Afghan Whispers:Education, music, wonderful nature and freedom · Global Voices
Fred Petrossian

Sun Leaf talks about the painful situation of Afghanistan's education system. The blogger says
Compared to other countries in Asia, the Afghan education situation is startling. The statistics below show that tremendous challenges remain. One of the poorest measures includes funding or implementing short-term education projects, which are abrubtly brought to an end leaving thousands of hopeful children back in the circle of illiteracy, neglect and darkness. The blogger to prove his/her argument mentions several statistics:More than 5.4 million children are enrolled in schools today, nearly 35% of them girls, compared to a little more than a million 5 years ago and almost no girls.
Still, half of our school-age children are estimated to be out of schools with significant gender and provincial disparities.
Afghanistan's Cat Stevens
Sun leaf also writes about a popular Afghan singer who is, according to the blogger, Afghanistan's Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam).The blogger writes about this singer: you know the lyrics or not, the tune itself should be able to take you to the lands far away.
Wonderful nature, dangerous road
Onne Parl writes about her journey to the heart of wondefrul nature in Bamyian but she reminds us about the danger too. When speaking to Afghans about sightseeing, they ask at first: “Have you been to Band-e Amir?” These well-known lakes in the middle of the Koha-e-Baba Mountains are one of the few tourist places in Afghanistan. Thousands of locals bundle up the whole family and make a long journey up to the lakes. It takes one and half days from Kabul to reach this place. Furthermore there are a lot of mines left in this area. Three years ago one minibus got blasted next to the main road. Thirteen men were killed on the spot.
Praising freedom of express
Free Keyboard,an Iranian blogger talks about [Fa] his trip to Afghanistan.He compares freedom of expression between Iran and Afghanistan:Contrary to our Islamic land (Iran),in Islamic Afghanistan,there is not a lot of restriction for newspapers,magazines,internet and books.You have your freedom to publish whatever you have.You have freedom to have your site and write whatever you want in it.Just like a developed country.He adds of course extremist people threat your life.
The blogger adds when I was in Afghanistan, a friend of mine launched Kabul Press and now it has 4000 visitors. He says internet is free but a few have access to that.