I think it means that the depicted man and "owner" of the captive woman knows that he is a pathetic scumbag and he's worried about losing his only worldly possession in the face of all the reform movements in his neck of the woods.

 We are all " dead", the ones who have been killed, the ones who are afraid to speak out, and the women " chained" in their burkas.  We are a country with out a soul.

Whatever it means, it is sad and depressing.

I think the depicted man and "owner" of the captive woman is realizing that he is in danger of losing his only worldly possession as his barbaric lifestyle is eroding away in the middle east. What a dirtbag.

A direct connection between man and his hatred, while unraveling and slipping away, his true meaning of existence.

I see it as the conflict with the Israeli's. The man doesn't look like a muslim.

The gun is covered in skulls - obviously a tool of death and control. Those who live by the gun also die by the gun.

The aging, weary man with the rope under his foot is the supposed 'conquerer', as he is the one who uses the gun. Note the tattered clothes - he has few worldly posessions but for his 'woman of servitude'. He also needs no hat, no cover, as he is the one in charge, able to show his face without scorn. He also appears to be unattractive, and destitute - he has nothing to offer her. This is noteworthy, because the only reason she stays is because she is in bondage! Even her feet make it look like she is trying to walk away.

As for our covered bride, we know little. She is faceless, covered in her burkah. We know that it cannot be good, because you don't need a rope to keep people with you unless they are unhappy. The rope is symbolic of the control of men over women in that region, as is the burkah. Women are slaves, controlled by men, yet their misery is covered from the world. It certainly appears to me to be silent suffering.

Sad & pathetic. The men in these countries need to grow some b..s and start behaving like 21st century human beings. As long as they continue on this path to nowhere then that's exactly where they are going.

First of all, there is the gun, covered in skulls, which I would take to mean it's killed many people. The man, balding, looks old, worried and has a patch on his clothing, which could represent old values, or old ways. Under the man's foot is a rope that leads to a woman, to whom it's tied to. She is dressed in a burqa. Really, if you didn't know a woman dressed like that, you wouldn't be able to tell it was a lady other than her shoes. The man is holding the woman back. Maybe it's because he is old and afraid.

That's just my interpretation :)

The gun represents violence and oppression, as it's been used to kill and control others. It's the old way of life in Afghanistan, represented by the balding man, who keeps his woman under his control by force (the rope), not by a bond of love. The rope is tied to her, and kept under his foot, which denotes disdain towards her, as she is kept bound by something beneath his shoe. She is lower than snake s..t under a wagon wheel to him. Not even the AK can keep her there, he needs a rope too. What a charmer!

I think it is a sign of the times in this country. Oppression by fear alone. Turned by a religion who is not violent but turned ugly and sick by those who are sick and diseased by power. Oh and those whom claim that Christianty is calm and not violent look to the Holy Wars of the Middle Ages. We claim that we are more educated than "others". Human nature in and of its-self is sick and needs help. No one is any better and any one else. In the end we all meet our maker whom ever we call them ( God, Allah, Jesus, Godesses, or otherwise). Just saying my peace....:)

The mural represents the sad, backward nature of a country which cannot upgrade its culture because of religion. The laborers in the forefront, well, if the laborers in Afghanistan would reject what their Muslim "scholars" tell them, they could eventually purchase better wheelbarrows. Western wheelbarrows.

The man is examining himself. He has courageously put his gun down, painfully aware of what he's done with it, feeling ashamed for having engaged in a fight his whole life. He now wants to stop old ways, but yet is so unsure what that means that he is still hanging on to other old ideas, passively holding his servant captive with one foot.

Actually nothing symbolic at all, just literal: the woman chained like a dog, the weapon close by because that's the way it works in Afghan.

I spent 4 weeks in Afghanistan in 1978, 8 months before the Russian invasion. Don't ask.

Surprisingly, the message of this mural is NOT "anti-Western." The gun, grimly decorated with the skulls of its victims, is a Russian AK-47, famously used by the Taliban (along with many other armies and armed groups in the Middle East and elsewhere). Even the bayonet is accurately depicted. With that level of detail, had the artist wished to represent Western arms, s/he easily could have done so (with tanks, missiles, Predators, M-16's, and so forth). The gun is his, and he has put it down. We know it belongs to him; it is not pointed at the man, and he is not the least bit threatened by it. The woman is leaving. Look at her feet, they are pointed distinctly away from the man, she is moving. The sense of motion is further enhanced by her casting a backwards looking over her shoulder as she travels in the opposite direction. True, the woman may still be bound, and she still wears the buhrka (accurately depicted in the Afghani style with the cloth "grill" covering the eyes), because there is absolutely no reason to believe that she is going to be any less enslaved wherever she ultimately goes. But she is going, nonetheless. And the man is hardly stopping her. He has placed one foot lazily atop one end of the rope, hardly the position one would assume if he intended to "hang on." One good yank (pun intended), and the woman is off and running. The man knows how tenuous his hold is, and yet clearly no longer cares. The way of the gun has lead only to death for so many. His own woman is challenging the traditional bondage of her gender. Want to know something really neat? Look at the woman's feet: She is wearing modern shoes -- which NO Afghani woman in a burhka EVER does -- while the man is in sandals. She is the future, he is the past. Her defiance and impending independence (at least from him), is near-comlete. Everything this man ever has had, or done, or knows, is gone or leaving, and he just sits, fretfully and resignedly watching the world pass him by. And good riddance.

Jeanie53 wrote

Sad & pathetic. The men in these countries need to grow some b..s and start behaving like 21st century human beings. As long as they continue on this path to nowhere then that's exactly where they are going.

Stoney replied:

I agree men in countries like the USA, among others, DO need to grow a pair and act like 21st century human beings instead of pig ignorant stone and bronze age cretins. Education, Reason, Reality, and Courage are in critically short supply.

The Gun controls the man and in turn keeps women down.

The militant is feeling uncertain about his ideals and how aimed to achieve them. Now he is losing family and the things he was trying to protect because of his methods and ancient ways.

Death...........Poverty...........Slavery

The working men are happy.

They are going to bring home to their family the much needed fruits of their labor.

The Afghan male,-holding onto his traditions (women) -caught between the gun and the garb (religion).