Now that the war is over, people can travel freely down highways devoid of gunfire, roadside bombs and attempts at extortion. The terrifying drone of warplanes overhead is long gone. But for many, the holiday served as a reminder of the dissonance between the promise of peace many Afghans had imagined and the realities of the end of the war
KABUL, Afghanistan — Thousands of Afghans had piled into buses and set out down the country’s once-perilous highways bound for relatives they had not seen in years.
Afghanistan’s only national park was filled with tourists who had only dreamed of traveling to its intensely blue lakes and jagged mountains when fighting raged across the country.
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