MOSCOW: Russia’s capital Moscow has this month seen the largest snowfall in more than 200 years, Moscow State University meteorologists said on Thursday.
AFP images from the city of around 13 million people showed residents struggling to make their way through heavy piles of snow on the streets in its central district.
Commuter trains in the Moscow area were delayed, AFP reporters witnessed, and cars were stuck in long traffic jams on Thursday evening.
“January was a cold and unusually snowy month in Moscow,” the university said on social media.
“By January 29, the Moscow State University Meteorological Observatory had recorded almost 92 mm of precipitation, which is already the highest value in the last 203 years,” it added.
Snow piles on the ground reached as high as 60 centimeters (24 inches) in some parts of the capital on Thursday.
Snow is mostly air, meaning the level of settled snow far surpasses scientific measurements of precipitation — which measures the amount of water that has fallen.
The record snowfall was “caused by deep and extensive cyclones with sharp atmospheric fronts passing over the Moscow region,” the observatory said.
“There was much more (snow) when I was a kid, but now we practically don’t have any snow at all, there used to be much more,” Pavel, a 35-year-old bartender and Moscow resident, told AFP, grumbling about a feeling of “emptiness” in the dark, snowy winter.
Earlier this month, Russia’s far east Kamchatka region declared an emergency situation due to a massive snowstorm that left its major city partially paralyzed.
Images, widely circulated online, showed huge snow piles reaching up to the second story of buildings and people digging their way through roads as snow blanketed cars on either side.
Moscow records heaviest snowfall in over 200 years
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Moscow records heaviest snowfall in over 200 years
- Commuter trains in the Moscow area were delayed and cars were stuck in long traffic jams on Thursday evening
- Snow piles on the ground reached as high as 60 centimeters in some parts of the capital
Afghan barbers under pressure as morality police take on short beards
KABUL: Barbers in Afghanistan risk detention for trimming men’s beards too short, they told AFP, as the Taliban authorities enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law with increasing zeal.
Last month, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it was now “obligatory” to grow beards longer than a fist, doubling down on an earlier order.
Minister Khalid Hanafi said it was the government’s “responsibility to guide the nation to have an appearance according to sharia,” or Islamic law.
Officials tasked with promoting virtue “are obliged to implement the Islamic system,” he said.
With ministry officials patrolling city streets to ensure the rule is followed, the men interviewed by AFP all spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
In the southeastern province of Ghazni, a 30-year-old barber said he was detained for three nights after officials found out that one of his employees had given a client a Western-style haircut.
“First, I was held in a cold hall. Later, after I insisted on being released, they transferred me to a cold (shipping) container,” he said.
He was eventually released without charge and continues to work, but usually hides with his clients when the patrols pass by.
“The thing is that no one can argue or question” the ministry officials, the barber said.
“Everyone fears them.”
He added that in some cases where both a barber and clients were detained, “the clients have been let out, but they kept the barber” in custody.
Last year, three barbers in Kunar province were jailed for three to five months for breaching the ministry’s rules, according to a UN report.
‘Personal space’
Alongside the uptick in enforcement, the religious affairs ministry has also issued stricter orders.
In an eight-page guide to imams issued in November, prayer leaders were told to describe shaving beards as a “major sin” in their sermons.
The religious affairs ministry’s arguments against trimming state that by shaving their beards, men were “trying to look like women.”
The orders have also reached universities — where only men study because women have been banned.
A 22-year-old Kabul University student said lecturers “have warned us... that if we don’t have a proper Islamic appearance, which includes beards and head covering, they will deduct our marks.”
In the capital Kabul, a 25-year-old barber lamented that “there are a lot of restrictions” which go against his young clients’ preference for closer shaves.
“Barbers are private businesses, beards and heads are something personal, they should be able to cut the way they want,” he said.
Hanafi, the virtue propagation minister, has dismissed such arguments, saying last month that telling men “to grow a beard according to sharia” cannot be considered “invading the personal space.”
Business slump
In Afghanistan, the majority are practicing Muslims, but before the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021, residents of major cities could choose their own appearance.
In areas where Taliban fighters were battling US-backed forces, men would grow beards either out of fear or by choice.
As fewer and fewer men opt for a close shave, the 25-year-old Kabul barber said he was already losing business.
Many civil servants, for example, “used to sort their hair a couple of times a week, but now, most of them have grown beards, they don’t show up even in a month,” he said.
A 50-year-old barber in Kabul said morality patrols “visit and check every day.”
In one incident this month, the barber said that an officer came into the shop and asked: “Why did you cut the hair like this?“
“After trying to explain that he is a child, he told us: ‘No, do Islamic hair, not English hair’.”
