Afghan Arnies gripped by bodybuilding craze
KABUL — Beneath a poster in a Kabul gym of muscular US movie star and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, scores of young Afghan men are pumping iron to Western dance music and dreaming of looking like their idol.
The urban youths, sporting spiky hair and tight T-shirts, have few memories of the oppressive Taliban regime ousted in 2001 by a US-led invasion, and grew up in a city where many people have grown rich on the war economy.
They love Hollywood and Bollywood movies -- Sylvester Stallone and Salman Khan are other popular stars -- and spend hours in Kabul's roughly 200 gyms honing their biceps to perfection.
"I don't care what's happening in the world," 18-year-old Hamid tells AFP, taking a break from his weights. "I want to look good and party, man. I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger... it's my dream to look like him."
It is all a far cry from the days of the hardline Islamist Taliban, who now lead a bloody insurgency against foreign troops and President Hamid Karzai's government.
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The urban youths, sporting spiky hair and tight T-shirts, have few memories of the oppressive Taliban regime ousted in 2001 by a US-led invasion, and grew up in a city where many people have grown rich on the war economy.