Indeed - the dreadful Pashtunwalli mores. Nothing to do with Islam. A code of tribal behaviour and custom that is, to me, disgusting.
For example, by the letter of ‘the law’ of pashtunwalli a woman’s brothers must kill her if she is no more than suspected of having been seen by a non-family male.
The Taliban regime has its roots in Pashtunwali. Thus the ban on education for girls and women.
A Pathan at the Afghan Media Resource Centre, where I was the photography tutor and consultant told me that it was only because I was his teacher and his friend that he was not obliged to kill me. This because I had, as one does in the West, jokingly asked who had let one go, in the darkroom.
The other two guys, not Pathans like ‘my friend’, avoided me for an hour or two before one of them explained the problem. They were seriously worried …