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KABUL, Monday (Reuters)

Soaring above the skyline of the Afghan capital in the crisp, blue skies of winter are dozens of examples of individual expressions of liberty that were banned under the Taliban -- kites.

"It is so wonderful to be able to fly our kites again," said Ezmarai, a kite maker in Shor Bazaar, South Kabul. "Business is doing well again, people are buying them and flying them -... look how happy they are."

One of the first things the hardline Taliban did on taking control of Kabul in 1996 was to ban kite flying, an ancient hobby for Afghans dating back to pre-Islamic history when the country was primarily Buddhist.

The ban, although never properly explained, was ruthlessly enforced.

Children were whipped by the feared religious police from the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice if they were caught flying kites.

Kite makers and sellers were beaten up and their stocks shredded. Kite seller Ezmarai spent three days in jail after a neighbour reported he had been flying a kite at night.

"I couldn't see the kite, but I could feel it flying," he told Reuters. "I couldn't be for so long without the kite. It was terrible."

In Shor Bazaar, at least a dozen shops have mushroomed in the past few weeks in exactly the same place where they were before the Taliban.

"We used to sell the string and tell them it was for prayer beads," said Ezmarai. "No, they didn't seem suspicious that it was a lot of prayer-bead string. They seemed happy."

Brightly decorated kites now hang openly from the shutters, huge balls of brightly coloured twine are arrayed on shelves and bottles of glue and reams of paper stacked up waiting for customers.

Most follow a traditional design with a curved, semi-circular top tapering off to a blunted point at the end. Unlike most kites in the west, the Afghan version doesn't have a frame - rather just three or four small pieces of springy wood at the top, which gives them the rounded top.

Most small children's kites sell for about 5,000 afghanis (US$ 0.06), but the bigger fighting kites can go for upwards of 500,000 afghanis - a fortune in this impoverished country.

One possible reason for the Taliban ban is revealed when Zalgai describes why men rather than children are the main customers.

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