Friends: Pictured are Afghan girls coming home from school. The girls, as well as boys, were educated up to the high-school level, and although both sexes wore uniforms, the girls were not allowed to wear a chadri on their way to secondary school. Able young women attended college, as did the men
Daily Mail: Life before the Taliban: Fascinating photos show short skirts, flash cars and no burkas before Afghanistan plunged into hell
* The collection was shot by university professor Dr. Bill Podlich from Arizona during a two-year stint with Unesco
* The amateur photographer set out to document the serene way of life in Afghanistan featuring locals and scenery
* Images include school pupils happily playing, a smiling boy decorating cakes, and people swimming in the river
These fascinating photographs from Afghanistan in the 1960s are a far cry from the war-torn images in the news today.
The eye-opening collection was captured by university professor Dr Bill Podlich from Arizona, who swapped life in America to travel to Kabul with his wife, Margaret, and two teenage daughters, Jan and Peg.
Using his Kodachrome film, his images show a peaceful Afghanistan making strides towards a more liberal and Westernised lifestyle - a stark contrast to harrowing sights seen during Taliban regime.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I posted something like this on Afghanistan a few years ago .... what life was like before everything collapsed. Bottom line .... you cannot help but wonder if the world is regressing.
3 comments:
Editor, I was in Afghanistan for almost eight months.
When I got home people asked me if it was like sent back in time to the stone ages. I told them that, in my opinion, what I saw over there was the future. One of the reasons I became more sympathetic to the ideas behind the USSR and other communist endeavours was what I saw over there.
If we keep carrying on the way we are, Communism may just be our only way out.
To me, Afghanistan is an example of what happens when what Jay calls "freedumb" reigns.
RRH,
"To me, Afghanistan is an example of what happens when what Jay calls "freedumb" reigns."
These photo's are from back in the day when the US and the USSR competed for Afghanistan's NonAligned vote buy helping the Afghan's build stuff, like roads, highways, bridges, airports, railways, hospitals, schools, theatres, universities, you know, a modern society.
They are also rare, as in the '50's Afghanistan was still a tribal pithole, but they show what the Afghan people can do, with help in only 20 years.
The. Carter bought into the "brilliant idea" that arming the most religious and fundimentalist wackjobs in the Country and training them as terrorist to attack Afghan Society, was the best idea ever, since peanut butter.
6 months later, the Soviets invaded to try to prop up the Government and save the country.
I remember watching the Afghanistan episode of the CNN Cold War series. One particular segment struck me. It was an interview with one of those "tribal pithole" leaders. He was expressing how the Afghan Government's land reform and education projects were anathema to the established culture and Islam. He stated to the effect that God decides who is rich and poor and any interference is unthinkable. How convenient for him and his.
After seeing how certain people---our warlord "allies" for instance---lived over there (in opulence) while most lived in stifling misery (I saw many disfigured from things like leishmaniasis-- poverty IS ugly) it came to me that this is just the sort of world outlook "our" leaders subscribe to. It is also the world outlook the shock troops of which they arm to the teeth and set loose upon anyone who tries to live otherwise. Why did/do they support Wahhibi Islam and other fascist movements? Because there is nothing fundamentally at odds with those beliefs and the values reigning in the so called west. When push comes to shove, and it did in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc. And it will in other places. They will ALWAYS side with the most retrograde element of any society.
Like is attracted to like.
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