Memories in Kabul of the hardliners' 1996-2001 regime are receding, and this year more companies than ever became involved, sponsoring events and sometimes distributing free kites, with television covering the festivities. -Photo by AFP

KABUL: In the skies above Kabul, hundreds of Afghans celebrated the war-torn country's New Year by engaging in aerial combat to the death.

High over a hill in the city, a white kite swept under a green, purple and orange rival and sliced through the thread connecting it to its owners, who smiled broadly even as their craft fluttered, crippled and useless, to the ground.

“Every New Year we come here to fight kites,” said Harst Kalq, a 20-year-old interpreter, whose kite had just lost.

“Kite-flying is our culture. All Afghans like it. Children learn to make them when they are very small.”

Crowds of men and boys, watched by their wives and sisters, took advantage of this week's arrival of 1391 -- Afghanistan follows the Persian calendar, where the year starts with the spring equinox -- to indulge in their favourite pastime.

The Taliban banned the hobby as un-Islamic on the grounds that it was a waste of time and money and fertile ground for gambling, rather than specifically prohibited in the Quran.

But memories in Kabul of the hardliners' 1996-2001 regime are receding, and this year more companies than ever became involved, sponsoring events and sometimes distributing free kites, with television covering the festivities.

In Afghanistan, a country that has spent the last three decades at war, to fly a kite is to fight it, trying to bring down all surrounding others.

“Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules. And so it was with kite-fighting. The rules were simple: no rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck,” wrote Khaled Hosseini in his best-selling novel The Kite Runner.

In past decades, threads would be covered by hand in glue and powdered glass to turn them into weapons, but nowadays specialised manufactured alternatives are available, imported from abroad.

“What we need is British thread, it's really sharp,” said Kalq on Wednesday.

“Pakistani thread is worth nothing.”

Whatever they use, most participants wrap their index fingers in sticky tape to try to avoid cuts from the kite cords.

Participants fly their kites in pairs, one to launch it and one to control it. Rather than spend as much as 2,000 Afghanis ($40) on a kite, as some do, Kalq and his friend Kayum Khan bought theirs from young peddlers for 20 to 50 Afghanis each.

Some people get through 20 kites in a day, while small children equipped with hooked poles compete to catch beaten kites as they fall, to resell them.

Coming at the end of winter, when winds are strong and skies often clear, the Afghan New Year, Nowruz, is the most popular time for kite-flying.

Even so nerves are strained. Two nights earlier, several loud explosions in Kabul triggered panic as the skies lit up, with rumours of insurgent attacks flying across social networks.

The blasts turned out to be a previously unannounced New Year firework display.