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A NOTE ON THE USE OF NAMES, DATES, AND TERMS USED IN THIS REPORT

Many Afghans use only one name, and Afghans who use two names do not necessarily use the same last name across generations, as is the practice in the West with family names.

Because of the overlapping use of several different calendars in parts of Afghanistan (including both the lunar Muslim and solar Afghan calendars, as well as the Western calendar) and the fact that many rural Afghans do not keep careful track of dates, it is difficult to establish the exact dates of many of the incidents documented in this report. Many witnesses dated events with a loose reference to the religious calendar, such as "around the twentieth day of [the Muslim holy month of] Ramadan." In writing this report, we have tried to be as accurate as possible in estimating the time and occurrence of each incident, but the reader should take most of the dates in this report as approximations rather than as exact dates. Similarly, ages of victims and witnesses in the report are often approximations, as rural Afghans often do not know their exact age.

The Afghan national currency is Afghani. Most Afghans count money in terms of lakhs, with one lakh equaling 100,000 Afghanis. There are two forms of Afghanis currently in circulation: one issued by the former Jamiat-dominated government in Faizabad, referred to as Daulati Afghanis; a second issued by General Dostum of Junbish, referred to as Junbish Afghanis. The two versions have widely different exchange rates: at the time of this writing, Daulati Afghanis trade for 38,000 to the U.S. dollar, while Junbish Afghanis trade at 72,000 to the U.S. dollar.

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