KABUL, Afghanistan — The first day of January isn't celebrated as the beginning of the year in Afghanistan, but since the American invasion, it's become a new kind of holiday — a de facto birthday for thousands of Afghans who don't know when they were born.
During protracted wars in the 1980s and '90s, the government didn't have a system in place to register births. Because identification cards and driver's licenses weren't standard in this impoverished nation, families saw no reason to record the exact dates. Government paperwork asked only for an approximate birthday on the Islamic calendar.
But when the United States and its NATO allies arrived, they brought with them a flurry of job opportunities, visa applications, and websites that all required a specific birthday on the Roman calendar.
''Those of us who don't know when we were born selected January first,'' said a US Army interpreter named Tariq, who first wrote the date on his job application with the military and would repeat it when he applied for a visa, and whenever anyone asked. ''It was very easy to remember.''
Like many Afghans, Tariq, who requested that his last name not be used to avoid Taliban threats, has only a vague sense of his birthday, which coincided with the country's collapse into civil war in the early '90s.
As Internet access became more widespread, with 3G networks advertised in the country's major cities, the question of birthdays arose with even greater frequency. Urban Afghans were quick to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail, all of which ask for the registrant's date of birth.
In the digital age, the collective birthday has become something of an inside joke here, as young Afghans send each other messages to celebrate.
But some worry that the lack of official birth registration — a problem that persists today, particularly in rural parts of the country — could have serious implications. ''Birth registration is instrumental in safeguarding other human rights because it provides the official 'proof' of a child's existence,'' said a 2007 United Nations report on the topic, which singled out Afghanistan.