no longer travel long distances without a male guardian, must not raise their voices outside the home, and are banned from universities, parks and gyms.
While surgical cosmetic interventions might be booming, hair salons and beauty parlors catering to women have been banned.
“If they were open ... our skin wouldn’t be in this state, we wouldn’t need surgery,” said Hamidi, who, at 23, had work done on the lower part of her face.
The Taliban authorities, who ordinarily forbid altering physical characteristics, did not reply for multiple requests for comment on cosmetic surgery.
Those in the sector said it is allowed as it is considered medicine.
The government does not interfere with their work, clinic workers told reporters, but morality police check that sex segregation is respected: a male nurse for a male patient, a female nurse for a female patient.
Some said that even Taliban members are clients.
“Here, having no hair or beard is considered a sign of weakness,” said Sajed Zadran, deputy director of the Negin Asia clinic, which boasts state-of-the-art Chinese-made equipment.
Since the Taliban ordered men to grow their beards at least the length of a fist, transplants have become fashionable, said Bilal Khan, codirector of the EuroAsia clinic, which is about to open a second facility.
And because not all clients are wealthy, some “borrow money to have hair before their wedding,” Khan said.
In the four-story villa transformed into a clinic, the methods are the same as those used abroad and pose “no risk,” said Abdul Nassim Sadiqi, a dermatologist.
At his clinic, it costs US$43 to US$87 for Botox and US$260 to US$509 for hair implants.
The sums are a fortune for many Afghans — nearly half of whom live in poverty, according to the World Bank — but a boon for those like Mohammed Shoaib Yarzada, an Afghan restaurateur based in London.
Put off by the thousands of pounds required in Britain for the same operation, he took advantage of his first visit to Afghanistan in 14 years to have his scalp replenished.
“When I enter the clinic, it’s as if I am abroad, in Europe,” he said.
To attract new customers, each clinic floods its social media pages with promises of beauty: smoothed skin, plump lips and abundant hair.
Afghanistan, like the West, is not exempt from the sway of social media influencers, said Lucky Khaan, 29, codirector of Negin Asia, which registers dozens of new patients every day.
“Many patients come without real problems, but want to have surgery because they have seen trends on Instagram,” said Khaan, a Russian doctor of Afghan origin, whose face is wrinkle-free.
While according to the UN, 10 million Afghans suffer from hunger and one in three lacks access to basic medical care, some, “who lack money for food, prefer to invest in their beauty,” the surgeon said.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS