Servis sneakers made in Pakistan prove popular as status symbol amongst Taliban

[Riz]

My school time favorite Cheetah

 

[Chakar The Great]

Slightly off topic but Afghanistan is such a big market for Pakistani products to be capitalised on. Only if that was the priority of state.

 

[Aspen]

Slightly off topic but Afghanistan is such a big market for Pakistani products to be capitalised on. Only if that was the priority of state.

If this state has any sense, it will soon. Imran Khan hypes up Central Asia so much for someone that can't even get IP pipeline up and running.

Look at how Iran is profiting from exporting to Iraq. They have a total dominance of market share, nobody else can compete with Iranian goods in Iraq. It's a captive market. US cannot fight a war with China because they economically depend on China. Afghanistan could be the same thing for us but our foolish leadership decided to cede Afghanistan's economy to our biggest enemy, look how that worked out for us.

Iran understood better than anyone else that you cannot fight a war with a country you economically depend on, which is why Iran is so deeply entrenched in Iraq's economy, they made sure Iraq never fights a war with Iran again by making Iraq economically dependent on Iran for imports. No one can ever come to power in Iraq again if they want to cut off themselves from Iranian economy because Iranian economy is lifeline for Iraq, Iraqis will starve without Iranian exports to them.

I wish Pakistanis understood this about Afghanistan. It is even more humiliating in our case because Afghanistan is a landlocked country and still Afghanistan figured out a way to be dependent on India instead of us despite not even having a border with them.

 

[SecularNationalist]

Those cheetahs are no doubt a very tough shoes because I have used them as well and my experience speaks.
They are made for the civilian market but they are as tough as any shoe made for any professional army in the world.
Taliban were clever and they have chosen the right shoe. It's bang for the buck.
Hats off to our service company which produced such a bad a$$ shoe which defeated two super powers

 

[TheSnakeEatingMarkhur]

SERVIS now have the NDURE brand, but its not as good or tough as CHEETAS


see, CHEETAS were built to take punishment, but NDURE is just too soft .


or maybe SERVIS has finally discovered the idea of planned obsolesce ?

Cheetas and all other servis shoes are tough ones like they are made to last...

NDURE is a sports brand by servis

 

[fitpOsitive]

Members of a Taliban Red Unit in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, in March. The sneakers they wear have become synonymous with violence.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The unassuming white leather high-top sneakers with green-and-yellow trim are a best seller for a roughly half-dozen shoe vendors in a sprawling bazaar in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But they are not in demand because they’re the latest fashion trend. For many Afghans, the sneakers evoke only one emotion: fear.
That’s because they’re beloved by Taliban fighters as a status symbol even as they have become a gruesome marker of an unending war, the sneakers’ white silhouette often cutting across Afghanistan’s battlefields of dirt, sand and blood.
Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan. They are marketed toward athletes, once endorsed by sports stars, and are the company’s best-selling model.

In Afghanistan they’ve been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades — from the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s to the U.S.-led war that began in 2001. They are burned into the memories of many, along with the wanton death and destruction the country has endured since the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979.

The sneakers have become synonymous with violence, and especially so on the feet of the Taliban.

A knockoff Servis sneaker on display at a bazaar in Mazar-i-Sharif, this month.

Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan.
At the market in Mazar-i-Sharif, the vendors’ stands are all neatly arranged — a commerce hub replete with kebab stands, home improvement and pharmaceutical goods, children’s toys and everyday clothing.
The popularity of the high-tops — which come in instantly recognizable white-and-blue boxes — is something rarely acknowledged aloud. But they are often inconspicuously displayed among the pairs of walking and running shoes, boots and sandals, a single sneaker sitting at the front of many vendor tables that line the bazaar’s dimly lit alleyways.

The positioning is almost like a subtle message: “You can get these here, but inquire quietly.”
“I don’t ask,” Hashim Shingal, 36, said, referring to who was buying his sneakers.
Mr. Shingal was just one of a few shoe vendors who were comfortable speaking on the record. At least 10 others refused, mostly because they feared incurring tax or retribution from the Taliban.
Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities, including the capital of Kabul, the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
“I have seen these shoes worn by the Taliban many times,” Said Mar Jan, a resident of Khost city in Afghanistan’s mountainous east, said. Government militia members, some security forces, criminals and people in rural areas also buy and wear them.

Members of the Taliban, one wearing Servis low-tops. The sneakers have been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades.

Defected Taliban insurgents in the courtyard of a government intelligence guesthouse in Faizabad, in 2019.
Servis (pronounced “Sarwees”) introduced the Cheetah line in the early 1980s, and they started showing up in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

Brig. Gen. Khair Mohammad Timor, a former insurgent commander who fought the Communist-backed Afghan government and the Taliban before becoming a police chief in 2011, recalled that more than 30 years ago, his superior officer ordered the shoes to make his fighters look more professional.
They “became a tradition,” said General Timor, who was accused of human rights abuses in a 2015 Human Rights Watch report.
But as U.S. forces surged into Afghanistan in 2001, the shoes became quickly associated with the Taliban, who had risen to power in 1996 and adopted the footwear along the way.
“Most of the time, we put on white shoes and the whiteness gives the sign of peace,” Najibullah Aqtash, a local Taliban commander in Kunduz Province, said flatly. He noted that white was also the color of the Taliban’s flag.
American troops referred to the sneakers as Haqqani High-Tops, after the group’s violent and criminal wing located in the country’s east and neighboring tribal areas in Pakistan. They would often stop and question people seen wearing them, and intelligence officers would sometimes tell units deployed to Afghanistan: Look out for the sneakers.
These days, though, American forces have slowly withdrawn from the country. The Afghan military and police bear the brunt of the fighting now, losing dozens of troops a week, while the roughly 2,500 U.S. service members still in the country provide airstrikes.

A private security guard in Mazar-i-Sharif. Cheetahs have also become popular with some Afghan security forces because they are a status symbol of being a fighter.

Afghan security forces along the Herat-Kandahar Highway in December. Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
Today, the shoes cost from roughly $13 to $25, depending on where they are being sold and if they are the original Servis brand or Chinese knockoffs, which are deceptively similar but of poorer quality. No matter who makes them, the high-tops are comfy and sturdy.
In Afghanistan’s South, Taliban fighters frequently trade their sandals for Cheetahs in the winter, but they are sometimes worn year-round in more mountainous parts of the country, lasting about a year before they need to be replaced, according to Taliban members.
The Taliban acquire the sneakers — which also come in low-top styles and in the color black — in different ways, depending on their region, according to several Taliban members and shop owners.
Taliban commanders in the north, east and west, for the most part, send taxi drivers or associates into city centers to buy them in bulk from local vendors, like Mr. Shingal. He said winter was his best season; he sells about 300 pairs a month. He added that his clients were mostly from districts outside Mazar-i-Sharif, where fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government is ongoing.
His customers almost always ask for receipts, he said.
In the south, Taliban commanders cross into Pakistan, buying the shoes in border cities such as Quetta and Chaman.
Roughly two years ago, a high-ranking Taliban commander recalled preparing for an operation against the Islamic State’s affiliate in the country that was entrenched in Kunar Province. The commander said the battle would be difficult and he wanted his men to “fight comfortably,” so he dispatched taxi drivers to buy 200 pairs of Cheetahs in Jalalabad, a bustling city in the east.

The Taliban and the Afghan government are now in peace talks in Qatar. As those negotiations inch forward, the Taliban have made a concerted propaganda push to publicly divorce themselves from the Cheetahs to try to appear more like a professional army — despite their history as an insurgent force responsible for human rights abuses, oppression of women under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law and having taken part in a recent campaign of targeted killings on civil society members across the country.

Local uprising forces, many wearing Servis sneakers, carry the remains of one of their fighters after a battle with Taliban insurgents in 2019.

Schoolgirls visiting Kabul’s land mine museum in 2019, where a photo of a boy with prosthetic legs is on display.
Their videos and images instead display uniforms and military boots, sometimes looted, along with U.S.-supplied weapons, from Afghan army bases.
Still, Cheetah sales in Afghanistan continue.
In Kabul city’s beating epicenter, on the second floor of a row of shops, is the office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Servis has been officially importing the shoes in Afghanistan for roughly 25 years, said Omar Saeed, the chief executive officer of Servis until 2019 who now serves on the board of directors of Service Industries Limited, the parent company.
In a good year, Mr. Saeed said, the company typically exports around 200,000 pairs to Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the only other country where Cheetahs are officially sold, the company usually sells more than one million pairs.

“We think everyone in Afghanistan wears it,” Mr. Saeed said of the sneaker in a recent telephone interview. “We don’t think of it as a shoe made for the Taliban.”
The warehouse in Kabul is the main distribution hub for the shoes that are stitched and glued together in a factory in Gujrat, Pakistan, before they are shipped across the border.
An older man in the Kabul office, who would not give his name, looked alarmed when asked about the sneakers and his business. He refused to talk about them.
But in the cramped, dimly lit room, the distinctive Servis Cheetah boxes were piled nearly floor to ceiling.

The office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Reporting was contributed by Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Afghanistan; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar; Asadullah Timory from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad; Najim Rahim from Kabul; and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, Follow the White High-Tops and You’ll Find the Taliban (Published 2021)

The sneakers have been worn by Afghan fighters over multiple generations, but they’ve become a gruesome marker of the Taliban’s violent insurgency.

www.nytimes.com

I have them too. Banda toot jata hai, yeh jota nahi tootta. Hats off to Servis Pakistan.

 

[Aryeih Leib]

Bata have a huge presence in India. Growing up I always thought it was an Indian brand. Current Bata CEO also seems to be of Indian origin. It is not a Pakistani brand.

First I'm hearing of 'Servis'.. just found it funny that the Chinese are making cheap low quality knock offs of a Pakistani? brand.

Bata is frm Czech Republic

 

[Muhammad Omar]

Oh bhai stop making every thread India Vs Pakistan thread

We make this we make that ajeeb Chay loog hain

 

[Zulfiqar]

I had cheetahs as a teen (although a different cut and design).

The one with some kind of pump in the sole to let air in.

Those were good and I bought a second pair after I was done with the first.

Those were mid cut probably.

Our cops and TTP terrorists also use cheetahs.


I sprained an ankle once while playing basketball ball so I then switched over to adidas and then nike zoom basketball shoes later on.

 

[TNT]

Definition of a stupid article. Maybe the author was bend down by taliban and had to smell those shoes and decided to write a useless article.

 

[RIP Pak LAW]

just bought a Service ndure jogger 2 days back ...very comfortable and soft ..liking it.

 

[xyxmt]

And My family members make fun of me because I have 9 number

I had a friend back in Pakistani who was 6' tall and wore size 7 shoes, we always wonder how could he balance himself on those feet

 

[ziaulislam]

Members of a Taliban Red Unit in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, in March. The sneakers they wear have become synonymous with violence.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The unassuming white leather high-top sneakers with green-and-yellow trim are a best seller for a roughly half-dozen shoe vendors in a sprawling bazaar in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But they are not in demand because they’re the latest fashion trend. For many Afghans, the sneakers evoke only one emotion: fear.
That’s because they’re beloved by Taliban fighters as a status symbol even as they have become a gruesome marker of an unending war, the sneakers’ white silhouette often cutting across Afghanistan’s battlefields of dirt, sand and blood.
Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan. They are marketed toward athletes, once endorsed by sports stars, and are the company’s best-selling model.

In Afghanistan they’ve been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades — from the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s to the U.S.-led war that began in 2001. They are burned into the memories of many, along with the wanton death and destruction the country has endured since the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979.

The sneakers have become synonymous with violence, and especially so on the feet of the Taliban.

A knockoff Servis sneaker on display at a bazaar in Mazar-i-Sharif, this month.

Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan.
At the market in Mazar-i-Sharif, the vendors’ stands are all neatly arranged — a commerce hub replete with kebab stands, home improvement and pharmaceutical goods, children’s toys and everyday clothing.
The popularity of the high-tops — which come in instantly recognizable white-and-blue boxes — is something rarely acknowledged aloud. But they are often inconspicuously displayed among the pairs of walking and running shoes, boots and sandals, a single sneaker sitting at the front of many vendor tables that line the bazaar’s dimly lit alleyways.

The positioning is almost like a subtle message: “You can get these here, but inquire quietly.”
“I don’t ask,” Hashim Shingal, 36, said, referring to who was buying his sneakers.
Mr. Shingal was just one of a few shoe vendors who were comfortable speaking on the record. At least 10 others refused, mostly because they feared incurring tax or retribution from the Taliban.
Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities, including the capital of Kabul, the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
“I have seen these shoes worn by the Taliban many times,” Said Mar Jan, a resident of Khost city in Afghanistan’s mountainous east, said. Government militia members, some security forces, criminals and people in rural areas also buy and wear them.

Members of the Taliban, one wearing Servis low-tops. The sneakers have been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades.

Defected Taliban insurgents in the courtyard of a government intelligence guesthouse in Faizabad, in 2019.
Servis (pronounced “Sarwees”) introduced the Cheetah line in the early 1980s, and they started showing up in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

Brig. Gen. Khair Mohammad Timor, a former insurgent commander who fought the Communist-backed Afghan government and the Taliban before becoming a police chief in 2011, recalled that more than 30 years ago, his superior officer ordered the shoes to make his fighters look more professional.
They “became a tradition,” said General Timor, who was accused of human rights abuses in a 2015 Human Rights Watch report.
But as U.S. forces surged into Afghanistan in 2001, the shoes became quickly associated with the Taliban, who had risen to power in 1996 and adopted the footwear along the way.
“Most of the time, we put on white shoes and the whiteness gives the sign of peace,” Najibullah Aqtash, a local Taliban commander in Kunduz Province, said flatly. He noted that white was also the color of the Taliban’s flag.
American troops referred to the sneakers as Haqqani High-Tops, after the group’s violent and criminal wing located in the country’s east and neighboring tribal areas in Pakistan. They would often stop and question people seen wearing them, and intelligence officers would sometimes tell units deployed to Afghanistan: Look out for the sneakers.
These days, though, American forces have slowly withdrawn from the country. The Afghan military and police bear the brunt of the fighting now, losing dozens of troops a week, while the roughly 2,500 U.S. service members still in the country provide airstrikes.

A private security guard in Mazar-i-Sharif. Cheetahs have also become popular with some Afghan security forces because they are a status symbol of being a fighter.

Afghan security forces along the Herat-Kandahar Highway in December. Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
Today, the shoes cost from roughly $13 to $25, depending on where they are being sold and if they are the original Servis brand or Chinese knockoffs, which are deceptively similar but of poorer quality. No matter who makes them, the high-tops are comfy and sturdy.
In Afghanistan’s South, Taliban fighters frequently trade their sandals for Cheetahs in the winter, but they are sometimes worn year-round in more mountainous parts of the country, lasting about a year before they need to be replaced, according to Taliban members.
The Taliban acquire the sneakers — which also come in low-top styles and in the color black — in different ways, depending on their region, according to several Taliban members and shop owners.
Taliban commanders in the north, east and west, for the most part, send taxi drivers or associates into city centers to buy them in bulk from local vendors, like Mr. Shingal. He said winter was his best season; he sells about 300 pairs a month. He added that his clients were mostly from districts outside Mazar-i-Sharif, where fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government is ongoing.
His customers almost always ask for receipts, he said.
In the south, Taliban commanders cross into Pakistan, buying the shoes in border cities such as Quetta and Chaman.
Roughly two years ago, a high-ranking Taliban commander recalled preparing for an operation against the Islamic State’s affiliate in the country that was entrenched in Kunar Province. The commander said the battle would be difficult and he wanted his men to “fight comfortably,” so he dispatched taxi drivers to buy 200 pairs of Cheetahs in Jalalabad, a bustling city in the east.

The Taliban and the Afghan government are now in peace talks in Qatar. As those negotiations inch forward, the Taliban have made a concerted propaganda push to publicly divorce themselves from the Cheetahs to try to appear more like a professional army — despite their history as an insurgent force responsible for human rights abuses, oppression of women under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law and having taken part in a recent campaign of targeted killings on civil society members across the country.

Local uprising forces, many wearing Servis sneakers, carry the remains of one of their fighters after a battle with Taliban insurgents in 2019.

Schoolgirls visiting Kabul’s land mine museum in 2019, where a photo of a boy with prosthetic legs is on display.
Their videos and images instead display uniforms and military boots, sometimes looted, along with U.S.-supplied weapons, from Afghan army bases.
Still, Cheetah sales in Afghanistan continue.
In Kabul city’s beating epicenter, on the second floor of a row of shops, is the office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Servis has been officially importing the shoes in Afghanistan for roughly 25 years, said Omar Saeed, the chief executive officer of Servis until 2019 who now serves on the board of directors of Service Industries Limited, the parent company.
In a good year, Mr. Saeed said, the company typically exports around 200,000 pairs to Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the only other country where Cheetahs are officially sold, the company usually sells more than one million pairs.

“We think everyone in Afghanistan wears it,” Mr. Saeed said of the sneaker in a recent telephone interview. “We don’t think of it as a shoe made for the Taliban.”
The warehouse in Kabul is the main distribution hub for the shoes that are stitched and glued together in a factory in Gujrat, Pakistan, before they are shipped across the border.
An older man in the Kabul office, who would not give his name, looked alarmed when asked about the sneakers and his business. He refused to talk about them.
But in the cramped, dimly lit room, the distinctive Servis Cheetah boxes were piled nearly floor to ceiling.

The office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Reporting was contributed by Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Afghanistan; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar; Asadullah Timory from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad; Najim Rahim from Kabul; and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, Follow the White High-Tops and You’ll Find the Taliban (Published 2021)

The sneakers have been worn by Afghan fighters over multiple generations, but they’ve become a gruesome marker of the Taliban’s violent insurgency.

www.nytimes.com

Never seen a stupid and so inaccurate article in NY times

Slightly off topic but Afghanistan is such a big market for Pakistani products to be capitalised on. Only if that was the priority of state.

Instead we let iran and india gain the markey due to frequent boarder closure and non sensical export bans

Several poultry business were wiped out in KPK after ban on chicken export

Farmers told me this was fone to drop the prices which worked for one season

Farmers simply moved away from it(as they sold stock on loss that year)

Result prices paradoxically went up

 

[khanmubashir]

Members of a Taliban Red Unit in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, in March. The sneakers they wear have become synonymous with violence.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The unassuming white leather high-top sneakers with green-and-yellow trim are a best seller for a roughly half-dozen shoe vendors in a sprawling bazaar in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But they are not in demand because they’re the latest fashion trend. For many Afghans, the sneakers evoke only one emotion: fear.
That’s because they’re beloved by Taliban fighters as a status symbol even as they have become a gruesome marker of an unending war, the sneakers’ white silhouette often cutting across Afghanistan’s battlefields of dirt, sand and blood.
Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan. They are marketed toward athletes, once endorsed by sports stars, and are the company’s best-selling model.

In Afghanistan they’ve been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades — from the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s to the U.S.-led war that began in 2001. They are burned into the memories of many, along with the wanton death and destruction the country has endured since the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979.

The sneakers have become synonymous with violence, and especially so on the feet of the Taliban.

A knockoff Servis sneaker on display at a bazaar in Mazar-i-Sharif, this month.

Called Cheetahs, the sneakers are produced by Servis Shoes, one of the largest shoe companies in Pakistan.
At the market in Mazar-i-Sharif, the vendors’ stands are all neatly arranged — a commerce hub replete with kebab stands, home improvement and pharmaceutical goods, children’s toys and everyday clothing.
The popularity of the high-tops — which come in instantly recognizable white-and-blue boxes — is something rarely acknowledged aloud. But they are often inconspicuously displayed among the pairs of walking and running shoes, boots and sandals, a single sneaker sitting at the front of many vendor tables that line the bazaar’s dimly lit alleyways.

The positioning is almost like a subtle message: “You can get these here, but inquire quietly.”
“I don’t ask,” Hashim Shingal, 36, said, referring to who was buying his sneakers.
Mr. Shingal was just one of a few shoe vendors who were comfortable speaking on the record. At least 10 others refused, mostly because they feared incurring tax or retribution from the Taliban.
Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities, including the capital of Kabul, the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
“I have seen these shoes worn by the Taliban many times,” Said Mar Jan, a resident of Khost city in Afghanistan’s mountainous east, said. Government militia members, some security forces, criminals and people in rural areas also buy and wear them.

Members of the Taliban, one wearing Servis low-tops. The sneakers have been worn by rifle-wielding insurgents for decades.

Defected Taliban insurgents in the courtyard of a government intelligence guesthouse in Faizabad, in 2019.
Servis (pronounced “Sarwees”) introduced the Cheetah line in the early 1980s, and they started showing up in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

Brig. Gen. Khair Mohammad Timor, a former insurgent commander who fought the Communist-backed Afghan government and the Taliban before becoming a police chief in 2011, recalled that more than 30 years ago, his superior officer ordered the shoes to make his fighters look more professional.
They “became a tradition,” said General Timor, who was accused of human rights abuses in a 2015 Human Rights Watch report.
But as U.S. forces surged into Afghanistan in 2001, the shoes became quickly associated with the Taliban, who had risen to power in 1996 and adopted the footwear along the way.
“Most of the time, we put on white shoes and the whiteness gives the sign of peace,” Najibullah Aqtash, a local Taliban commander in Kunduz Province, said flatly. He noted that white was also the color of the Taliban’s flag.
American troops referred to the sneakers as Haqqani High-Tops, after the group’s violent and criminal wing located in the country’s east and neighboring tribal areas in Pakistan. They would often stop and question people seen wearing them, and intelligence officers would sometimes tell units deployed to Afghanistan: Look out for the sneakers.
These days, though, American forces have slowly withdrawn from the country. The Afghan military and police bear the brunt of the fighting now, losing dozens of troops a week, while the roughly 2,500 U.S. service members still in the country provide airstrikes.

A private security guard in Mazar-i-Sharif. Cheetahs have also become popular with some Afghan security forces because they are a status symbol of being a fighter.

Afghan security forces along the Herat-Kandahar Highway in December. Even in the heart of Afghanistan’s most populated cities the shoes evoke a certain sense of dread.
Today, the shoes cost from roughly $13 to $25, depending on where they are being sold and if they are the original Servis brand or Chinese knockoffs, which are deceptively similar but of poorer quality. No matter who makes them, the high-tops are comfy and sturdy.
In Afghanistan’s South, Taliban fighters frequently trade their sandals for Cheetahs in the winter, but they are sometimes worn year-round in more mountainous parts of the country, lasting about a year before they need to be replaced, according to Taliban members.
The Taliban acquire the sneakers — which also come in low-top styles and in the color black — in different ways, depending on their region, according to several Taliban members and shop owners.
Taliban commanders in the north, east and west, for the most part, send taxi drivers or associates into city centers to buy them in bulk from local vendors, like Mr. Shingal. He said winter was his best season; he sells about 300 pairs a month. He added that his clients were mostly from districts outside Mazar-i-Sharif, where fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government is ongoing.
His customers almost always ask for receipts, he said.
In the south, Taliban commanders cross into Pakistan, buying the shoes in border cities such as Quetta and Chaman.
Roughly two years ago, a high-ranking Taliban commander recalled preparing for an operation against the Islamic State’s affiliate in the country that was entrenched in Kunar Province. The commander said the battle would be difficult and he wanted his men to “fight comfortably,” so he dispatched taxi drivers to buy 200 pairs of Cheetahs in Jalalabad, a bustling city in the east.

The Taliban and the Afghan government are now in peace talks in Qatar. As those negotiations inch forward, the Taliban have made a concerted propaganda push to publicly divorce themselves from the Cheetahs to try to appear more like a professional army — despite their history as an insurgent force responsible for human rights abuses, oppression of women under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law and having taken part in a recent campaign of targeted killings on civil society members across the country.

Local uprising forces, many wearing Servis sneakers, carry the remains of one of their fighters after a battle with Taliban insurgents in 2019.

Schoolgirls visiting Kabul’s land mine museum in 2019, where a photo of a boy with prosthetic legs is on display.
Their videos and images instead display uniforms and military boots, sometimes looted, along with U.S.-supplied weapons, from Afghan army bases.
Still, Cheetah sales in Afghanistan continue.
In Kabul city’s beating epicenter, on the second floor of a row of shops, is the office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Servis has been officially importing the shoes in Afghanistan for roughly 25 years, said Omar Saeed, the chief executive officer of Servis until 2019 who now serves on the board of directors of Service Industries Limited, the parent company.
In a good year, Mr. Saeed said, the company typically exports around 200,000 pairs to Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the only other country where Cheetahs are officially sold, the company usually sells more than one million pairs.

“We think everyone in Afghanistan wears it,” Mr. Saeed said of the sneaker in a recent telephone interview. “We don’t think of it as a shoe made for the Taliban.”
The warehouse in Kabul is the main distribution hub for the shoes that are stitched and glued together in a factory in Gujrat, Pakistan, before they are shipped across the border.
An older man in the Kabul office, who would not give his name, looked alarmed when asked about the sneakers and his business. He refused to talk about them.
But in the cramped, dimly lit room, the distinctive Servis Cheetah boxes were piled nearly floor to ceiling.

The office of the only licensed Servis importer and distributor in Afghanistan.
Reporting was contributed by Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Afghanistan; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar; Asadullah Timory from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad; Najim Rahim from Kabul; and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, Follow the White High-Tops and You’ll Find the Taliban (Published 2021)

The sneakers have been worn by Afghan fighters over multiple generations, but they’ve become a gruesome marker of the Taliban’s violent insurgency.

www.nytimes.com

Grip servis jesi to fikar kesi???

Btw Isis also used alot of Toyota pickup truck so should we blame Japan for Isis ??

 

[SecularNationalist]

just bought a Service ndure jogger 2 days back ...very comfortable and soft ..liking it.

I also bought ndure jogger almost 2 weeks ago. Good quality and light in weight.
But the toughness is not even close to cheetahs.
Cheetahs are very heavy weight .