In the years before the 1740s, before Pashtuns had made their way to Garmsir, is when the fort, Observation Post Rock’s foundation, is thought to have been built, according to local officials and residents. Local people, he said, and eventually ethnic Pashtuns, saw it and the other structures like it in the area as spiritual sites and transformed them into burial sites. A Growing Threat: A local affiliate of the Islamic State group is upending security and putting the Taliban government in a precarious position.Īn American missile had struck the outpost before the Marines had seized it, the Americans would later say, burying Taliban fighters inside.īut the bones were almost certainly not Taliban: they were decades and, likely in some cases, centuries old.Ī local scholar in Garmsir, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said the hill had originally been a fort, but that hundreds of years ago its use changed.But many artists have fled, fearing for their work and their lives. Can Afghan Art Survive? The Taliban have not banned art outright.Far From Home: Some Afghans who were abroad when the country collapsed are desperate to return, but have no clear route home.Vanishing Rights: The Taliban’s decision to restrict women’s freedom may be a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology.Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. It is the backdrop for a ghost story built along the spine of Afghanistan’s unending wars and its countless dead. The vacated outpost has cemented itself in both American and local Afghan culture as part of a legend, a peculiar intersection of history, spiritualism and the paranormal. The post and its surrounding area were considered cursed by residents of the Amir Agha villages, an area where the Taliban insurgents now reside following the failed campaigns of the American, Afghan, Soviet and British militaries there. Only later did the Marines and British soldiers stationed there begin to understand the place they called Observation Post Rock. What they could not explain were the strange lights at night, the whispers in the darkness, the mysterious radio static, the sudden chill in a summer breeze and the recurring whiff of corpses. KABUL, Afghanistan - It seemed the perfect vantage point for the Marines: a 30-foot-high dirt pile overlooking the low-lying poppy fields of Helmand Province.